Ship Lake

Drainage: Rock Creek
Approaches: West Fork Rock Creek Trailhead — 8 mi, 6.5 on trail with 1.5 mi off-trail; 2,600 ft up · From Bowback Lake — about 0.4 mi south-southeast · From Marker Lake — about 0.5 mi northeast

Elevation: 10,594 feet
Fish: Brook trout (FWP)
Coordinates: 45.11702, -109.59641
Bugs: Minimal on our visit

Getting there

West Fork Rock Creek Trailhead. Drive past the campgrounds along the gravel access road to the main parking area.

FWP puts Ship at eight miles with the last mile and a half off trail and 2,600 feet of climbing. We did it as part of a four day trip out of the same trailhead, camping at about 9,400 feet and working the upper basin from there.

The hike

Ship was the fourth lake of the third day, about four tenths of a mile south-southeast of Bowback across the bench.

It is the one lake up here that reads differently from the rest. At 28.9 acres it is about four and a half times the size of Kookoo, Triangle, Bowback or anything else in the cluster, big enough to be the anchor of the basin rather than another pocket in it. It is also the only one holding brook trout. Everything else on this bench is Yellowstone cutthroat.

The walking to it stays easy. Open rock, no trail, and the lake visible well before you reach it.

Ship sits at 10,594 feet, level with Bowback.

Marker is about half a mile southwest and about 340 feet higher, the last and highest lake of the loop before the drop back to camp.

Tips & safety

• Navigation: no maintained footpaths in this cluster. Open ground and a lake this size make Ship the easiest of the five to find and the most useful thing to fix your position against.

• Weather: high country with nothing to break a front. Come prepared for sustained wind or a storm that arrives fast.

• Fishing: FWP lists brook trout, the only brook trout water in this basin.

• Camping: Ship sits at 10,594 feet on open rock, well above treeline, so no timber, no wind shelter and no firewood. The shoreline is rock, but at nearly 28.9 acres there is far more of it than anywhere else up here, and it is the only lake in the cluster large enough to give you real choice about where to sit. We camped a mile and a half south at around 9,400 feet and worked the basin from there.