Besides the cost of gas, the price of car rentals at Great Falls is outrageous. We have a 4 wheel drive out of Bozeman at Memorial day for $186/wk, but at G.F. it is $500/wk in July.
Re. rental cars, I reserved mine back in early November (out of the Kalispell airport) and the rate is $272 for 8 days, from Avis. It's the airfare that's the real killer. The cheapest flight out of Indy is $640 with two connections adding up to nearly 10 hours before you get to Kalispell. The actual flights I'm on are $903 (at least that's the rate quoted online right now). Fortunately, a buddy sold me a bunch of frequent-flyer miles, and I got my flights for just $300.
Our trip is finally shaping up! Finally got airfare out of CT to GTF, more than last year, more than we wanted to pay but "just HAVE TO go back to Glacier!!" Thought it might make sense to go into GTF since our first 4 nights are at Glacier TrailHead Cabins so we don't have to plan on the GTTSR being open by then. Found a car, hopefully a subaru forester or smilar (whatever that means) for just a little over $300, snapped it up quick.Prices seems to change every day, even for airfare. Figured at this point, it will probably just keep going up. Gas in CT is $3.09. Plan to re-hike what we did last year, Iceberg, ptarmigan, grinnell, swift current, maybe Poia and/or Cracker, any other suggestions??? Hopefully can do the Hockey Ref hike but not sure because of the snow. Will arrive in MG June 15. June 19 til departure out of GTF at 2 p.m. on June 24 are still in the planning stages. Any suggestions for the Two Medicine area, dayhikes, ??places to stay.
I would keep checking on the rental car prices...word on the Yellowstone page is prices are actually dropping because companies fear lack of business due to the rising gas prices.
Hikes...I'm not sure about Poia that time of year. Piegan would definitely still have some snow but is a beautiful hike. I'd check with the rangers on that one. As I've said before, I personally would not do Cracker as a hike...it is a really, really long time in dense forest on muddy horse trails. It is, however, a wonderful trail ride destination. We thoroughly enjoyed our day and the Muleshoe guides were so much fun and so nice...we even spent time exploring trying to find the mine. Its a beautiful lake and destination that doesn't get nearly as much traffic as places like Iceberg and Grinnell.
In East Glacier...the hike to Twin Falls is a breeze, and you could take the boat one way and hike back. If you don't want to go all the way up to Dawson that's an option and so is going up to...is it No Name Lake? I think that's right. We stayed at the lodge and it was nice but others here have cabins they recommend...
In two med, there is also the hike to Cobalt lake- Ref posted a nice picture of it a while back on a different thread.
Also, regarding the hockeyref hike: they have said that snow pack this year is the most since 2002. I have many pics from the highline from that year in late JULY- still tons of snow. I guess it depends on how fast it melts this year, but you may have a challenge there, snow wise, on the highline.