Mountain View Lake
Drainage: Stillwater
Approaches: Approximately 3 miles round trip from Road 2486, with roughly 1,500 feet of climbing. No trail.
Elevation: 6,986 feet
Fish: Brook trout. White sucker, abundant. Montana FWP.
Coordinates: 45.3872, -109.90144
Bugs: Mosquitoes and black flies.
Getting there
Know where the property lines are before you start. The route works up alongside the Mouat mine ground, and FWP says the same thing in its own directions, to use care to stay on Forest Service property.
We walked up Mountain View Creek from the road above the Stillwater mine settling ponds. It is steep, but it is manageable, and there are some old road beds that help near the end.
A mile and a half and 1,500 feet is a thousand feet of climbing per mile, so this is short rather than easy. There is no trail.
FWP lists a second way in on the Rabbit Gulch trail at 4.5 miles, three of them on trail. We did not take it.
The hike
This one sits outside the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, on Forest Service land next to the mine. It is small, 3.7 acres, and shallow at 13 feet in the deepest spot and 6 on average.
There are brook trout in it and they run a decent size. FWP sampled 10 in 2009 averaging 11.2 inches with the biggest at 16.3, and 5 in 2018 averaging 9.6. Their own summary calls it decent fishing for some nice size brook trout. There are also white suckers, which they list as abundant, and at least one lake chub turned up in 2018.
The mine ground you are skirting has a history worth knowing. The Mouat mine shut down in 1961, and Mouat Lake Camp above it was a small town of its own, with a school, a rec center, a store and boarding houses for the miners and their families. The houses are gone but many of the buildings are still standing.
If you want to see any of that, the Museum of the Beartooths runs a historic mine tour once a year that gets onto the private ground legitimately, by ATV, with people who know the geology. That is the way in. Walking to it is not.
Tips & safety
Property lines: The route runs against the Mouat mine ground. Do not trespass. FWP flags this in its own access notes and it is the first thing to sort out.
Navigation: No trail. Straight up the creek from the road above the settling ponds, with old road beds helping toward the top.
Camping: FWP lists nothing, and we did not scout it. It is a small shallow lake a mile and a half up a steep creek with mine ground on the boundary, so it reads as a day trip. That is terrain description, not a site report.
Fishing: Brook trout to 16 inches in FWP's nets. Suckers are abundant and there are lake chubs in there too.
Bugs: Mosquitoes and black flies.
The mine sites: The Museum of the Beartooths runs an annual tour that reaches the Benbow site, the Mouat mine and Mouat Lake Camp. The Benbow site is open to the public on its own; the rest is private.
