Sioux Charley Lake

Drainage: Stillwater
Approaches: Sioux Charley Trailhead — 3.5 mi; about 350 ft up. Trail now starts behind the restrooms

Elevation: 5,796 feet
Fish: Brook trout, abundant. Rainbow trout, rare. Self-sustaining
Coordinates: 45.33100, -109.93292
Bugs: Not recorded

Getting there

Park at the Sioux Charley Trailhead. The route has changed. The June 2022 flood reshaped this whole drainage and took out the old riverbank route, so you can no longer walk directly along the river. The trail now starts higher up, right behind the outhouse near the restrooms.

If a guidebook or a trail app has you walking the riverbank, it predates the flood.

The hike

Three and a half miles with about 350 feet of climbing. Sioux Charley is one of the first lakes you reach heading up the Stillwater drainage and it is a good one for families, with modest climbing spread over an easy distance.

There is an old foundation about a hundred yards from the lake's inlet. It is tricky to spot. If you find yourself pushing through a stand of small young trees, you have gone past it and should turn back.

FWP lists brook trout as abundant and rainbow trout as rare, and the population is self-sustaining rather than stocked.

Tips & safety

• Start behind the restrooms. The riverbank route is gone. Older descriptions of this hike will send you to a trailhead that no longer works.

• The old foundation sits about a hundred yards from the inlet and is easy to walk past. Young trees mean you have overshot.

• Fishing: brook trout are abundant here and the fishery sustains itself. Rainbows are in there but rare.

• The flood changed this drainage. Conditions may keep shifting for a few seasons as the river settles.

• Little Legs: we walked this one with our own young kids and they finished it on their own feet. That is a record of one day with our kids, not a rating. Read what Little Legs means.