The M Trail parking lot reached capacity at 5:47 AM Tuesday, according to the Forest Service counter installed last spring and the three Subarus idling with headlights off beside the kiosk. By 6:15, a line of headlamps stretched up the switchbacks like a slow-moving constellation. Everyone interviewed said they came early to avoid the crowds.

“I got here at 5:30 and there were already twelve cars,” said Dale Henderickson, 34, who moved to Bozeman in 2019 and works remotely for a Denver software firm. “Unreal. It used to be empty at this hour. I remember in twenty-twenty you had the whole mountain to yourself.” Henderickson was wearing a headlamp, a Patagonia Capilene hoodie, and carried a Nalgene stickered with the logo of a brewery that opened in 2021.

Ranger Mavis Cooley, who has staffed the Bozeman Ranger District since 2003, watched the line snake upward from her truck. “They all say the same thing,” she said. “‘Beat the crowds.’ Ma’am, you are the crowd. Sir, you are the traffic. But I don’t say that out loud. I just hand them the bear spray checklist and wish them a nice hike.”

The bear spray checklist is new this year. A grizzly was spotted near the Sypes Canyon junction last Thursday, the third sighting in the front range this summer. Hikers stepped around the printed warning sheets stacked on the kiosk. One woman picked one up, read “Make noise in brushy areas,” and said, “Good to know,” before continuing up the trail in silence.

At the summit, the view was exactly what everyone came for: the valley spread out below, the Bridgers purple in morning light, the new subdivision on North 19th catching sun on its gray roofs, the old cottonwoods along Bridger Creek still holding shadow. Three hundred people stood shoulder to shoulder taking the same photograph. Nobody spoke. The wind moved through the chokecherries.

By 9:00 AM the lot was turning over. A Prius with a “Native” bumper sticker pulled into the spot a Tacoma had warmed. The driver, a woman named Karen who declined to give her last name, said, “I try to get up here before the tourists arrive.” She locked her door and started up the trail. The M doesn’t care.