Real-life Yellowstone: 5 outdoor adventures in Montana 

Montana is well deserving of its ‘Big Sky Country’ moniker. Spend any time exploring the state’s wild backcountry – with cloudless blue or a glittering starscape painted above you – and you’ll soon understand. This is the USA’s fourth largest state by area, which means ample space for sprawling national parks, spooling scenic byways and animal-filled wilderness areas.

The state’s great outdoors is also the star of hit TV show Yellowstone, a modern Western that follows a Montana ranching family who live on the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park. The drama dropped on Netflix UK for the first time this week and its epic backdrop has garnered as much press as the plotline.

Dreaming of boots-on adventure inspired by the locations on your TV screen? Here are five ways to explore:

Wyoming gobbles up the lion’s share of America’s oldest national park, but Montana’s West Yellowstone – a buzzy town filled with cheerful restaurants and a range of lodges – is actually the most popular gateway to the wilderness. This entrance places you within easy reach of the park’s big hitters, just across the Montana/Wyoming border: they include kaleidoscopic Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful Geyser, whose regular eruptions make it a crowd favourite. Time your trip for winter, when you’ll share a blissfully quiet park with busy wildlife such as bison and elk, who are driven down from the higher elevations by the snow. 

But even without crossing into park boundaries, Montana’s Yellowstone Country offers natural wonders in spades. Make time to drive the Beartooth Highway, which wiggles its way between the Montana towns of Red Lodge and Cooke City. The drive ascends into dramatic forested peaks, revealing plunging views of the mountain surrounding as it goes, and eventually decanting roadtrippers into the quieter northeastern entrance to Yellowstone Park. It’s a springboard for Yellowstone’s wildlife-rich Lamar Valley, known for sightings of grizzlies, black bear and wolves, which were reintroduced here in 1995.

For a real-life Yellowstone experience, book a horse-riding trip with Elk River Outfitters. You’ll ride out from Red Lodge and push into the surrounding wilderness – a playground of mountains, meadows and waterways.

Around 161 km northeast of Cooke City, you’ll find the little town of Fishtail parcelled into the Beartooth Mountains. It’s home to the impressive Tippet Rise Art Center, a celebration of creativity and nature that sees giant art pieces installed amid the peaks and prairies. The centre is set on a working cattle and sheep ranch and through the summer months, visitors are welcomed onto the land to see works by the likes of Alexander Calder and the late Louise Nevelson, whose giant metal sculptures rise dramatically from the green surroundings. Hit the art-studded hiking and biking trails, take a van tour, or enjoy the summer concert series, which focuses on classical music.

Glacier is one of the USA’s most popular national parks for good reason – it’s a wild wonderland of skyscraping mountains, alpine lakes and (of course) milky blue glaciers. In fact, the Indigenous Kootenai people call the land Ya·qawiswit̓xuki, which means ‘the place where there is a lot of ice’. 

The park’s natural wonders are on fine display in the trail-covered (and aptly named) Many Glacier Valley. Popular hikes include the challenging 8.5 km trek to Grinnell Glacier Viewpoint, which gains 488 m in elevation over its scenic course, or the 7.2km  journey to Piegan Pass, which offers camera-loving vistas of the sprawling Blackfoot Glacier. The 80 km Going-to-the-Sun Road – which wiggles up to Logan Pass, promising views of snow-dusted mountains and alpine lakes – is also highly popular. Begin your drive early to avoid crowded roads. 

A trip with Sun Tours is another way to connect with the park. Led by Native Blackfoot guides, excursions strike into the park, taking in wonders such as Jackson Glacier or the forested Trail of the Cedars, and offering visitors a lesson in the tribe’s culture, history and relationship with the land. 

This giant body of water feels more like an ocean than a lake, stretching over 518 sqkm and edged by some 298 km of shoreline. The towns of Polson, Bigfork and Kalispell are springboards for watery adventures, including kayaking trips, sailing and wild swimming. 

For a vista-packed cruise coupled with local insights, join Polsen tour operator Discover Flathead Lake on an excursion. Their boat tours include a jaunt to Wild Horse Island State Park, a forest-covered isle floating in the lake’s west, which is home to (you guessed it) wild horses, as well as bald eagles and bighorn sheep. Their sunset cruises are also a crowd pleaser. 

The Fort Belknap Reservation, home of the Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) tribes, holds cultural history and natural wonders in spades. Explore the reservation to discover ancient petroglyphs and tipi rings, plus landmarks including Snake Butte, which rises like a rocky organ from the plains.

You can book a guided tour with Aaniiih Nakoda Tours, whose excursions explore all of the above and explain the importance of the tribe’s growing buffalo herd, which can be seen grazing in the reservation’s grassy pastures. Time your trip for late July, when the annual Milk River Indian Days powwow also takes place.