best backpacking Glacier National Park

A backpacker above Oldman Lake along the Dawson Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.

10 Backpacking Trips for Solitude in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

Is it possible to find solitude backpacking in a national park as popular as Glacier? The answer is an unequivocal yes—even in Glacier’s relatively short peak season of mid-July through mid-September. And the strategies for doing so are remarkably simple and will not compromise the quality of your experience in other ways—in fact, encountering fewer people only increases the chances of encountering wildlife. This article describes five backpacking trips where you are virtually guaranteed to enjoy serious solitude in Glacier National Park.

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A backpacker on the Continental Divide Trail above Medicine Grizzly Lake in Glacier National Park.

How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

There are two immutable truths about backpacking in Glacier National Park. First, from its stirring landscape, where glaciers hang off muscular mountains and sheer cliffs soar above deeply green valleys dappled with lakes and waterfalls, to almost certain sightings of wildlife like mountain goats, bighorn sheep, moose, elk, and grizzly and black bears, there’s really no place in the continental United States quite like Glacier.

Second, it’s one of the hardest backcountry permits to get in the National Park System. But Glacier adopted a new wilderness permit reservation system in 2023 that improved on what preceded it and made changes again to the system for 2024 that greatly improve it, bringing equity to the process and eliminating the frantic scramble for a permit that the 2023 changes had spawned

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A backpacker on the Teton Crest Trail, Death Canyon Shelf, Grand Teton National Park.

The 10 Best National Park Backpacking Trips

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By Michael Lanza

Olympic, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion, Grand Teton, Mount Rainier, Canyonlands, Sequoia, Great Smoky Mountains. To backpackers, these names read like a list of America’s greatest cathedrals in nature—and no surprise, because these parks harbor some of the most scenic wilderness trails in the country. Hike any of them and it will earn a spot on your personal top-10 list. Knock off every trip on this list and you will experience some of the finest landscapes not only in the nation, but on the planet.

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Backpackers on the Piegan Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.

5 Reasons You Must Backpack in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

Create a list of the attributes that constitute a great backpacking trip and the chances are very high that you will describe Glacier National Park. There’s the incomparable landscape, where the remnants of glaciers hang off craggy mountains, vertiginous cliffs tower above deeply green valleys carved in the classic U shape by ancient rivers of ice, and hundreds of mountain lakes reflect it all. And encounters with wildlife like bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, moose, and, yes, grizzly and black bears: Few places in the continental United States harbor such a breadth of megafauna.

Sprawling over a million acres in Montana’s Northern Rockies, most of it wilderness, Glacier exudes a sense of wildness and beauty that no longer exists in most of the country.

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A backpacker hiking the Dawson Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.

Déjà vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

In the second week of September, the cool air in the shade of the forest nips at our cheeks as we leave our first night’s camp beside Glenns Lake in the backcountry of Glacier National Park, starting at a reasonably early hour for a day where we will walk nearly 16 miles and 6,000 feet of combined uphill and downhill. I’m hiking in a fleece hoodie, pants, and gloves and my friends Pam Solon and Jeff Wilhelm are similarly layered up. Once the sun reaches us within an hour, we’ll strip down to shorts and T-shirts.

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