Gateway to Glacier Trails Make Steep Gains
Since launching in 2011, the nonprofit has completed a paved path from Hungry Horse to West Glacier while adding projects like the Cedar Flats Trails, which will soon enter phase three of the planned 25-mile single-track network
By Maggie Dresser
After years of volunteering with Rails-to-Trails of Northwest Montana, Val Parsons moved from Kalispell to West Glacier in the mid-2000s and traded a deliberately built, multi-use path for an adrenaline-boosting bicycle ride on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 2.
“I thought it was going to be a great place to ride bikes, but that wasn’t the story because there was no trail, and I was riding alongside the highway to get to the park,” Parsons said. “It was frightening and after four years of screaming every time I took a bike ride – I decided we needed start a trail up here – and that’s what I did.”
Parsons helped found the Gateway to Glacier Trails nonprofit in 2011 with the goal of building a complete bike path from Columbia Falls to West Glacier. The path now exists between Hungry Horse and West Glacier, but the completion is in limbo until the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) reconstructs the U.S. Highway 2 section through Bad Rock Canyon.
At the most eastern end of the trail, a group of volunteers led by Sharon Bengtson have been working to revitalize the West Glacier overpass and connect it to the path. MDT crews widened the sidewalks to 12 feet in 2022 while volunteers recently finished landscaping the east- and west-side native plant gardens.
Bengtson is now working to fundraise $300,000 for the final cleanup and painting of the overpass, which is owned by BNSF Railway. Work required includes sandblasting concrete and metal beams, repairing metal handrails, priming and painting, which Bengston says is not a priority for the railway.
“The hope is to some day get that concrete a face lift,” Bengston said. “It’s quite a bit of work – it was last done 20 years ago, and things are a lot different now with traffic. It’s a complicated project.”
As volunteers wait for funding to finish the paved Gateway to Glacier path in its entirety, the nonprofit has expanded its reach to other projects in Columbia Falls, including the Columbia Falls River Trail in the Bad Rock Canyon Wildlife Management Area and the Cedar Flats Trails north of town.
Columbia Falls residents Sam Kavanaugh and Jeremiah Martin and a group of cyclists joined forces with Gateway to Glacier Trails and the Flathead National Forest several years ago to help bring an improved multi-use, 25-mile trail system to the Cedar Flats area.
The Flathead National Forest Crystal Cedar project launched in 2018 as a 10-year resource management effort with a goal of reducing hazardous fuels in the wildland-urban interface, improving forest health and adding recreational trails to Columbia Falls.
“There were a lot of times when Jeremiah Martin and I thought, ‘are we ever going to have trails out here?’ But by the end of last June, we were riding all new single-track,” Kavanagh said.
Since breaking ground three years ago, crews with Montana Conservation Corps, Flathead Area Mountain Bikers, TerraFlow Trails, Montana Made Trails and volunteers have built more than 10 miles of trails in Cedar Flats, an area that historically consisted of user-made trails and was often used as a dumping ground.
This year, phase two of construction has been finished with the development of the Fourth Avenue Trailhead, map installation, directional signage and the completion of the Cedar Ridge Trail – a two-mile, non-motorized point-to-point segment off Cedar Ridge Road/FR 1690.
Gateway to Glacier board members hope to finish the trail system within the next five years, but the timeline depends on funding and fuel management.
Kavanagh, who now serves as the board president, says phase three of the project will be significantly more labor-intensive than the first two phases, with roughly 12 new miles of single-track that will gain up to 2,000 feet of elevation.
“Phase three will represent the most expensive and difficult trail because it’s the most vertical … the character will be steeply different from the previous phases,” Kavanaugh said.
As part of the management resource aspect of the project, Flathead National Forest officials on Aug. 26 announced the closure of the Cedar Ridge area as crews use a skyline logging system to implement a timber harvest.
The closure will impact a portion of the Cedar Flats Trails and the public will not be able to access Cedar Ridge Road/FR 1690 from the Beargrass Trail or the Waving Bear Connector Trail. Cedar Ridge Trail and Lower Cedar Ridge Trail will be closed.
According to officials, the closure will be lifted on Sept. 30.
