Silver Lake (West Rosebud)

Drainage: West Rosebud
Approaches: Mystic Lake Trailhead — 8.2 mi, all on trail; about 1,900 ft up · From Island Lake — about 2.8 mi up the valley · From Mystic Lake — about 5 mi

Elevation: 7,993 feet
Fish: Rainbow trout (FWP)
Coordinates: 45.21096, -109.85298
Bugs: Minimal on our visit

Getting there

Drive West Rosebud Road past Emerald Lake and West Rosebud Lake. The trailhead lot sits just before the power plant at the end of the road, with plenty of room for a standard vehicle.

Eight miles on trail with about 1,900 feet of climbing. It took us most of a day with full packs, roughly six hours including stops. The tread is clear and established the whole way, past Mystic and Island and on up the valley floor.

The hike

It is a long walk rather than a hard one, and it starts to feel long near the end. What you get for it is position.

Silver sits at 7,993 feet at the heart of the upper drainage, and almost everything worth reaching in this basin is a day trip from here. Frenco is 1.2 miles north on trail, Beckwourth 1.8, Nugget 2.1, Brown eight tenths of a mile north up a steep line, and Star 2.8 miles south. We camped here three nights and reached all of them without moving.

Silver is 54.6 acres, the largest water in the upper valley by a wide margin. FWP lists rainbow trout. The fish run small, but they are there, and you can cast from outside your tent.

Tips & safety

• This is the basecamp. Carry the weight in once, camp here, and work the surrounding drainages on day trips with a light pack. Every lake above is steep enough that you would not want to be moving camp between them.

• Camping: good, reliable ground with plenty of quality sites, and enough of them to find something whatever the wind is doing. Frenco, 1.2 miles up, is the better site if you want to be higher, but Silver is the better hub.

• Hang your food and your gear: we had a pine marten or something like it get into camp overnight and work through a sandwich and the cork grip off a walking stick. Marten will chew anything that has had hands on it, not just food. A walking stick leaned against a tree counts as fair game.

• Huckleberries: the timber just above camp, on the line coming down from Brown Lake, holds thick huckleberry patches.

• Fishing: FWP lists rainbow trout. Small fish, easy casting, right at camp.