Martin Lake (East Rosebud)

Drainage: East Rosebud
Approaches: Approximately 20 miles round trip from the East Rosebud trailhead, with roughly 3,300 feet of climbing. The last 1.2 miles above Lake at Falls are unmaintained.
Elevation: 9,118 feet
Fish: Golden trout, common and stocked. Montana FWP.
Coordinates: 45.11598, -109.71162
Bugs: Not a problem in August.

Getting there

Trail #15 to Lake at Falls, which our track read at about 9 miles and FWP publishes at 11. Everything after that is off the maintained trail.

We crossed the Falls Creek inlet above the lake, definitely plan on water shoes. From the far side the route climbs southeast up Falls Creek, roughly 1.2 miles and about 1,080 feet of gain. FWP describes it as climbing the chute just to the right of the falls coming down from Martin. There is sign of trail in places and none in others.

We left the crossing at one in the afternoon and reached the lake at twenty past four, carrying overnight packs.

The hike

We quit watching the mileage on this climb and went by the altimeter instead. Around 8,330 feet the scramble starts in earnest. At about 8,700 we hit the base of the upper cliff band and skirted along the bottom of it. From there to roughly 9,000 we were scaling rock slides below the cliffs. The route was good and we could not complain, just steep. The last stretch before the lake is the scary part, with real rock scaling, and we could not tell whether the flood had changed it.

There are a lot of cliffs on this climb. A lot. We found a better line going up than we did coming down, and we paid for that on the way out. One of us took a full somersault into branches and rock, and had already broken a pole and bruised a tailbone on earlier falls. It took us an hour and twenty minutes to get back below the cliffs.

The lake is 30 acres and 108 feet deep at the deepest, with a 40-foot average, which makes it one of the deeper lakes in the drainage. We swam it.

Tips & safety

• Navigation: Unmaintained above the Falls Creek crossing. Sign of trail comes and goes. We tracked our progress by elevation rather than distance.

• Camping: A decent group of campsites right at the outlet, this is where we ended up camping, and that is all we found. Ground is rocky or lumpy. FWP calls it few rocky campsites with no use. Firewood is plentiful, which is not true of much else up here.

• Fishing: Stocked with golden trout, 3,000 fish in 2017 and again in 2012, with another 3,000 planned for 2025. Catching them is another matter. FWP fished it three hours in 2015 and got nothing. An angler reported 8 fish between 6 and 10 inches in two hours in 2013. FWP's only recent sampled fish was a 15.4-inch golden in 1998. We had a couple rising after dark and caught nothing.

• Bugs: Nothing that stood out.

• The descent: Harder than the climb. It took us an hour and twenty minutes just to get below the cliffs.