Noisy Creek Notch Trail is a 5.3 mile moderately trafficked loop trail located near Bigfork, Montana that features beautiful wild flowers and is rated as moderate. The trail is primarily used for hiking, nature trips, and birding and is best used from June until October. Dogs are also able to use this trail but must be kept on leash.
Hiked from Camp Misery trailhead to Twin Lakes via trail 8 and then on to Picnic Lakes via trail 7. Once leaving Picnic, we returned back to the trailhead via trails 7 and 717. The mosquitoes are heavy at both lakes and there remains some significant snow drifts along the way.
Wonderful trail with incredible views. Early July, there’s still so much snow on the backside of the mountain it’s just about impassable (hiked the loop counterclockwise). Spent about an hour going less than a half mile because we kept loosing the trail since all there is to go on is other people’s footprints. Had to turn around. Maybe later in the summer the trail is clear enough to enjoy properly.
It was raining in Glacier so we decided to do this hike instead. NOTE: you must drive down a 6 mile dirt road to get to the trailhead. We made it in a Prius V but there were a few areas where we thought the car might break. As long as you’re careful and drive slow and have a car that can handle a dirt road it should be fine. We went around the trail clockwise. The first half is along the side of a mountain, beautiful views. At one point you can even see Flathead Lake. The second part is through small ‘prairie’ fields and pine forests. There are wild Huckleberries that we ate along the way. It rained right before we started hiking so there weren’t many bugs, but I would suggest bringing bug spray if you’re bothered by bugs.
This is not a real marked trail in the Jewel Basin. It’s a combination of existing trails to make a loop. We followed the all trails map clockwise. Up the mountain in the shade, up switchbacks and gradual incline. A few steep spots we had to use our hands to help up. Good view of the valley. The trail at the top goes on trail 7 through alpine meadows. They were beautiful but we didn’t enjoy them due to the horrible swarms of flies and bees attacking us the whole time (it was around noon at this point). No water for dogs. Bring a lot of water. We would not do this trail again, we would do one of the marked trails on the Jewel Basin map. Of note, this trail goes by twin lakes, which isn’t even on the all trails map. We didn’t even see the lake till we were several hundred feet above it. Use the Jewel lakes map. The area itself is beautiful, I just don’t think this loop takes full advantage of it.
Great moderate hike with spectacular views. Lots of wild flowers and a little snow. Loved the mountain meadows. Got there around noon and parking was full. The hike took us 3 hours to complete.