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Awesome experience renting some snowshoes and going on a quick 3-hour jaunt down to Beaver Lake via the South Beaver Lake Trail. The trails were well groomed and the equipment was top-notch. The owners and family were very friendly and extremely helpful when it came to understanding the new terrain. My husband and I highly recommend taking your adventurous side the the Whitefish Bike Retreat for some exploration in nature and a great time! Thanks again!
Money hungry. They will charge you $50 for “camping” which just means a parking spot. No reception when you arrive past 6, either by phone or in person, so good luck orienting yourself. Then they charge you a surprise daily fee for parking when you’ve already paid them $600 for a shuttle. Not chill.
We absolutely loved this place. We stayed in the cabin and it was super nice. Has everything you need. Our dog was very welcomed by staff and other guests. The trails are nicely maintained and link right up to the Whitefish trail system. We will be back and hope to stay longer this time!
If you are heading to the Flathead National Forest or Glacier National Park for some biking or bike-packing adventures, make Whitefish Bike Retreat your basecamp! The Dean family and staff will provide a first-class destination for your biking needs.
We spent nine days bike-packing at Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park. While there, we used the bike retreat's shuttle service and bike lodge as base camp.
The lodge accommodation includes a fully equipped kitchen that you can use to whip up some local Montana cuisine, a bike shop with tools and stands for assembling/disassembling your bike for shipping (we also stored our boxes and other bike-packing gear that we didn't need during our biking in the shop), a bike wash station cleaning up the bike before packing it up for shipping, clothes washer/dryer for your clothes cleaning needs, grill and fire pit on the back deck, and last but not least outdoor firewood fueled sauna for easing those sore muscles after a long day of biking. Is all of this included in the nightly lodging rate? Absolutely!
Just down the hill from the lodge, the office sells basic camping needs (freeze-dried meals, camp stove fuel, locally brewed beers, etc.)
The retreat also offers some challenging mountain bike single-track trails on the property and camp sites you can use if you like roughing it (although I highly recommend you spend one night at the lodge)
Thanks to the Dean family, Nicole, Lucy, Phil, and Lynn, for taking care of us and providing us with the latest local knowledge on the bike packing trails we were taking on. If we are ever back in the area, we will definitely be staying with you again.
We heard about this place a few years ago and decided we’d head down from Canada with our two kids under 10 to do family rides and adult rides. We camped for 4 nights. This place was quiet with a lot of tour divide groups staying and getting shuttles up to Banff. it was so quiet at night it was awesome. Met a guy from Washington, he said he’d stayed here 5 or 6 times and keeps coming back because it’s so quiet. We value that. The trails around the retreat are short but awesome. Could let our kids loose on some of them to get a before breakfast or before bed lap. Their network hooks into the whitefish trail so we did a great family loop out to Beaver Lake. The information from the staff at the office, the shuttle availability, The ability to ride to town and ride the other networks was awesome. We didn’t want to leave. It was an awesome place to set up shop for a family who rides bikes. We’ll be back next summer!
