No Bones Lake

Drainage: Clarks Fork (MT)
Approaches: No documented trailhead route. Nearest is the Goose Lake Jeep Trail to Pneumonia Lake, 5.5 mi with the last half mile off-trail, then about 1.4 mi east · From Stepping Stone Lake — about 0.74 mi south-southeast

Elevation: 9,974 feet
Fish: No FWP data
Coordinates: 45.09795, -109.82102
Bugs: Minimal on our visit

Getting there

No trail reaches No Bones. The nearest documented access is the Goose Lake Jeep Trail to Pneumonia Lake, five and a half miles with the last half mile off trail, and from there about a mile and a half east across the bench.

We came on a thru hike that started at the Lady of the Lake Trailhead and exited at the Clarks Fork end of the Beaten Path. Two vehicles, one dropped at the exit before we started. Without a shuttle you are walking the whole thing twice.

The hike

Day two was the only day we did not move camp. We left the tents at Splinter and walked a loop up through the high basins, and No Bones came about three and a third miles into it, a little after one in the afternoon.

From Stepping Stone it is three quarters of a mile south-southeast, and you lose about 300 feet coming off that shelf. That is the largest drop anywhere on the day's loop, and it is worth knowing because you climb most of it back later. The ground is rolling granite benches and gaps, no tread on any of it, and it took us forty minutes.

No Bones is 4.7 acres at 9,974 feet. FWP has no data for it, which means no stocking record rather than a confirmed empty lake.

Tips & safety

• Navigation: no maintained paths through this upper basin. Continuous route finding, and the drop off Stepping Stone commits you to re-climbing it if you are looping back the way we did.

• Fishing: FWP has no data for this lake. That is an absence of record, not a statement that it holds nothing.

• Camping: No Bones sits at 9,974 feet on rolling granite, right around the upper limit of timber, so any wind shelter comes in scattered pockets rather than a stand. The shoreline is rock. At under five acres there is not much of it. We came through in the early afternoon on a day loop without scouting sites, so take this as terrain description rather than a report on what is available.

• Thru hike logistics: this is point to point, not a loop. Your ride has to already be parked at the exit trailhead.