South Boundary Trail
parts of trail are wooded, parts are without Shade Moderate hike Please note above the difference in timing between this yeaer and last! South Boundary Trail is the earliest view trail to be snow free in Glacier Park. April 21, 2012 This is another one of those trails that I seriously miscalculated the amount of water needed for the hike and suffered for it. The South Boundary Trail follows the north shore of Middle Fork of the Flathead River providing dramatic views of the river and it's rapids. The South Boundary Trail is a rolling up and down trail sometimes densely wooded other times completely exposed. In late spring this is a good wildflower trail. In season you will be able to watch the river rafters and kayakers coming down from Nyak to West Glacier. This is also a good trail for those interested in the railroad as the trains can be seen across the Middle Fork River as the trains make their way thorough a series of tunnels. Mary Roberts Rhinehart Tenting To-night published in 1917 "What odds and ends of knowledge we picked up on those long days in the saddle! That if lightning strikes a pine even lightly, it kills, but that a fir will ordinarily survive; that mountain miles are measured air-line, so that twenty-five miles may really be forty, and that, even then, they are calculated on the level, so that one is credited with only the base of the triangle while he is laboriously climbing up its hypotenuse. I am personally acquainted with the hypotenuses of a good many mountains, and there is no use trying to pretend that they are bases. They are not." Mary Roberts Rhinehart description of the hypotenuse of the triangle are equally apt for this trail which on the map looks simple, the distance not that great, but neither successfully convey the irregularity of this trail, that dips and rises as it wanders, along the northern edge of the Middle Fork River, on the southern boundary of Glacier National Park.  This is one of those trails that you hike until you decide that it's time to turn around, it's 5 miles (by air) to Lincoln Creek which I didn't make on my first time on this trail due to the heat and lack of enough water. Bring a water filter as there are numerous creeks along the trail. |
| A good trail if you want to watch white water rafting on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. 
This is not a quiet trail, between the rafters, the trains, jake brakes on the tractor trailer trucks and the helicopters the sounds of silence are few and far between. The railroad came through in 1891. You will see more rafters then hikers on this trail.
When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
