Goose Lake
Drainage: Stillwater
Approaches: Goose Lake Road end (FS 3230), 0.5 mi round trip; ~50 ft up. On trail the whole way
Elevation: 9,945 feet
Fish: Yellowstone cutthroat (FWP)
Coordinates: 45.11735, -109.91315
Bugs: Minimal mosquitoes on our visit
Getting there
Goose Lake Road, Forest Service 3230, leaves US 212 about three miles east of Cooke City, just short of Colter Pass. From the highway it runs roughly eight miles to the end of the road. The first two miles were rebuilt during mine reclamation work at Crown Butte and a normal car will handle them. Everything after that needs high clearance and four-wheel drive, or an ATV.
Just before the road ends there is a hard right heading north. That is where the hiking starts. A quarter mile over a low rise and down to the water, about fifty feet of gain. The lake is not visible from the road.
The hike
The walking is nothing. The road is the whole trip.
We came in on four-wheelers. It is rocky, steep, and side-hilly in stretches, and it deserves respect even on a machine built for it. There is one drop just before Goose that got hearts racing. We watched a buggy on 45s smash down on a rock badly enough that it had to be towed out.
Once you park, the quarter mile north is a walk in the open. At 9,945 feet you are at the top of the trees, and the basin is bare rock and low ground cover with the lake sitting in the middle of it.
There are abandoned mine camps and rusted mining equipment scattered through the basin. The road itself was cut in 1905 and 1906 to reach a copper lode up here. If the fishing goes cold, the wreckage is worth the walk on its own.
A trail continues southwest toward Wall Lake.
Tips & safety
Fishing. Yellowstone cutthroat, self-sustaining. FWP's 2017 sample was taken by angling and the crew rated fish condition thin to average. The state logged 417 angler days here in 2019, so you may have company.
Pine martens chew vehicle cables. This is a real problem here, not a curiosity. Coming back to a machine that will not start after eight miles of road is a bad afternoon.
Camping. We have not scouted sites at the lake itself, so this is terrain description and not a site report. The basin is above the trees, which means flat ground is easy to find and wind shelter is not. Weather comes across open country with nothing to break it. Water access is unrestricted along most of the shoreline. Most people we have seen up here camp back down along the road where there is some cover rather than at the lake.
Getting out. This is a dead-end road with no cell service. Anything you break, you fix or you walk.
Little Legs: we walked this one with our own young kids and they finished it on their own feet. That is a record of one day with our kids, not a rating. Read what Little Legs means.
