Mount Brown Lookout Trail in Glacier National Park

Good morning, it is June 19th in Glacier National Park, 2026. Today we are going to head up the Sperry and Gunsite Trail over about a mile and a half to two miles and we're going to get off on the Mount Brown Lookout Trail and try to get up to Mount Brown Lookout. Now it should be a little over five miles with 4,300 feet of elevation gain, which is about 860 feet a mile. They just reopened this trail about 10 days ago. They had an unfortunate fatal bear incident up here, but the trail is back open, so we're going to try to get up to Mount Brown Lookout today. To make your way up to the Mount Brown Lookout, you start at Lake McDonnell Lodge just off the Going to the Sun Road on the west side of Glacier. There is the trailhead for the Sperry and Gunsite Trails, which you use for about 1.4 miles until you make a left and branch off onto the Mount Brown Lookout Trail where your elevation gain really begins. This trail is a little over 10 and a half miles out and back with 4,300 feet of elevation gain. So we're at the trail junction. This is the Sperry Trail, Gunsite Trail. We're about a mile, 1.3, 1.4 miles in and now going to attempt to go up to Mount Brown Lookout. 3.7 miles with a lot of elevation. As soon as we turn off on the Mount Brown Lookout Trail, there's a lot of down timber. They haven't cleared any of this, so it'll be a challenge to see if we can still get there. So we're a little over halfway up, both elevation wise as well as mileage wise, so we're going to stop and take a break. This is Mount Edwards here and if you pan over here, there's Lake McDonald where we've come up from so far. Great spot to take a break. We're climbing over our 400th log for the day. You can see Stanton and Vought on the way up. The peaks that you typically see from the far end of Lake McDonald, but we're climbing up one of them. So as of June 19th, they haven't cleared any of this. So far the worst stretch has been the third mile. The trail actually goes right down through here, you have to climb through. But so far manageable. Piece of cake. So from here you can make out Mount Brown Lookout where we're headed. Great views of McDonald Creek, the drainage there, Vought, Stanton, Kimberley, Lake McDonald, and from here you can also see where we started, Lake McDonald Lodge down there, and then Apgar Village is down at the other end. A lot of people get a view of this mountain from Apgar Village, but we're standing on one and heading to the top. So we're at a little vantage point here, you've got Lake McDonald over here, if you pan this way, this is the Snyder Creek drainage that comes down here, Mount Edwards, Little Matterhorn. This here is Mount Brown itself, which we are not going to get to. Instead we're going to try to get over here to the lookout. Maybe a bit challenging with the snow, I haven't been filming because the snow is rather deep. Just trying to get through without coast holding too bad. We have our ice cleats and we're hoping that we can get up here shortly, we'll see. Some of the drifts are pretty steep, but it looks like we're going to be able to make it to the lookout. This gang is following us all the way up, they just keep following us up. He wanted to beat us there. At the summit of Mount Brown Lookout, not Mount Brown, the lookout itself, we're at the Mount Brown Fire Lookout, built in 1928, we're going to walk all the way around it. This is where Kimberly wants to have lunch, up here, I'm voting for the rocks right down here, and I think I'm going to win. I talked Kim into lunch on the rocks instead of the lookout. Heading back down, about 5 miles and 8 million logs. So on the way up, we went this way, a lot of snow, on the way down we're going to try to come this way. We may be able to skirt most of the snow field to the left, but we'll see. Good news is this is the last of the snow for the day, so we don't have to worry about downed trees. If you look real hard, you can see just the peak of Mount St. Nicholas over there. My least favorite part of the trail, about a mile stretch of downed timber. Let's take a break, it's an easy tree. We are finishing up the Mount Brown lookout hike. Some well-respected people in the glacier hiking community say that this is 10 of the toughest hiking miles in Glacier, because it's a little over 5 miles up, with 4,300 some feet of elevation gain, and then you've got to come back down, and that's not much easier. So today, what we're going to add to that is, what would you say Kim, about a hundred downed logs on the way up, at least, a hundred downed trees that we had to kind of climb over and walk around, and then you get to do it on the way down too, so that was awesome. But hey, we were able to get up to Mount Brown lookout, had relatively good weather, fantastic hike right from Lake McDonnell Lodge in Glacier National Park.