Our Story

How We Started

Glacier Outfitters began in 2013 with a single box of bear spray and a trailer full of paddleboards, operating out of the Discovery Center on Highway 2. Our founder, Hampton, saw a gap: visitors were arriving in Glacier National Park eager to explore, but the gear they needed — paddleboards, bear spray, rental bikes — wasn’t available anywhere inside the park.

After just a month from the trailer, we found a property in Apgar Village, right inside Glacier National Park, and set up shop. We’ve been there ever since, steadily filling the gaps adventurers kept telling us about.

First in the Park

We’re proud to have been the first to bring three things to Glacier National Park visitors:

• Paddleboard rentals — putting Lake McDonald within reach of every visitor, not just those who traveled with their own boards
• Bear spray rentals — making park-ranger-grade UDAP bear spray available without asking visitors to buy a canister they’d just have to throw away at the airport
• Bike rentals — so anyone could experience the Going-to-the-Sun Road on two wheels during the car-free Hiker-Biker season

Those three ideas shaped everything we’ve done since.

The Team

We’re a small operation: about 5 year-round employees and roughly 20 seasonal team members who come on board for the summer (May through September).

We invest heavily in training, because our customers depend on us for more than just rental gear:

• Bear biologist training — every team member completes extensive training so they can answer the hard questions about wildlife safety, bear encounters, and spray technique with real authority.
• Park-current intel — we pride ourselves on knowing what’s actually happening in Glacier right now: road status, trail closures, weather, wildlife sightings. Many guests tell us our shop is the best place in the valley to get real-time park information.
• Hiker-Biker training workshop — we facilitate an annual bike-repair workshop where our shop mechanic trains the National Park Service volunteers who patrol the Going-to-the-Sun Road during Hiker-Biker season. That way, when a hiker or biker runs into trouble out on the road, the NPS volunteers can handle basic bike fixes on the spot.

Two Locations, One Mission

In 2019, we opened our second location as an authorized concessioner inside Glacier Park International Airport (FCA). It solved a very specific problem: bear spray can’t travel on airplanes, so flying visitors had no good way to get it before reaching the park.

But the airport shop has become something bigger. It’s our first-contact point with travelers — a chance to hand over maps, share what’s happening in the park that week, and set guests up for success before they even get to their rental car. Paired with our Apgar Village shop deep inside Glacier, it creates a kind of synergy: airport staff set expectations, Apgar staff deliver the in-park answers.

What We Stand For

Everything we do comes back to three commitments:

• Making Glacier accessible to every visitor — whether you flew in with just a carry-on or drove across the country, you should have what you need to experience this place.
• Leaving the park better than we found it — we operate inside Glacier National Park every day, and we take that responsibility seriously.
• Supporting local conservation — see our partners below.

Conservation Partners

We donate approximately 5% of our annual revenue to five organizations that protect the land, water, and wildlife of northwest Montana:

• Glacier National Park Conservancy — funds park projects, education, and youth programs in Glacier
• Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation — trail stewardship and wilderness protection in the Bob Marshall ecosystem
• Flathead Rivers Alliance — protects the Wild & Scenic Flathead River system
• Wildlife Act — wildlife conservation and coexistence programming
• People and Carnivores — science-based coexistence between people and large carnivores like grizzly bears

Every rental you book contributes to these partners. Thanks for being part of it.