Trail journeys inspire hiker to create guides for Glacier National Park

It’s a bluebird fall day on the southern side of Glacier National Park in early October. Map maker Jake Bramante has hiked thousands of miles here but is still as excited as ever to descend into a golden grove of aspens and talk about his love of nature.  

Bramante’s brown Day Hikes of Glacier National Park map can be found in almost every store in the park and thousands of visitors use it to guide their itinerary every season. It is easy to follow, giving people unfamiliar with Glacier’s terrain and trails an idea of what to expect.  

“My goal is to help people have adventures. Like, I want this to be one of the components that gets them out on the trail, you know? I hope that my blog causes people to see the park differently ... that it helps people notice things — notice the flowers, notice the birds and notice the colors," Bramante said.  

Although he set out to hike all 734 miles of trail in Glacier National Park in 2011, Bramante is far from a completionist. Sauntering up to Firebrand Pass, he stops frequently to take photos, spot birds and note markings from bears — like scratch marks on a tree or a dig spot in scree. Hiking is all about noticing the little things and the nature around you, he said.  

He’s been able to make a career out of his day hike map and Going-to-the-Sun Road driving guide, expanding to other national parks like Zion and Yosemite. But he wasn’t always sure it would work out this way.  

Bramante was sick and tired of the corporate world when he decided to leave his IT job to focus on video production, something he had previously only done as a side gig. He’s a Northwest Montana native and had a love of being outdoors. Around 2011, he had the idea to do something related to Glacier and started to wonder if anyone had ever hiked all 734 miles of trails.  

“I decided to try and be the first person to do it all in one summer, but I always had kind of an eye, entrepreneurially, to see what is on the other side of that, whether it was like a book or speaking [about it] or whatever kind of a thing,” Bramante said.  

It was a big undertaking, no doubt, but Bramante said it was fun (especially at the start.) He was about a third of the way through his hikes that summer when he started to wonder if he’d be able to accomplish hiking all 734 miles of trails. It was a big snow year, so lingering snowpack meant he couldn’t hike every single day. He would go on a hike and then have a few days to edit the video and create a blog post on his website.  

Though his videos started in a “come hike with me” format, he said he soon realized this content was evergreen — meaning that hikers could continue to reference his posts as they plan for their trip for years to come. Because of this, he started treating the videos as a library of the park, in a way, and began talking less about what he was going through on the trail and more about what hikers could expect to encounter.  

There were still doubts and unknowns that plagued him on his endeavor.  

“I think that there was always this thing in the back of my mind of like, ‘what happens if a fire starts? What happens if I get hurt? What happens if we get early snowfall?’ ... I mean, nobody really cares about a guy who hiked like 90% of the trails, I really did need to do it all in one summer,” Bramante said.  

But his physical strength improved as well as his mental, and by the end of the season, he was hiking seven to 14 days straight. He said there was a point where he felt relief — he was within reach of completing all the miles of trails. He applies this philosophy to other areas of his life now — sometimes being in the middle of a big project is likely the hardest part. 

After the hard work was over, Bramante was trying to nail down what he wanted to do with his season of hiking all of Glacier’s trails. He was on his honeymoon in Maui with his wife Kristen when they decided to drive the Road to Hana. They picked up a couple of local guidebooks which ultimately inspired his Going-to-the-Sun Road driving guide. 

“I think experiencing it as a tourist that way, what I realized was like, I really wanted somebody who had driven it, who was an expert at it and who said, ‘You know what? Here's a strategy to be successful on the Road to Hana.’ And I was like, ‘well, I have that for Going-to-the-Sun Road,” Bramante said.  

The driving guide came out in 2013, but his biggest success came with the creation of the day hikes map, released in 2014. Teaching himself to make topographical maps in the process, he felt like he was filling a need from visitors that needed to be met.  

“So many people come to the park, and they may have looked on TikTok or Instagram or whatever, of the top five hikes to do. But sometimes when you get to the park, the Highline is closed because of snow or a bear closes this trail or that trail ... I think my map has really helped people with that. Because I sort the hikes for you to get the best bang for your buck,” Bramante said.  

He receives feedback about his maps from visitors and is happy so many people have resonated with it. Because of the success of his Glacier maps, Bramante was able to create more maps for other parks like Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Zion, Rocky Mountain, Yosemite and Olympic. Though he couldn’t hike every single mile of trail in these parks, Bramante would take extended trips to hike as much as he could to create an informative map for visitors.  

It’s a culmination of years of hard work, but Bramante said his wife Kristen has been a huge part of it, too. Her job allowed them to pay the bills while he started his business, and her support of the project has been immeasurable.  

“My wife is amazing because I would write a map or video description and she would read it, and go, ‘I have no idea what you're talking about,’” Bramante laughed. “She provided tons of great feedback ... Kristen is definitely the unsung hero of Hike 734.”   

In addition to joining Bramante on hikes, Kristen has pulled from her medical background to launch her own hiking fitness program and blog.  

These days, the couple enjoys taking part in Glacier’s citizen science programs and mountaineering, among other ventures that get them outside and up on top of the park’s peaks.  

To learn more about Bramante’s maps and Hike 734, visit his blog at hike734.com. Videos of his years of hiking in Glacier National Park can be found at www.youtube.com/@hike734/  

Watch a video of the hike to Firebrand Pass on Bramante's YouTube channel.

Reporter Taylor Inman can be reached at 406-758-4433 or by emailing tinman@dailyinterlake.com.