How far is Glacier National Park from Columbia Falls? Here's the quick answer if you drive this relatively short distance without making any stops.
Nonstop drive: 41 miles or 66 km
Driving time: 1 hour, 3 minutes
Even though you can drive this distance straight through, it might be more interesting to stop along the way. You can scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Columbia Falls, Montana and Glacier National Park. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 31 miles or 50 km
Flight time: 34 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 10 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.3x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/2th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Glacier National Park, and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 2 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start in Columbia Falls.
Drive for about 13 minutes, then stop in Hungry Horse (Montana) and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 15 minutes then stop in West Glacier and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 17 minutes then stop at Sprague Creek Campground and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 13 minutes then stop at Avalanche Lake and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 15 minutes then stop at Granite Park Chalet and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 13 minutes then stop at Logan Pass and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 13 minutes then stop at Sunrift Gorge and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 21 minutes and arrive at Glacier National Park.
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Glacier National Park. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Glacier National Park. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Glacier National Park like What are the best hikes in Glacier National Park?. Click the button below to explore Glacier National Park in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Glacier National Park to Columbia Falls, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Columbia Falls, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Columbia Falls!