Parking
Sunrift Gorge Pullout on Going-to-the-Sun Road. It is the shortest access to Baring Falls; check seasonal road conditions before driving to the pullout.
Overview
About Baring Falls Trail
Why go
- A waterfall payoff on a short out-and-back
- A separate gorge overlook starts from the same pullout
Heads up
- The walk back climbs and the outing is over quickly
Map & elevation
The route
Loading the Glacier map
Full mapElevation4,510–4,677 ft
Plan your hike
Before you go
Parking
1 active Glacier alert
- ClosureTwo Medicine Campground closed for 2026 constructionTwo Medicine Campground is closed throughout 2026 because of construction in the Two Medicine developed area.Official details
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Glacier Tour Guide
Your drive to Baring Falls Trail, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Glacier National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Glacier audio tourRecorded for this trailhead
Sunrift Gorge and Baring Falls0:00 / 0:31
“Sunrift Gorge is coming up, a narrow rock cleft with Baring Creek running between its walls. The overlook is about two hundred feet from the pullout, with steps, so this works as a five-to-ten-minute stop.”
Plays as you drive up to this trailhead in the Parkwolf Glacier Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- St. Mary and Virginia Falls
- Sun Point's View and Vanished Chalets
- Why the Lakes Turn Turquoise
- How the Peace Park Began
- 204 audio storiesacross Glacier’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Grizzly Bear, Wolverine, Mountain Goat, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 157 trails, 91 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“Our first time to glacier and we used the audio portion for Going to the Sun Road. Wonderful information with perfect advice of what to see and do along the road.”
Trail guide
Hiking Baring Falls Trail
A short walk to Baring FallsBaring Falls Trail is an out-and-back from Sunrift Gorge Pullout to a waterfall on Baring Creek.
Baring Falls Trail is an out-and-back from Sunrift Gorge Pullout to a waterfall on Baring Creek. The mapped walk is about 0.35 miles each way, or 0.71 miles round trip; published one-way figures vary by about a tenth. Allow 30 to 45 minutes to reach the falls, look around, and walk back. It’s a good choice for a quick waterfall stop while you’re on Going-to-the-Sun Road.
Where to turnThe route leaves the pullout on the Siyeh Pass Trail and branches right toward Baring Falls.
The route leaves the pullout on the Siyeh Pass Trail and branches right toward Baring Falls. Follow the creek-side path and cross Baring Creek on a footbridge just before the first clear view of the falls. The trail drops on the way out, so save a little energy for the uphill walk back to the road. Pets aren’t allowed on park trails.
The falls and the creekBaring Falls drops about 25 feet over a rock ledge.
Baring Falls drops about 25 feet over a rock ledge. Baring Creek runs for roughly another 100 yards before reaching Saint Mary Lake, so look downstream as well as at the falls. American dippers sometimes feed along the creek, diving below the surface. For a photo, include some of the fast-moving creek in front of the falls to show the full scene, not just the white water.
How the falls got their nameA local historical account traces the name to one of two Baring brothers, London bankers who…
A local historical account traces the name to one of two Baring brothers, London bankers who visited on a guided hunting trip with Joe Kipp and James Willard Schultz in the late 1880s.
A separate quick stopSunrift Gorge is beside the same pullout, but it’s a different short walk: a 200-foot path…
Sunrift Gorge is beside the same pullout, but it’s a different short walk: a 200-foot path leads to an overlook above a gorge where Baring Creek drops into a channel about 80 feet deep. Don’t count that overlook as part of the Falls route. Starting from Sun Point is another, much longer way to reach Baring Falls; this entry covers only the short Sunrift Gorge out-and-back.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Glacier
404 sightingsGrizzly BearMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
11 sightingsWolverineMost seen around 8 PMSighting map
1,173 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
1,000 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
395 sightingsMooseMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
506 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 8 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Glacier. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
