Apgar Campground

There were no hookups but plenty of water and a dump station as you came in. The toilets were flushing and there were showers in Loop A. We stayed with our 17 ft TT and it was pull through. The sites were far enough from each other to afford privacy. It was a great location to Lake Mcdonald and Apgar Village. Wished we were able to stay longer but would definitely come back again!

We were here years ago and paid another visit this week. We stayed in C loop which consists of all pull throughs however, if you have anything over 25' or so, you'll likely have to back in. The pull throughs are tight and trees are in the way. A Loop is mostly pull-off sites and B Loop is mostly pull through but looked to be more level and wider. With our 30', I'd plan for B loop next time.

During the high season, Apgar is now a reservation only campground. This made it less stressful than driving around looking for a FCFS spot however because some people don't cancel when plans change, there were a lot of empty spots. Just an FYI, we left a day early and were able to go on to recreation.gov, even after we had checked in, and we were fully refunded for our last day that I cancelled.

I love this campground because it's within easy walking distance of Lake McDonald, the Apgar Village and Visitor center.

Clean bathrooms with flush toilets. People were respectful of generator hours. If you have a campground reservation, take a screenshot of it because you'll need to to get back into the park between 6AM-4PM. You do not need a separate GTSR pass if you have camping reservations.

We had no ATT or Verizon. We even tried the WeBoost and Mimo. However, T-Mobile had voice and text service with no boost and crazy 30-45 Mbps down and 2-3 Mbps up with the WeBoost.

The campground itself is typical national park, clean and servicable. Flush toilet bathrooms, dry sites, good for small to mid-sized rigs. Where it really shines is as a base camp for the Lake MacDonald area and western half of Going to the Sun Road. GTSR wasn't yet opened past Avalanche Creek campground, but a 2-mile hike from the latter yielded us a beautiful alpine lake with a majestic backdrop:)

We arrived before 9:00 am on July 2, and we drove around for at least 30 min looking for a spot. The tags on the space markers show the date they will be leaving. It reminded us of driving around Manhattan looking for a parking spot. We lucked out and pulled into a spot just as someone was leaving. It appeared that all spots were pull through, but some were only suited for tent camping because it was a small site or not level at all. The campground location was perfect. Basically the best parking spot in the park during the week of Canada Day AND Independence Day. We rode our bikes to visitor center and took 7:00 am shuttle to St. Mary (highly recommend getting an EARLY start). Also rode bikes to West Glacier for souvenir shopping. There’s no hookups, cell service doesn’t work for most of the day, no showers, not even soap in the bathroom, but hey, the convenience for visiting the park out weighed all of that.

It's a great campground right in Glacier National Park. Sites have a picnic table, fire ring, and flat area for tents. Site size varies a lot. You'll have to drive around a bit to find ones that accommodate bigger rigs. There were still plenty that did, though. One warning - most sites are pull-thru, but some are very narrow. In our 33' 5th wheel, we would have hit trees/rocks trying to get through a lot of them. We ended up backing in, and we fit with no problems at all.

The only downside to the park for us is that every site has tree cover, so our solar isn't doing much. They have generator hours, but they're pretty limited. That's good for the noise, but bad if you're used to having lots of power.

Verizon signal is hit and miss. At the start of Loop A, we had a few bars. When we got to the back of the loop, we had none. Even with a few bars, we only get a couple mbps down. It's not very busy right now, but I'd imagine at peak season it's probably unusable. AT&T is faster at around 10 mbps down and 2 mbps up. We didn't check that at the back of loop A, but that's what we get near the middle. Worst case, we're only 1/2 mile from the visitor center, and they have WiFi there.

Nice wooded campgrounds with plenty of space between sites.

Clean bathrooms—no showers.

No hook-ups. Free dump station and free water.

Campsites are mostly level and each have a nice big fire pit with grill and wheelchair accessible picnic tables.

You can run a generator only between the hours of 8am to 10am, 12pm to 2pm or from 5pm to 7pm.

Situated on the west side of Glacier, though near Lake McDonald, Apgar is large and heavily wooded, which means there are basically no views from the campground itself. We stayed at Two Medicine and St. Mary and visited the campgrounds at Cut Bank and Many Glacier. All of those have direct mountain views from the campground as well as lake views that highlight the most notable features of Glacier. Apgar could basically be any forest campground in the Pacific Northwest.

That being said, the campground is large and has plenty of room for rigs of all sizes. There is a paved walking path to the Apgar Visitor Center, where you can catch the shuttle up Going to the Sun Road, and the small concessions at Apgar Village. Shuttles on this side were busy throughout the day, so we got in line before 7 am to have any chance to getting up to Logan Pass early. The best part is that data is available in the campground, but is significantly stronger as you proceed down the loops. With AT&T, we had two bars LTE in loop D while we had no service at all in loop A! Speeds were really poor at peak times, however (ATT Download 0.81 Mbps Upload FAILED at 4 pm. At 6:30 am, download was 15.87 Mbps and upload was 2.64 Mbps).

Our site was large, level, had great privacy and even had enough of a clearing in the trees to allow some solar power generation. Being in the last loop, noise was minimal except when there were large parties in the group camping area in loop E. D158 is one of the best in the campground, in my opinion. Access to the campground was easy, and the road into the park to the campground is in excellent condition. As is usual for national parks, there were toilets but no showers, and water was available throughout the campground on unthreaded spigots. There is one dump station for the whole campground that gets busy in the mornings.

Compared to the campgrounds on the east side of the park, we thought this was just OK, but it's obviously the biggest and best option if you want to camp on the west side.

Apgar Campground has been one of our favorite campgrounds by far. There are no hookups but a dump station and fresh water are on site. Honestly, I like that it doesn't have any hooksups because then the price would be crazy high, I'm sure.

This campground is first come, first serve, so plan accordingly. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon almost 2 weeks before July 4th and had no trouble getting a site. It started filling to capacity the weekend before the 4th but during the week, you can almost certainly get a site. Just have a backup plan in case you don't. It's worth the effort, though.

The scenery is beautiful and wildlife is abundant. Within an hour of arriving there was a deer walking through our site. The rangers warn about bears and enforce the rules.

Rule enforcement is actually one of the things that we liked the most about this campground. They set the rules and enforce them *strictly*. The rangers are very nice but do their job thoroughly. The rules are reasonable and ensure that everyone has a good, safe time.

At this campground, you are within easy walking distance to McDonald Lake and Apgar Village. Both worth while. The Going To The Sun Road starts at the entrance to here and is a phenomenal drive. An absolute must.

The sites can be a bit tight and range from "no way to get anything more than a tent in there" to big enough for larger rigs. Our 31' class A towing our Jeep had no troubles parking.

The only drawback (really, if it is one) is that cell service is nearly non-existent here. Without our booster, AT&T had 1 bar of LTE to just 4G to nothing. With the booster we had 3 to 4 bars of LTE but the tower was so overloaded that it was unusable. T-Mobile had about the same signal but zero data. I heard that Verizon was about the same here as well.