Lower Sheepherder Lake

Drainage: Clarks Fork (WY)
Approaches: A loop of roughly three hours takes in both Sheepherder lakes, from the end of a short dirt road between Long Lake and Little Bear Lake off the Beartooth Highway. Lower Sheepherder is about forty minutes in.
Elevation: 9,800 feet
Fish: No WYG&F data.
Coordinates: 44.96410, -109.51066
Bugs: Nothing that stood out.

Getting there

The trailhead is at the end of a short dirt road that leaves the highway between Long Lake and Little Bear Lake. It is a use trail rather than a maintained one.

You cross Bear Creek on the way in and there is no bridge, so figure on wet feet or a change of footwear depending on the year and the time of season.

We left the car at twenty past two and were at Lower Sheepherder by three.

The hike

Lower Sheepherder is the first of the two you come to, and it is the smaller of the pair.

Upper sits four tenths of a mile northwest and about 95 feet higher, and drains down into this one. It took us another fifty minutes to get up there from here. The whole loop taking in both runs about three hours.

Wyoming Game and Fish has no stocking record for this lake, so there is nothing published about what is in it.

Tips & safety

• Navigation: Use trail from the dirt road, not a maintained one. The Bear Creek crossing has no bridge.

• Camping: We walked this as a day loop and did not scout camping, so there is nothing here worth calling a site report.

• Fishing: No WYG&F data.

• Bugs: Nothing that stood out.