Facilities and Locations
Learn and adventure in the wildest corners of Glacier National Park.
The Glacier Institute's offices are located at 320 Nucleus Ave, Columbia Falls, MT 59912.
The Glacier Institute provides adult field courses at the Field Camp and teen and youth courses at the Big Creek Outdoor Education Center, including camps for backpacking, fly-fishing, young naturalists, and field courses in ecology, geology, cultural history and more. All proceeds from courses and donations directly support outdoor education programs for local students.
The Glacier Institute
The Glacier Institute is located in Columbia Falls, a family-friendly community at the gateway to Glacier National Park. The town averages about 4,800 year-round residents and is 14 miles from the western entrance to Glacier National Park. Columbia Falls is nestled against the northern tip of the Swan Mountain Range and the Flathead River, which flows through the east end of town. Columbia Falls offers numerous options for outdoor recreation including fishing, river floats, hiking, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling.
Glacier Institute
320 Nucleus Ave.
Columbia Falls Montana, 59912
The Glacier Field Camp
The Glacier Park Field Camp, a National Park Service facility operated by the Glacier Institute, is located just inside the West Glacier entrance of Glacier National Park on a bluff overlooking the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. Field Camp has five cabins for student housing, a community kitchen where students can store and cook food, an energy efficient bathhouse with hot showers, a classroom and the Morris Brown Myerowitz Memorial Library, that contains a myriad of educational materials on the Crown of the Continent ecosystem.
Glacier Institute Field Camp
Glacier Institute Road
West Glacier, MT 59936
Big Creek Outdoor Education Center
The Big Creek Outdoor Education Center, a historic Flathead National Forest Ranger Station, is located along the Wild and Scenic North Fork of the Flathead River adjacent to Glacier National Park, a twenty-minute drive from West Glacier. The Big Creek campus includes two bunkhouses with bathrooms, a main dining hall (which can accommodate up to forty people), a meeting room, a large classroom, a twenty-foot tepee and additional teaching space. Big Creek is off-the-grid and relies on solar power for the summer months.
Big Creek is home to Youth Science Adventure Camps, Discovery School and numerous adult field courses that operate under a special use permit with the Flathead National Forest.
The Glacier Park Field Camp and/or Big Creek Outdoor Education Center can be rented for custom programs, small conferences, trainings and retreats. For more information, please contact register@glacierinstitute.org or our Main Office at (406) 755-1211.