As described in J. Gordon Edwards' A Climber's Guide to Glacier National Park, the approach for Otokomi Mountain is via the official trail to Otokomi Lake which starts beside the camp store at the Rising Sun parking lot. On this day, the parking lot was closed, and I had to park on the access road between the store and the campground. Par for the course, I mistakenly began hiking through the campground only to find myself on the wrong side of Rose Creek (outlet stream for Otokomi Lake). After backtracking to the proper trailhead (signed), I hiked for about half an hour to a hairpin bend where a small creek spilled over the trail. A route description from Summitpost.org recommends leaving the trail at this point, and I followed suit. Though steep, the bushwhacking through the trees was light, and shortly thereafter, I emerged from the forest and began toiling up a vast scree slope. There are a few cliff bands on this slope, but I easily avoided them all by sticking more or less to climber's left. I eventually settled into an easy but long plod up a broad ridge which was heavily foreshortened and seemingly interminable. When I reached a large cairn on what looked like the summit, my GPS stated that the actual summit was still a few hundred metres to the north. From my perspective, the rolling terrain to the north actually looked lower, but taking no chances, I took a quick altitude reading at the cairn before proceeding northward. There was no marker of any sort in the vicinity of the actual summit, but when I took another altitude reading, I was surprised to find that the elevation was indeed higher albeit by only a few metres. Although I was still unconvinced by the GPS reading, I felt assured that I had reached Otokomi Mountain's high point one way or another. Returning to the cairn, I stopped briefly to snap some uninspiring photographs before retracing my steps back down the mountain. Descending the vast scree slope was probably the most tedious and unappealing stretch of the entire outing, and despite the growing darkness, I was actually relieved to be bushwhacking through the forest again. Subsequently, I had no problems finding the trail and hiking out.
When I had started hiking in the late afternoon, I had no worries
about descending in the dark, but I did have some concerns about making
it back to the Carway/Piegan border crossing before they closed for the
evening (11:00 PM). After returning to my car, I quickly changed
and wasted no time driving to the border crossing where I managed to get
through customs with about 15 minutes to spare.