Opinion: Brushville

For the past few years now, I’ve been hitting obscure trails in Glacier National Park in an effort to hike every trail in the park.

Last weekend was the Fielding Trail from Park Creek to Coal Creek, perhaps one of the brushiest hikes I’ve ever taken.

All told, it was a 16-mile one-way trip from the Walton Ranger Station on Saturday and then the same hike back on Sunday.

The hike up to Park Creek is an easy and fast one, about 7 miles through a cool old-growth larch forest.

At Park Creek campground you take a hard left turn and enter Brushville and as you go up and over the saddle between Salvage and Rampage Mountains. You then follow the Muir Creek Valley for a few miles, which is very brushy, but not in an entirely unpleasant way — it was loaded with huckleberries. In fact, the most berries I’ve ever seen, ever.

Just picking them as I went I probably ate a half a pint.

Funny thing is, we never saw a bear, or even fresh bear sign for that matter and the place literally spoke bruin. We did see some old bear tracks and a wolf track as well.

The trail then leaves the Muir Creek and heads back up and over an unnamed ridge and then down into Coal Creek.

You get great views of Mount St. Nicholas at Coal Creek, but believe me when I say there are far easier ways to get them (namely hiking up Coal Creek from U.S. Highway 2).

Coal Creek is a beautiful stream, but it’s closed to fishing to protect spawning bull trout. Same with Muir Creek.

I can’t say I recommend this hike to anyone. The yo-yoing up 1,000 feet and then down a 1,000 feet and then back up 1,200 feet an then back down is not a lot of fun and outside of Coal Creek, there are almost no views.

It might be a better hike in the fall, after the leaves are off. At least trail crew had been on it — most of the downed trees had been cut out and with the August heat, the bugs were at a minimum, except camp at Coal Creek had a few yellowjackets and one hornet that eventually ended up dead when it tried to get into my tent.