NW Montana

If I were in NW Montana, I'd be fly fishing, and enjoying the scenery.

So... you get paid to catch fish? That's pretty damned awesome. I know I've over-simplified your work description. Wish I could help with the day hike thing.

Not adventure related but if you're in Whitefish grab a burger at the Buffalo caf?. Stopped there when I drove down to Seattle from Calgary and they were great, one was snow ghost or something, with blue cheese and onion strings...yum!

Fantastic area around there too, might head back that way myself at some point in the future, bit harder now though as I'm back living in the UK.

If you're feeling like crossing the border, you could go try some downhill mountain biking at Fernie. It's a fun little ski town. Maybe check out the Frank Slide area (Frank Slide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). There's a shit ton of good camping and hiking in Southern BC that's only a couple hours away from you. And yeah, the Calgary Stampede is probably worth checking out, but you'll be shocked by how expensive everything is. The city more or less shuts down for two weeks and everyone gets fucking hammered while pretending to give a shit about cowboys and rodeos.

Iceberg Lake is an awesome day hike...shit pretty much anywhere in Glacier National Park is solid. Some good weekend trips there too for any time you have multiple days off.

TheBeagle_sl said:

So I'll be doing research at the Flathead Lake Biological Station for 8 weeks this summer and want to get as many badass outdoor adventures in as I possibly can. This will be my second summer up there, but last year I was either stranded at the Biostation a lot of the time or was out working in the field and feel like I didn't get to experience as much as I wanted to. Any suggestions on lesser known things to do would be appreciated. I'm also on a super tight budget this time as well.

Things I did do last year: 47 mile float down the North Fork of the Flathead River starting at the Canadian Border, touristy day hikes around Glacier - Avalanche Lake, Numa Ridge, McDonald Lake, Hidden Lake, got drunk as shit at The Raven on Flathead a few times, and did an overnight backpack trip in the Jewel Basin.

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Lolz, your going to be next to my crazy sister with 9 children. (That facility is down the road from her)

When will you be out there till? My parents live in Polson and I may fly out. Could catch some brews with a random FoH person up on Polson.

TheBeagle_sl said:

I've never done any mountain biking but I think I remember someone saying that Whitefish Mountain had a lot of that in the summer.

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I was talking about "downhill" mountain biking, which is different than "cross-country" mountain biking. XC is what most people think of when they say mountain biking. Riding some trails through the forest or even up a mountain, but all fairly mellow. "Downhill" mountain biking is done at ski resorts in the summer, where you use the chairlifts to get up the mountain, then you ride a 40lb monster bike down. If you're at all in to adrenaline sports, it's a lot of fun. They have the same run rating system as ski resorts, green/blue/black, where on the green runs just about anyone with a bit of biking experience can make it down and have fun, and the black ones are sheer death if you don't know what you're doing.

I'm almost positive that Whitefish doesn't have downhilling in the summer. It takes a pretty significant investment to build the trails etc, and I would imagine that in the overly litigious US a lot less resorts are interested in taking that risk. Because it's a super risky sport, even compared to skiing/boarding. In any case, that's why I mentioned Fernie, they have downhill biking in the summer.

XC biking is also a lot of fun, and you can certainly cover more distance in a day than you could hiking.

Oh yeah, if you're fragile and/or accident prone, stay the fuck away from DH. Looks like Whitefish has only recently opened up downhill trails. Good to see.