As someone who grew up in Montana and goes to Glacier every year, I was curious if this book would provide me any insightful info that I didn’t already know.
Spoiler alert: it definitely did!
Seriously, what a great resource for families! I have two boys, ages 2.5 and 6, and if I was not already familiar with the park this is absolutely the book I would seek out.
The beginning has some great info about helpful equipment, terrain, and general information about the park and proper trail etiquette geared toward families.
The trails listed give clear, concise directions on how to get there, and if for some reason that’s not clear, coordinates are also given. Helpful information like distance, approximate hiking time, and beautiful pictures accompany the listings. I loved the random facts sprinkled throughout, and even learned a few things about the history that I was unaware of.
All in all, an excellent guide! I have already recommended it to several people and will be gifting it to some friends in the near future!

Hiking with Kids Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks

This is an excellent book for families taking their kids to either or both of these two parks. We’ve been hikers for decades and always had good luck with Falcon books and this one is no different. Some specifics:

1) This is a family book, particularly babies and young children, so the hikes are generally short and relatively easy. However, they’re not “nature walks” (though a few such are included) where you’re waking a quarter or half mile alone a paved or gravel path. These are hikes through woods and uphill, some under a mile but a good number in the 3–4-mile range.

2) Each segment gives a start location, total roundtrip distance, elevation gain, and a difficulty. Also included is a rough estimate of hiking time (really, if you’re hiking with kids any estimate is going to be extremely rough — you might hike 2 miles in an hour and then hike 2 miles in 3 hours). Other info in the opening includes a good seasonal time to hike the trail, any fees or permits required, the surface of the trail, contact info, and if pets are allowed.

3) Following are more detailed directions to the start (including noting if any of the roads are rough, narrow, or have steep edges), and often some suggestions regarding parking, which can be tough, particularly in sections of Glacier. We then get very clear, very detailed, very useful, and very detailed descriptions of the actual hike.

4) There’s a decent-sized intro section that covers more general information, such as gear, preparing for animals, leave no trace, etc. And of course, hiking with kids. The best piece of advice in here is be prepared to spend wayyyyy more time. Don’t look at a hike and go, “yeah, that’ll take two hours” based on how you’d walk it. Because you might spend an hour of a hike simply watching your kid carefully transport large black beetles off the trail to the brush to “save them from getting smushed.” Believe me, there can be a lot of beetles on paths.

5) The parks themselves are divided into sections, which is a good way of organizing the hikes and typical for hiking books. Some segments of the parks get more attention than others simply because some sections are more family-friendly than others.

6) The book is filled with pictures, not just of landscapes but of kids merrily walking down a trail or happily ensconced in a carrier. When they say, “there’s a great view,” the claim is often supported by a picture of, well, a great view.

The only things possibly “missing” here is some further information about flora/fauna/geology, though that’s a very minor nit and honestly, for a family-hiking book I’m not sure I’d even qualify it as an “absence.” One thing I wouldn’t have minded though is mention of spur trails or how to extend a hike a little longer if those opportunities are there for a given trail. Again though, for the aim of this book, that’s not a big deal. As someone who once made the mistake of extending a hike in Bryce with our young child and then paid the price by carrying him on my shoulders for the backend (including a killer uphill ending), I can wholly get behind the idea of “don’t extend a hike because you want to spend more time hiking”.

All in all, this is an excellent book. Detailed and useful and highly recommended for those it’s aimed at.

We have a trip planned for glacier this summer with our kids, so when I saw this book I thought, "how perfect!" I loved it so much I'll be planning to get a physical copy for the trip!