Great Bear Wilderness

The Great Bear Wilderness, on the western side of the Continental Divide, shares its southern border with Bob Marshall Wilderness, which in turn shares its southern border with Scapegoat Wilderness. Together, the three areas form the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, an area of more than 1.5 million acres. Glacier National Park lies just across U.S. 2 to the north of Great Bear.

Grizzly bear, lynx, wolverine, deer, elk, moose, black bear, mountain goat, and mountain sheep roam about these rugged ridge tops, gently sloping alpine meadows, and thickly forested river bottoms.

The upper Middle Fork of the Flathead River rises here and runs ”Wild and Scenic” through the area for about 50 miles, raging below cliff faces and over boulder-strewn rapids in what some refer to as Montana's wildest waterway. Elevations range from 4,000 feet on the Middle Fork to 8,705 feet on Great Northern Mountain.

More than 300 miles of trails provide access to virtually unlimited backpacking and horse-packing, hunting and fishing, backcountry skiing, and mountain climbing, but much of the interior has no trail. Did you know that the United States Congress designated the Great Bear Wilderness in 1978 and it now has a total of 286,700 acres—all in Montana.