Words provided by TJ David.

The beautiful landscape of the Flathead Valley is intriguing to anyone who has taken in the expansive view from the Amtrak train station platform in Whitefish, Montana. As you follow the rows of train tracks up past idling train cars into the impressive backdrop that encompasses Big Mountain and the great northern beyond, the extensive vista is so grand in scale it easily swells outside the powerful bounds of the imagination. As we look on from the platform, we can’t help but be curious.

Incredibly, only thirty miles of rail have separated us from our first stop at West Glacier. However, within those short thirty miles the landscape has changed drastically. Rugged, above the tree-line scenery has slowly transitioned into beautifully treed mountainsides, ever sweeping into white-rime topped peaks characterized by the incredible haunting figures of snow ghosts. Their irregular, archaic and certainly prominent attributes stand to intimidate. Guarding the top of the mystical landscape. However, their hallmarks only work to further fascinate our teams curiosity with the great northern.

And so, located approximately twenty miles north of the town of Whitefish within the perfect infrastructure of well-established logging roads sits Great Northern Powder Guides. The operation, by utilizing already existing terrain that had been gladed by loggers and their roads to access expanding acreage was just the ticket our team needed to get into the mountains we had been viewing from the platform at the Whitefish Amtrak station. With our gear in tow and eyes set on a beautiful sunset we boarded a Great Northern Powder Guides bus and were soon whisked off to the north. Ready for a new adventure.

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