About this permit
Two Medicine holds five of Glacier National Park's 65 designated wilderness campgrounds: Cobalt Lake, No Name Lake, Oldman Lake, Two Medicine and Upper Two Medicine Lake. All five are no-campfire camps, and Two Medicine itself is flagged as no campfires in 2026.
The permit is Glacier's single park-wide wilderness permit on Recreation.gov. The maximum party size is 12, each wilderness campground has 2 to 7 campsites, and each campsite is limited to four people. Glacier has no group campsites. It issues five large-group advance reservations a year for parties of 9 to 12 through a separate single-day lottery, after which large groups can only get permits on a walk-up basis.
Costs are $10 for the permit plus $7 per person per night from May 1 to October 31; winter permits are free. The lottery application fee is a separate non-refundable $10. In 2026 the large group lottery ran March 1 and the standard group lottery for parties of 1 to 8 ran March 15, for one of 3,000 advance reservations, with results March 17 and booking from March 21 to April 30. General sale opened May 1 at 8:00 am MT and ran to September 30; October is in-person walk-up only. About 30% of all sites parkwide are held for walk-up campers: a share of sites, not of permits.
2026 is the year to plan carefully here. A utility project replacing the full water distribution system in the Two Medicine developed area and campground started in May 2026, and the Two Medicine Road closes at the Running Eagle Falls Trailhead from September 8, 2026. The Two Medicine Campground is closed for the whole of 2026. The North Shore Trailhead is not accessible because of that construction; the park's reroute to the North Shore Trail requires an unbridged ford, and the workaround is to use the South Shore Trail, which adds about a mile one way. The Two Medicine Ranger Station, which issues permits, is open May 25 to September 7 and closes on September 8, 2026. Vehicle reservations are not required in Two Medicine in 2026.
The route
The park publishes one-way distances and gains from the Two Medicine trailheads: Cobalt Lake 5.8 miles and 1,400 feet from the South Shore Trailhead; No Name Lake 4.9 and 800 from the North Shore Trailhead; Oldman Lake 6.4 and 1,500 from the North Shore Trailhead; Upper Two Medicine Lake 5 miles and 350 feet, or 2.2 miles if you take the concession boat; Dawson Pass 6.5 and 2,450; Pitamakan Pass 7.6 and 2,400; Scenic Point 3.9 and 2,350.
For 2026 the North Shore Trailhead is not accessible because of construction in the Two Medicine Campground. The park has established a reroute to the North Shore Trail, but it requires an unbridged ford. Twin Falls, Upper Two Medicine Lake, No Name Lake and Dawson Pass can all be reached without that ford by using the South Shore Trail instead, at a cost of about one extra mile each way.
Why it matters
Two Medicine is the part of Glacier that feels like the park did before the Going-to-the-Sun crowds. Sinopah Mountain over the lake, the Dawson-Pitamakan loop over two passes in a day, and camps at No Name, Oldman, Cobalt and Upper Two Medicine that almost never appear in anyone's photographs. It is also the district where a utility project has rearranged access for the whole 2026 season.
