This is the ride for folks who've sat a horse before and want more than a meadow loop. We're saddled early and climbing while it's cool, switchbacking up old stock trails through larch and lodgepole into the open high country along the edge of Glacier's wild west side.
Up top the timber falls away and the country goes big — alpine parks, beargrass meadows in July, and the Whitefish Range and Glacier's peaks laid out around you. We tie off and lunch where the view is worth the stop, breathe the horses, then ride on. A full day like this asks something of you and the horse both, and gives it back twice over.
Come October the larch turns gold across the whole high country, and a Glacier day ride through it is about as fine a day as Montana hands out.