Blacktail Mountain's Second Summer Is Bigger Than Its First. A 1,131-Acre Deal in April Made It Permanent.
For most of the last three decades, Blacktail Mountain went quiet on the last Sunday of ski season and stayed that way until the lifts spun again in December. The road up Blacktail Road ended, for most residents, at the Foy's to Blacktail trailhead about halfway up.
That has stopped being true. The mountain is on its second full summer of operating as a June-through-Labor-Day recreation base, and a conservation acquisition finalized on April 9 of this year quietly locked in the corridor that makes the whole thing work. If you live in Lakeside and have been treating Blacktail as a winter address, the map has changed.
Blacktail Mountain Ski Area launched its first full summer program on June 18, 2025, after roughly four years of internal planning, general manager Jessi Wood told KPAX when the gates opened. The Flathead Beacon reported the season would run through Labor Day, and the same calendar holds in 2026. That is a real number worth pausing on. Ski season at Blacktail typically stretches roughly 100 days. The summer season now runs about 75. The mountain is open for business closer to six months of the year than four.
The Blacktail Trading Company retail store on the summit keeps posted summer hours of Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Friday through Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., functioning as a camp store with logo wear, trail snacks, disc golf gear, and camping essentials. It is a small detail, but scheduled hours are what separates an experiment from an operation.
The offer is more specific than "the mountain is open." Four things exist on Blacktail this summer that did not exist two summers ago:
None of these require a hotel booking, a park pass, or a two-hour drive. The furthest thing on that list is fifteen minutes from Volunteer Park.
If any single event proved the mountain's summer identity had arrived, it was the inaugural Blacktail Mountain Archery Festival, held July 10 through 12 on the ski hill's three mountain 3D archery courses and the Silver Snag practice range. Rinehart Targets signed on as Summit Sponsor. The weekend featured lift-assisted access to summit-start terrain, a Summit Shoot-Out competition, a vendor village, beer gardens, and camping on the mountain, with early-bird registration at $145 through June 30 and $165 after. Full details are on the Discover Kalispell events page.
The relevant fact is not that an archery festival happened. It is that a national-scale sponsor put its name on a first-year event at a Lakeside ski hill, on the same trail network local residents have been walking dogs on for a decade. That is the signal that the summer operation is being taken seriously outside the valley, not just inside it.
"This summer we decided to offer Blacktail as a base camp for lots of amazing adventures you can access right here in Lakeside, Montana," Wood told KPAX when the summer program opened.
That framing, base camp rather than day trip, is the shift.
On April 9, 2026, Flathead Land Trust, in partnership with Foy's to Blacktail Trails, the Trust for Public Land, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, closed on the acquisition of a 1,131-acre property from the Griffith Family Foundation. The parcel sits inside the corridor that connects Herron Park, south of Kalispell, with the timberlands rising toward Blacktail Mountain above Lakeside. Foys to Blacktail Trails described the closing as the completion of the first goal of the coalition's landmark conservation initiative.
Why it matters for a Lakeside resident: the Foy's to Blacktail Trail was completed in August 2017, with signage installed the following summer. Since then, the coalition has worked with private landowners to hold together a trail corridor that mostly crosses land it does not own. Handshake permissions and easements are the standard tool for keeping a trail like that stitched together. They are also the standard tool for losing one when a property changes hands. The April acquisition takes 1,131 of those acres off the handshake ledger and puts them into permanent conservation. It is the difference between a trail that exists in 2026 and a trail that exists in 2046.
Zoom in on the corridor itself. The Foy's to Blacktail system now covers more than 34 miles of single-track running south from Herron Park on the edge of Kalispell down to the Blacktail summit. The Lakeside-side approach, the Lakeside to Blacktail Trail, is a 22.4-mile out-and-back with roughly 3,750 feet of elevation gain, listed on AllTrails at about 10 to 11 hours for a hiking round-trip. From the mountain-biker's perspective, mtbproject.com describes the descent back to Lakeside as fast, flowy, and rideable in 15-to-20-minute laps if you shuttle.
Those are extreme numbers on the outer end. Most residents will not ride the whole spine. The point of the corridor for a resident isn't the through-hike. It is that any given afternoon can start at the pavement's end on Blacktail Road, climb a section of the Lakeside to Blacktail singletrack, and turn around. The corridor exists because the coalition, and now the acquisition, have secured the connective tissue. The individual afternoons are what the connective tissue enables.
The Foy's to Blacktail Marathon, run for the eighth year in 2026, still buses runners from Herron Park at 6 a.m. to a start line at the Lakeside to Blacktail trailhead. The race climbs to the summit of Blacktail and rides the corridor back to Herron. Fees from the marathon and the FTBT Half, 10K, and 5K trail races fund the trail-building itself, including new work along Emmons Ridge on the run south to Blacktail.
None of this is asking a Lakeside resident to reroute their summer. It is filling in the days that used to have gaps.
The lake still runs Tuesday, Friday, and weekend afternoons. Tamarack Brewing at 105 Blacktail Road, in Lakeside since 2007, still anchors the Duck Races on Fair day and the end-of-race pint on any given Saturday. Legacy Bike Park, two miles south of town, still handles the days when the lake is flat and the legs want a lift-assist. The Flathead Lake Alpine Coaster still absorbs the guests who want a land-based option with kids.
What's changed is the vertical option. A Wednesday afternoon that used to end at Volunteer Park can now end with nine holes at Silver Snag, followed by a walk down the ridge before dinner. A Saturday morning that used to require an hour's drive to a trailhead can now start at the pavement break on Blacktail Road. A guest who used to require the whole valley to be entertained can now be sent up the mountain with a rented UTV and a map from the Trading Company.
That is what a base camp means. Not a destination people fly in for. A place the town uses.
Blacktail's summer window closes on Labor Day. The archery festival will not happen again until next July. The Trading Company's summer hours reset when the lifts start. If you live here and you haven't been up the mountain since March, the mountain you left is not the one waiting for you.
The reason to know the April 9 acquisition is because it tells you what to expect a decade from now, not just this weekend. The trail corridor is not going away. The mountain's second season is not a pilot. Both facts should influence how a Lakeside resident thinks about their own address, whether they own their home already or are still deciding whether the west shore is a place to plant something long-term.
When you are ready to think about that decision seriously, whether you already live off Blacktail Road or you are watching the valley from somewhere else and trying to understand what's changing, Tyree Real Estate knows this shoreline, this mountain, and the corridor between them. Work with us to start your Montana property search.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
At Tyree Real Estate, our experienced team is deeply committed to the Montana community and your real estate success. Let us help you find your perfect home today!