Pine Creek Lake

Drainage: Yellowstone/Hell Roaring
Approaches: Approximately 9 miles round trip from Pine Creek Campground on Trail #47, with roughly 3,400 feet of climbing.
Elevation: 9,032 feet
Fish: No FWP data.
Coordinates: 45.48444, -110.46449
Bugs: Nothing that stood out.

Getting there

Pine Creek Trail #47 out of Pine Creek Campground in Paradise Valley. It is maintained the whole way and there is no route-finding, but it is a long steady climb and it does not let up.

Pine Creek Falls comes early, thirty-five minutes from the trailhead. After that the work starts.

We took six hours and twenty minutes to reach the lake. You pass Jewell first at five hours ten, then Jewel forty minutes later, then Pine Creek Lake another half hour on. Anyone planning this as a day hike should look hard at those numbers before committing.

The hike

This is a busy lake. On the way out, a Saturday, we counted a hundred people walking up. That is the most we have seen on any trail in a single day anywhere in this range.

There is camping and there is enough of it, but you will have neighbors. We camped on the east side because we were crossing to the McKnight lakes the next morning and wanted to start from that shore. There is camping on the outlet side as well.

The Falcon Guide puts the maximum depth at 170 feet, which is deep water for a lake you can reach on a maintained trail. Montana FWP has no entry, so there is no acreage of its own and no fish record from the state.

The lake sits right on the divide. Pine Creek runs west from here down to the Yellowstone, and everything on the far side drains east down Davis Creek into the Boulder. That is why the Falcon Guide files this one under Yellowstone, Hell Roaring and Buffalo Fork while the McKnights an hour east of it are a Boulder lake.

Tips & safety

• Navigation: Trail #47 the whole way, maintained, no route-finding.

• Camping: Sites on the east side and on the outlet side. Expect company. We took the east side to set up the next day's crossing.

• Fishing: No FWP data.

• Bugs: Nothing that stood out.

• Crowds: A hundred people on a Saturday. If you want it quiet, this is not the day.