GUIDED RIDES
Backcountry Pack Trip
A multi-day horseback trip into the high country, camp and meals included.
By inquiry
I'm Cole Brewster, head guide here at Beargrass. My job is simple to say and a lifetime to learn: get you onto good country and back, with the kind of day you'll still be talking about come winter.
The outfit runs off the working ranch, not alongside it. The horses you ride are the same ones that move cattle in the spring and pack camps in the fall — saddle-smart, sure-footed, and honest. We saddle at the corrals below the lodge most mornings, then ride out the way the Calloways have ridden out since 1947: across the hay meadows, into the larch and lodgepole, up toward the Whitefish Range with the Flathead River running off to the south.
We keep groups small on purpose. A guide who's watching six riders can read the trail, the weather, and the horse under you all at once; a guide herding twenty cannot. Everything below is real country, real water, real work — matched to what you can handle and what the day will allow. Tell us what you're after and we'll point you at it.
GUIDED RIDES
A multi-day horseback trip into the high country, camp and meals included.
By inquiry
THE HUNT
A guided fair-chase elk and deer hunt in big timber and high parks.
By inquiry
ON THE WATER
A guided day fly-fishing the Flathead for native westslope cutthroat.
$425 / day
GUIDED RIDES
A full day in the saddle on Glacier-country high trails, lunch included.
$210 / rider
GUIDED RIDES
A guided half-day ride through meadow and timber toward the Whitefish Range.
$140 / rider
RANCH LIFE
Work a real day with the crew — cattle, fence, and whatever the ranch needs.
$160 / personIf you've never sat a horse, start with a half-day trail ride. We'll match you to a gentle one, walk you through the basics at the rail, and take the easy meadow-and-timber loops where the footing is good and the views come cheap. By the turnaround most folks have forgotten to be nervous and started to look around.
For riders with some seat under them, the country opens up. We climb into the timber on old stock trails, push up to a bench where the beargrass blooms white in July, and sit the horses a while where you can see clear across the valley to Glacier's peaks. These rides aren't a pony ride dressed up — they're the real ground we work, ridden at a pace that lets you take it in.
When you want a full day in the high country and a horse you can trust to do it, that's the Glacier day ride — Glacier-country trails, an alpine lunch, and the kind of distance that earns the supper waiting back at the ranch.
The Flathead River runs three forks down out of the mountains, and a good stretch of it runs within a short drive of the ranch. The North Fork comes off the Canadian line and Glacier's west boundary — wild, cold, and clear enough to spook a fish with your shadow. The Middle Fork carves the southern edge of the Park. Below the confluence, the main stem widens and slows.
We fish for westslope cutthroat mostly — Montana's native trout, willing to come up for a well-placed dry — along with bull trout you'll admire and release, and the odd rainbow. Late June through September is the heart of it, with the salmonfly and stonefly hatches early and good terrestrial fishing as the summer dries down.
You don't need to own a thing or know a roll cast from a haircut. Our fly-fishing guides put beginners into fish and challenge anglers who've forgotten more than I'll ever know. We supply the rods, the flies, the knowledge of where they're holding that week — you bring a willingness to stand in cold water and be patient.
Come September the gates mostly close to summer guests and the outfit turns to the fall hunt. This is the oldest use of this country and we treat it that way — fair-chase, on foot and horseback, in big timber and high parks with the larch going gold around you.
We guide elk and deer across our own ground and the country we know up the North Fork and along the Whitefish Range. It's hard, honest hunting: cold mornings, long glassing, miles under your boots, and no guarantees — which is the whole point. We run it small, licensed, and by inquiry, because a good hunt is built around the hunter, the tags, and the season, not a brochure.
If you're thinking about a fall hunt, reach out early. The good dates go first and there's real planning to do.
Some folks come to Montana to be waited on. Others come to find out what a day on a working cattle ranch actually feels like. For the second kind, we run Ranch Hand for a Day.
You'll be up with the crew, saddled and out moving cattle, mending fence, checking water, or whatever the season and the herd require that morning. It's the real article — Wade Calloway runs the cattle side, and on a ranch-hand day you ride with the outfit that does the work. You'll come in dusty, tired, and grinning, having done something with your hands and your seat that most people only watch from a fence line.
It's the truest thing we offer. The ranch was a working outfit long before it took a single guest, and the work is still the heart of the place. Spend a day inside it and you'll understand Beargrass better than any ride or supper could teach you.