Photographing Glacier National Park
Glacier NP is a beautiful US National Park and a hiker's dream thanks to its vast network of hiking trails but, with the Going-to-the-Sun park road, it is also a good choice for those not wanting to or those unable to leave their vehicle.
In this year, 2020, the park was only partially open thanks to COVID-19/coronavirus. This meant the most beautiful trail, the Grinnell Glacier Trail, was closed. The only entrance open was the west entrance near Apgar Village. The park was completely saturated with visitors.
Some campgrounds are on a first-come-first-serve basis while some are available through recreation.gov.
When to Visit
The park is closed during the winter.
Gear to Bring
Bring the whole gamut of lens focal lengths. Because some of the park is nestled within a valley, a wide angle to a normal to a moderate telephoto will be useful. Super telephoto lenses will be useful for the abundance of wildlife like bears. If focus stacking or doing time-lapse photography then a tripod is a must. Bring a polarizer.
Wildlife
From pikas, a small mouse-like mammal, to large elk and eveything in between, there is no shortage of wildlife in this park. On this visit only mountain goats were seen.
Cellphone Service
AT&T cell service is available in Apgar Village but only one to two bars of 4G LTE signal strength can be found. While the signal was not bad, the service was very poor due to the large number of people trying to access it from the park this time. The cell towers had become completely saturated with connections and data usage. This may be a circumstance of COVID-19.
Relates links: