Rain 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 0.9 mi east-southeast · From Stash Lake — about 0.3 mi northeast

Elevation: 10,023 feet
Fish: No FWP Data
Coordinates: 45.09504, -109.83060
Bugs: Minimal on our visit

Getting there

No trail reaches Rain. 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 nine tenths of a mile east-southeast 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

Rain sits a third of a mile northeast of Stash on the same high bench, tucked slightly lower than the crags to the east, between the Pneumonia drainage and the creek canyon below. Coming from Splinter it is a little over a mile east, though the ground between makes it a longer walk than that sounds.

The route is rolling granite bands with no tread on any of it. This is country where you check the map often, not because the walking is hard but because one bench looks much like the next and the lakes up here sit close enough together to be confused for each other.

Rain is small, 2.2 acres at 10,023 feet. It is the kind of lake that does not announce itself until you are nearly on top of it.

Tips & safety

• Navigation: no maintained paths anywhere in this upper basin. Continuous route finding, and with Stash a third of a mile away and Surprise and Weasel just past it, this is the easiest place on the shelf to end up at the wrong water.

• Fishing: No FWP data.

• Camping: Rain sits at 10,023 feet on open granite, above treeline, so there is no timber, no wind shelter and no firewood. At 2.2 acres the shoreline is short and there is little flat ground at the water. Rough Lake, about two miles northwest, is the nearest water with a known campsite. We came through 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.