Paddle 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 0.4 mi east · From Recruitment Lake — about 0.12 mi southeast
Elevation: 10,070 feet
Fish: No FWP data
Coordinates: 45.09788, -109.83615
Bugs: Minimal on our visit
Getting there
No trail reaches Paddle. 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 four tenths of a mile east up onto the shelf.
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. Paddle came about an hour in with roughly 650 feet of climbing behind us, the first of the shelf lakes.
Once you are up top the walking is easy. Paddle sits in the middle of a tight cluster: Recruitment is an eighth of a mile northwest, Production about a third of a mile north-northeast. You can cover all three in well under an hour if the weather holds.
Paddle is 3.2 acres at 10,070 feet. FWP has no data for it, which means no stocking record rather than a confirmed empty lake.
Tips & safety
The gap, and the cliff past it: you can walk directly between Paddle and Recruitment, even though the gap does not look promising when you are standing in front of it. Head back toward Recruitment immediately after going through. If you carry on toward Production from above instead, you come out on a 100 foot cliff over the water.
Fishing: FWP has no data for Paddle. That is an absence of record, not a statement that it holds nothing.
Navigation: no maintained path on this shelf. The three lakes sit close enough together that the easy walking hides how easy it is to end up on the wrong side of the wrong one.
Camping: Paddle sits at 10,070 feet in the middle of the open shelf, above treeline, so no timber, no wind shelter and no firewood. The shoreline is rock and at 3.2 acres there is not much of it. Production, a third of a mile north-northeast, sits below a rocky pitch and has more shelter than anything up here on the bench. We came through in the late morning 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.
