Piegan Pass
| Trail Features: | Outstanding views |  |
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| Trail Location: | Siyeh Bend | ||||
| Roundtrip Length: | 8.8 Miles | ||||
| Total Elevation Gain: | 1890 Feet | ||||
| Avg. Elev Gain / Mile: | 430 Feet | ||||
| Highest Elevation: | 7600 Feet | ||||
| Trail Difficulty Rating: | 12.58 (strenuous) | ||||
| Parking Lot Latitude | 48.70145 | ||||
| Parking Lot Longitude | -113.66959 | ||||
Trail Description:
The hike to Piegan Pass begins from the Siyeh Bend Trailhead, located 2.2 miles east of Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. Hikers also have the option of using the Piegan Pass Trailhead from the Jackson Glacier Overlook, but this would add a little more distance to your hike, and several hundred more feet of climbing. The Siyeh Bend Trail offers hikers a much more gradual climb up to their destination.
The first two hundred yards of the Siyeh Bend Trail travels beside Siyeh Creek as it cascades down the valley. Roughly 1.1 miles from the trailhead hikers will reach the Piegan Pass Trail junction. A turn to the right here will take you down to the Jackson Glacier Overlook. To continue on towards Piegan Pass, hikers should turn left here.
The trail passes through a dense spruce-fir forest along the lower elevations of the hike. The forest, however, begins to thin out as you get closer to the Siyeh Pass Trail junction, located roughly 2.4 miles from the trailhead. To continue on to Piegan Pass hikers should proceed to the left at this junction. A turn to the right would take you to Preston Park and Siyeh Pass.
At roughly 2.8 miles the Piegan Pass Trail finally emerges from the treeline, and enters the talus-scree slopes of 10,014-foot Mount Siyeh. Take a moment to look towards the south and across the valley for some absolutely grand views of Jackson Glacier, and Blackfoot Glacier, the largest glacier in the park. Almost directly west of you is Piegan Glacier, which sits just below the summit of 9220-foot Piegan Mountain (see photo below). Your destination can also be seen now, by following the trail line as it makes its gradual ascent all the way up to the pass.
Roughly 4.3 miles from the trailhead you’ll reach the top of Piegan Pass, which is the saddle between Piegan Mountain and Cataract Mountain. For perhaps the best views of the hike, continue on for another tenth-of-a-mile. By walking only a short distance from the top of the pass, hikers will find outstanding views of Bishops Cap and Mount Gould on the Garden Wall, Angel Wing, as well as views deep into the Many Glacier valley.
Hikers should also keep an eye out for ptarmigan and mountain goats, both of which are known to frequent the area near the pass.
Piegan Pass has the distinction of being one of four sites
in Glacier to have had a locomotive bell installed on it. In 1925, W. R. Mills,
an advertising agent with the Great Northern Railway, and H. A. 
Noble, manager
of the Glacier Park Hotel Company, requested permission from the park to place
locomotive bells on the summits of several passes in Glacier. According to Donald
H. Robinson’s Administrative History of Glacier National Park, the request was
based on the old Swiss custom of placing bells on mountain tops and passes to
allow hikers or horseback riders the unusual experience of ringing loud bells
high in the mountains.
In September of 1926 the request was finally granted to place bells at Swiftcurrent, Piegan and Siyeh passes. Three years later a fourth bell was added at Scenic Point in Two Medicine. The bells remained in place until the fall of 1943, when they were removed by the hotel company and donated to a World War II scrap metal drive.
The Piegan Pass Trail is also part of the Continental Divide Trail, which runs from the Mexican border in New Mexico, all the way to the town of Waterton Park in Canada.
