Big Therriault Lake

First be aware that Therriault is 28 miles up a gravel road. The road is in good shape; however, I’ve pulled a 24' trailer up it and it will take about 1 hour from the main road to the campground. Keep an eye out because you will go within a short distance (1/4 mile) of the Canadian border and you can see the border cut up on the mountain side as you travel in.

Do not bother to take a trailer over about 30' as you simply will not fit! It’s a tight USFS campground in the middle of the forest!

This is a 100% boondocking campground. NO water is available, absolutely no cell signal of any kind, and be sure to bring bear spray as this is in the middle of bear country.

There are actually two campgrounds here, about 1/2 mile apart, and the better, by far, is Little Therriault Lake which has only 6 very private sites.

Big Therriault is a good option, it has about 15 sites (don't quote me on that), but they are not on the lake. You should head directly to Little Therriault first, and if a site is open don’t second guess, grab it!

Because this is in a low population area, 35 miles north of Whitefish Montana toward the Canadian border, and up a long gravel road, there will normally be very few people. Last weekend, 6/28/19 there were three other campers. If you get there on a Thursday you'll almost always get a site within view of the lake.

The campground is at about 5,500' in the mountains so it will normally be 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the Flathead valley floor so plan for that.

The lake is small, you can take kayaks, paddle boards, and very small inflatable boats which you can carry to the lake, there is NO boat ramp.

Also, on a map you might notice it is close to Glacier National Park, but if you're going to the Park this is not an option as it would take no less than 2.5 hours to reach the park entrance.