The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness on the Montana-Wyoming border is my favourite backpacking destination in the Greater Yellowstone region. The remarkable thing about the plateau is that you are mostly above the treeline, in high alpine tundra country normally reserved for treks in places like Tibet or the high Himalaya.
If my other summer backing trip to Bechler was all about waterfalls, then the Beartooths are all about lakes, hundreds of them in fact, and you can hardly walk for more than 20 minutes without passing another one. The landscape is high altitude tundra, a bit like the higher valleys of Nepal (think Gosainkund lakes), and this makes for easy walking and even easier routefinding. If you have a good map and navigation skills you can pretty much walk anywhere. The following was my four-day itinerary, but the options are endless. Click on the following pictures to see them larger.
Day One starts at Clay Butte trailhead, west of Beartooth Lake, and heads across the plateau towards Martin Lake. This is an established trail and so you might find other hikers on this section.
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| Kidney Lake with the Beartooth wall behind |
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| Wright Lake and Martin Lake |
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| Campsite night one, Martin Lake |
Day two heads off trail, east up to the three dramatic Cloverleaf Lakes, then north to Two Bits Lake at the base of the Beartooth wall. From here I climbed up to the top of the ridge for aerial views of Sky Pilot Lake and the valley of Rock Lake to the east. A scramble can take you down the ridge to High Pass Lake, which makes for a great traverse option from Rock Lakes (accessed from near Red Lodge). The route then took me back down onto the plateau and west past Donelson and Maryott lakes to drop down steeply past charming Pleides Lakes and then up the valley to Flat Rock Lake for night two.
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| Cloverleaf Lakes |
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| Two Bits Lake |
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| Sky Pilot Lake |
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| Rock Lake |
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| High Pass Lake |
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| Two Bit Lake and Lonesome Peak from the north |
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| Pleides Lakes |
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| Flat Rock Lake |
Day Three Leave your main pack at Flat Rock Lake and make a detour loop up the valley past Varve Lake and Navajo Tarn to the iceberg-full lake of Castle Rock Glacier. From here you can shortcut south to Copepod and Cladocera lakes. Then it's a short, sharp descent back to Flat Rock Lake, where you can enjoy lunch beside the stunning lake. Then follow the river downstream past Castle Lake and Summerville Lake to Green Lake, where you'll have to wade across the northwest inlet to access Lake Elaine for a sublime night three.
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| Castle Rock Glacier |
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| Castle Rock Glacier |
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| Cladocera Lake |
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| Flat Rock Lake |
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| South from Flat Rock Lake |
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| Lake Elaine |
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| Lake Elaine camp |
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| Lake Elaine dusk |
Day Four is easy; hiking around the west side of Lake Elaine, through the forest and river gorge to Granite Lake (a great lunch spot) and then uphill, past several lakes and a confusing section of trail (keep your wits about you here) to eventually rejoin the trail you took in on day 1. You'll be back in your car in the early afternoon, to reach Red Lodge or Cooke City in time for a cold beer.
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| Lake Elaine |
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| Trail back to Beartooth Butte |
Practical Tips
Bring bear spray and have it accessible in a holster. August and September are the best months to avoid mosquitoes, but bring bug spray any time. Invest in Beartooth Publishing's 1:100,000 Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness map and also check out the terrain beforehand on Google Earth.
I'm a hiker / backpacker from New York...the mostly rock landscape of the high elevation Beartooth Wilderness does not interest me so much...but I'd like to explore the lower elevation, greener, more forested areas of the Beartooth Wilderness...remote places with lots of green. Maybe on Google Earth I can find these spots.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, How bad were the mosquitoes when you went? Seems like they can be exceptionally bad there...and that alone would steer me towards other wilderness areas that did not have the mosquito problem in mid August that the Beartooths seem to have.
Above tree line is the cool part. The forests are VERY mosquito-ey.
DeleteHi, yes agree with DH in that the lower areas with lakes and forest are more mosquitoey, partly because they get less wind. September is a great month to avoid mosquitoes, but mid-August is not as bad as earlier in the summer in my experience. The fringes of the Beartooth Wilderness are more forested with lakes, including the valleys out of Red Lodge, but I find the pine forest gets a bit samey lower down. I like the combination of trees, barren plateau and high lakes more interesting personally. For more variety of scenery, there's always nearby Yellowstone NP.
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