Got approved for 4 nights in Glacier on the Highline Loop in mid September!

@ Michael,

In Glacier, I would start early if only to avoid the dayhikers if you want a more solitary experience on any trail that is within 7 or 8 miles of a road.

IMO early Sept is still summer in Montana.  You could check some sites like https://www.mountain-forecast.com/ for the lowest nighttime temps at the elevations you are hiking.  Not sure why you are thinking about crampons unless you want to go off trail and cross a glacier.

If you hike at a leisurely 2 mph you can hike 13 miles in less than 7 hours. In early September you should have enough time to do that even with a generous lunch break. I don’t remember the hiking there very being extremely strenuous. There were hills but it was never impossibly steep.

@ Michael

I’m a long time lurker as well.  Congratulations!  Get stoked! That is a gorgeous loop! A friend and I did  a similar loop, in reverse, last summer. We were right at the early edge of berry season and the Park nearly closed the Ptarmigan Tunnel area on us at the end of July due to bear activity in the area.

I can share my strava data and packing list if you’re interested. This loop was our first attempt at a fastpacking loop in the mountains so the style and gear would be a bit different than what you’re taking. I live in Michigan and I can’t offer any knowledge on local weather.

Some quick trail are below notes to get you started. I don’t have the 3 letter codes for the campgrounds, but I’ve made my best guess.

Night 1-  Ptarmigan Trailhead to Cosley Lake –  The first 5 miles is  a 2000 foot climb followed by all downhill  after that.  Not too strenuous if you take your time getting up to the top

Night 2- Cosley Lake to Stoney Indian – Pretty flat and easy day until the  climb up and over Stoney Indian Pass at the end of the day.  Enjoy the waterfalls!  I didn’t get to see them as we made that descent (your climb) in the dark.

Night 3- Stoney Indian to Fifty Mountain –  You’ll have a good long descent to start off your day and will spend most of it in the forest.  There’s a good climb out of the forest and then you’ll have a really pleasant  walk along an alpine valley to camp.

Night 4 – Fifty Mountain to Granite Park Chalet? –   This is the one stretch where we were told to bring crampons and an ice axe due to the Ahern drift. We fortunately met a trail maintenance crew that gave us some good beta that we used to scramble around the steep snowfield and avoid needing the axes and crampons. Otherwise we certainly would have needed them. Check in with the Ranger station before you head out and they should be able to tell you if you need them or not.

There were some long dry spells in this stretch if I remember right and it was hot due to sun exposure during the day.

Best of luck and enjoy the trip planning!

@Bruce

Ahh, I see.  Well I was reading someones trip report at the same time and they were talking about getting snowed on and needing crampons.  That’s great I’ll check that out.  Thanks so much!

@sbhikes

Ok great!  Thank you so much!

@treefarmer

This is exactly what I was looking for!  Thank you so much for your time writing that up.  You answered a lot of my questions right there.  I’d love to see your trip data.  Since I am leading this and one of my friends has never been before I want to be as prepared as possible.  We want to take him out this summer but with his job he can’t get weekends off so we aren’t sure if he is going to get a test run in ahhhh…

@Michael

Here’s the trip data, in Strava.  You should be able to export the GPX data (and import to something like Google Earth). If you’ve got any questions then let me know.

Day 1: https://www.strava.com/activities/1742937587

Day 2: https://www.strava.com/activities/1742941853

Gear List: https://lighterpack.com/r/bcfyhl