A Montana family, more than 900 alpine lakes, and a lot of good days in the Beartooths.

We're a family of five who started hiking the Beartooths for the simplest reason there is: it's fun. The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness is our home range, nearly a million acres of granite, more than 900 alpine lakes, and country most people only ever see from the highway. We kept going back, kept finding new lakes, and somewhere along the way started writing them down.

That's really all Beartooth Echo is. We're not a guide service or an official trail report. We're a family that's spent a lot of days up here and figured the notes might be worth sharing. So that's what you'll find: the hikes we've actually done, the lakes worth the walk, honest takes on what's easy and what'll kick your tail, and the stuff we wish we'd known starting out.

The kids are logging their own lakes now, learning the range the same way we did. We hope it helps you find your next good day out here too.

Hiking with kids

We have young kids and they come with us. A few lakes on this site carry a Little Legs tag, which means our kids walked that one and finished it on their own feet. It is not a difficulty rating and it is not a recommendation for your family. Here is what Little Legs means, and here are the lakes that carry it.