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Apgar is the largest campground in Glacier National Park. It offers 5 reservable group sites that accommodate 9-24 people each. Apgar Village is just minutes away, offering a visitor center, gift shops, a general store and casual restaurant. Amenities within the campground include flush toilets and drinking water. Picnic tables and fire rings are provided, and a campground host is on-site. Ranger programs are held nightly at the amphitheater. Lake McDonald is just a short stroll from the campground.
Located 1 mile northeast of the west entrance near West Glacier, Montana. Access is from U.S. Highway 2, approximately 32 miles northeast of Kalispell, Montana.
We arrived on October 21. The campground is pretty and spacious for car camping but here are a few things to expect if you are going around this time. Only a few bathrooms are open, no water (they are shut off), it is primitive camping. No sinks in bathrooms; bathrooms have pit toilets. There’s nothing open around the campgrounds.
Me and my partner recently stayed at Apgar for a week tent camping! We came at the end of the season on purpose (less crowded) and the fall foliage was so vibrant & AMAZING!! With it being the end of the season, the regular bathrooms and shower got shut down half way through our stay. They had a vault toilet that was open and it was still nice and clean. The shower was free and surprisingly very nice for a campground shower. Apgar village is within walking distance & has just about everything you’d need, including regular bathrooms that are open! The lake is right next to the campground as well and a great place to hangout on the beach! We had to switch camp sights half way through our week and both sights were great! They all come with a campfire ring and picnic table. I’ve definitely been to more private sights but I would say you still have a good chunk in between you and your neighbors, it didn’t bother us at all. Plenty of trash, recycling & food storage boxes.
If I HAD to say one bad thing about our experience at Apgar would be the spiders haha! Of course that comes with the territory, you’re camping! But seriously, there’s a lot of spiders, in October at least. So for those of you who are creeped out by that sort of thing, don’t leave any of your stuff outside at night!
We stayed at B89, the very end of Loop B, for two nights—August 23 & 24. A couple sites next to us stayed empty. I could see the headlights and brake lights of cars through the trees, waiting for their turn to take the one lane construction zone road into the park at 5:30am and could hear louder vehicles at times. The second night we got better at finding a flat spot on the site for the van.
Fellow campers were very quiet all the time. The bathroom was clean and a short walk away, although there was no soap. We had to drive to the shower in Loop A and wait in line (not everyone knows that 20 minute showers when there are only 3 is not very courteous). The showers were hot and really big (could’ve made 6 showers out of that building).
The road along Lake McDonald as others have said is entirely under construction. A bumpy ride that I remembered to be so peaceful and beautiful the previous several times I was here. It’s exactly one hour from Apgar to Logan Pass where parking filled up around 7:40am.
There were fire restrictions during our stay meaning there was no way to cook food, no way to enjoy a campfire which was a bummer. But we spent our second day renting a motorboat (we saw a bear on the shore!) and eating at Eddie’s Cafe which were both great experiences.
I really enjoyed this campground. We were in loop D and had a spacious campsite with pull through parking and 2 tent pads. The sites were well spaced out and I didn't feel cramped in on top of my neighbors. Check in was essentially non existent and we could pull right in. The grounds felt very "hands off" which was lovely. The bathrooms were clean and all flush. There are not showers in all of the loops, you might have to drive to the shower facility a few loops away. I was disappointed to find that there was no on-site wood available. You will have to bring your own from gas stations nearby. There was also no dishwashing station. As a tent camper it makes washing up very difficult to stay bear safe. Plenty of signs saying not to wash dishes in the bathroom sinks, but no real solution.
