For most of August, the answer to “can I take my dog into the Bob Marshall from Spotted Bear” was a flat no. Rain changed that. Cooler weather and a soaking rain event in early September knocked the Silvertip Fire back enough that Trail 83 — the main access route into the Bob Marshall from the Spotted Bear side — reopened Sept. 9, according to Hungry Horse News. That’s the first real good news out of the Spotted Bear Ranger District in weeks.

It’s not a full reopening, though. Not close. We’ve been tracking wildfire trail closures piling up all season — Three Queens near Cle Elum took out 50 miles of PCT in Washington, and closer to this fire, Cedar Flats north of Columbia Falls is a grizzly story in the same corner of Montana. This one’s a moving target that just moved for the first time in nearly a month, right as fall backpacking season with dogs starts to peak in one of the best off-leash wilderness destinations in the country. Nobody’s published the current trail-by-trail status yet. Here’s what it actually looks like right now.

Quick Verdict: What’s Open, What’s Not

Detail	What You Need to Know
Fire size	~7,272 acres, 15% contained as of late August 2026
Location	Near Silvertip Mountain, ~15 miles southeast of Spotted Bear Ranger Station
Cause	Lightning, detected July 24, 2026
Trail 83 (Spotted Bear River Trail)	Reopened Sept. 9 — main Bob Marshall access from Spotted Bear
Silvertip Trail (#89)	Still closed in its entirety
Limestone Peak Trail (#435)	Still closed — it branches off the closed Trail 89
CDT near Elbow Pass	Closed, South Fork Sun Packbridge to Straight Creek Trail junction — this one’s tied to the separate Camp Creek Fire, not Silvertip
Your dog, today	Trail 83 is back on the table; the interior loop around Silvertip Mountain and that CDT stretch are not

Why This Update Actually Matters

September in the Bob Marshall is the good window. Bugs are mostly done, the crowds from July have thinned out, and the larch hasn’t started dropping needles yet. It’s also the window a lot of people wait all year for — a multi-day trip with a dog off-leash on trail, which the Bob is genuinely known for in a way most Lower 48 wilderness areas aren’t.

A fire that closes your only reasonable access point doesn’t just cancel a hike. It cancels the trip. Spotted Bear is one of the handful of practical entry points into a wilderness complex that doesn’t have a lot of trailheads to begin with, and Trail 83 is the one most people actually use to get past the boundary and into the interior. When it closed in late July, that wasn’t “pick a different loop.” That was “the Bob is off the table from this side, full stop.” Getting it back changes the calculus for anyone who’d shelved a September trip.

The Silvertip Fire, By the Numbers

Lightning started the Silvertip Fire on July 24, deep in the Spotted Bear Ranger District of the Flathead National Forest, near Silvertip Mountain and roughly 15 miles southeast of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station. It grew through July and August in steep terrain choked with standing dead and down timber — exactly the kind of ground that burns slow, stays stubborn, and doesn’t respond fast to containment lines. By Sept. 1 it had reached 7,272 acres with containment sitting at 15%, per NBC Montana.

Fifteen percent containment on a fire that size, this late in the season, isn’t a fire anyone was calling finished. What actually moved the needle was weather, not firefighting alone — the rain and cooler temperatures that rolled through over Labor Day weekend did more to calm this fire down than a month of crew work on steep, timbered slopes. That’s worth remembering before you assume “rain happened, so it’s fine now.” Rain buys a reprieve. It doesn’t reset containment to 100%, and acreage and containment numbers are both snapshots that can be a week old by the time you read them. Check InciWeb’s Silvertip Fire page before you drive out.

What Reopened on Sept. 9

Trail 83, the Spotted Bear River Trail, is the main corridor into the Bob Marshall from the Spotted Bear side, and it’s the trail most people mean when they say “we’re going in from Spotted Bear.” It had been closed from its junction with Silvertip Trail 89 down to its junction with Wall Creek Trail 90 under the original Flathead National Forest closure order issued July 29. As of Sept. 9, that stretch is back open, according to Hungry Horse News’s report on the rain-driven improvement across the district’s fires.

That’s the headline. It’s not the whole story.

What’s Still Closed Around Silvertip Mountain

Two trails specifically are still shut down as of the Sept. 9 update:

• Silvertip Trail (#89) — closed in its entirety. This is the trail that runs closest to the actual fire perimeter near Silvertip Mountain, and it’s not reopening until the fire footprint stops being active ground.
• Limestone Peak Trail (#435) — also closed. It branches off Trail 89, so as long as the Silvertip Trail stays shut, there’s no way to reach Limestone Peak without walking through closed terrain to get there.

The original closure order also touched several connecting trails around the fire perimeter — Sergeant Creek–Corporal Creek (#88), Harrison Creek (#584), and sections of Trail 103 and Wall Creek Trail (#90) — with partial closures at specific junctions rather than full closures. Some of those have likely eased along with Trail 83, but the Forest Service hasn’t published a full itemized update the way it did for the original order. If your route touches any of those connector trails, call the Spotted Bear Ranger District at 406-758-5376 before you commit — don’t assume “Trail 83 is open” means every trail feeding into it is too.

What’s Open for Dogs in the Bob Marshall Right Now?

1. Trail 83 (Spotted Bear River Trail) — open as of Sept. 9, the main access route from Spotted Bear.
2. Silvertip Trail (#89) — closed in its entirety, no timeline given.
3. Limestone Peak Trail (#435) — closed, inaccessible without crossing closed Trail 89.
4. Connector trails (#88, #584, #90, #103) — partial closures at specific junctions under the original order; status unconfirmed since the Sept. 9 update, call ahead.
5. CDT (#202) near Elbow Pass — closed, but due to the separate Camp Creek Fire, not Silvertip.

The Fire You Haven’t Heard About: Camp Creek and the CDT

Here’s where this gets confusing if you’re just skimming headlines. The Continental Divide Trail closure — the stretch from the South Fork Sun Packbridge through Elbow Pass to its junction with the Straight Creek Trail — is real and current, and the CDT Coalition’s closures page has it listed. But it’s not the Silvertip Fire causing it. It’s the Camp Creek Fire, a separate blaze also burning inside the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, reported at 9,495 acres west of Augusta near the Danaher drainage.

If you’re planning a CDT section hike with your dog through this part of Montana, that distinction doesn’t matter much — the trail’s closed either way, and the USFS is directing hikers onto the Straight Creek Trail as the official reroute around the closed segment. But if you’re specifically trying to figure out whether the Silvertip Fire’s improvement means the CDT is back open too, the answer is no — that closure lives with a different fire entirely, and Camp Creek hasn’t seen the same rain-driven progress reported for Silvertip. Two fires, same wilderness complex, two separate sets of trail problems. Track them separately.

Gear and Prep If You’re Going In Anyway

Trail 83 being open again doesn’t mean you show up unprepared. A few things worth sorting before a fall Bob Marshall trip with a dog:

• Confirm current status the day before you drive out, not the week before. InciWeb and the Flathead National Forest alerts page are both better sources than a news article from a few days ago — closures shift fast when weather does.
• If your dog’s off-leash reliability is rusty from a summer of leashed neighborhood walks, this isn’t the trip to find that out. Our off-leash training guide covers the actual progression, and the Bob Marshall’s remote terrain and wildlife density is not a forgiving place for a recall that’s “mostly good.”
• This is grizzly country, actively in hyperphagia season, with bears working hard for calories before winter. We covered what that meant for Cedar Flats near Columbia Falls a few weeks ago, and the same caution applies here — bear spray on your hip, not buried in a pack, and noise on blind corners.
• A multi-day trip means multi-day gear, and a dog carrying its own food and gear changes the math on distance and pace. Our multi-day backpacking guide and backpacking pack roundup are the place to start if you haven’t done an overnight with your dog before.
• A GPS collar earns its keep in country this remote. Cell service doesn’t exist for most of the Bob Marshall’s interior. Our GPS dog collar guide covers what actually works off-grid.
• Smoke doesn’t respect closure boundaries. Two active fires in the same wilderness complex means smoke can drift into areas that are technically open. Check our wildfire smoke and AQI guide before you commit a dog with sensitive lungs to a multi-day trip downwind of either fire.

Bottom Line

The Silvertip Fire eased enough with early September rain that Trail 83 — the main Spotted Bear access into the Bob Marshall — reopened Sept. 9, after being closed since late July. That’s real progress on a fire that sat at 7,272 acres and 15% containment just over a week earlier. But the Silvertip Trail and Limestone Peak Trail, both closer to the actual burn near Silvertip Mountain, are still shut with no reopening date given. Separately, if a Continental Divide Trail section hike was the plan, that’s still closed near Elbow Pass — not because of Silvertip, but because of the Camp Creek Fire burning elsewhere in the same wilderness complex, with the Straight Creek Trail as the official detour.

Trail 83 being open is genuinely good news for a fall Bob Marshall trip with a dog. Just don’t assume it means the whole wilderness is clear. Call the Spotted Bear Ranger District, check InciWeb for both fires, and confirm your specific route before you load the truck.

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Fire acreage and containment from NBC Montana, current as of Sept. 1, 2026. Trail 83 reopening reported by Hungry Horse News, Sept. 9, 2026. Original closure order details from the Flathead National Forest. CDT closure and reroute details from the Continental Divide Trail Coalition. Camp Creek Fire acreage from NBC Montana. This is a developing situation on two active fires — confirm current conditions at InciWeb before any trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.