Kookoo Lake

Drainage: Rock Creek
Approaches: West Fork Rock Creek Trailhead — 7.5 mi, 6.5 on trail with 1 mi off-trail; 2,340 ft up · From Triangle Lake — about 0.3 mi northeast

Elevation: 10,394 feet
Fish: Yellowstone cutthroat (FWP)
Coordinates: 45.12216, -109.58758
Bugs: Minimal on our visit

Getting there

West Fork Rock Creek Trailhead. Drive past the campgrounds along the gravel access road to the main parking area.

FWP puts Kookoo at seven and a half miles with the last mile off trail and 2,340 feet of climbing. That is a long day as a single push. We did it as part of a four day trip out of the same trailhead, camping at about 9,400 feet and working the upper basin from there.

The hike

Kookoo was the first lake of the third day, a little over a mile almost due north of camp and about 1,000 feet above it.

It sits differently from the other lakes on this bench. Bowback, Ship, Marker and Triangle are all easy walking once you are up top. Kookoo is not. The lake sits below the bench, and reaching the shoreline means dropping a steep 200 feet down to the water and climbing the same 200 feet back out. If you are the kind of person who only counts a lake by touching the water, that is the price.

Kookoo is 6.1 acres at 10,394 feet. FWP lists Yellowstone cutthroat. We fished it in July 2014 and did not land anything.

Triangle is about three tenths of a mile southwest and is the next water on the loop.

Tips & safety

• The drop: 200 feet down and 200 feet back up, steep and rocky, on loose scree. Take it slow. This is the only lake on the bench that asks anything of you.

• Weather: high country here with nothing to break a front. Come prepared for sustained wind or a storm that arrives without much warning.

• Fishing: FWP lists Yellowstone cutthroat. We did not catch anything.

• Camping: Kookoo sits at 10,394 feet below the bench, well above treeline, so there is no timber, no wind shelter and no firewood. The shoreline is scree and rock and at 6.1 acres there is not much of it. The 200 foot climb out means anything you carry down there you carry back up. We camped a mile south at around 9,400 feet and worked the basin from there, which is the better arrangement.