Spider Lake

Drainage: Stillwater
Approaches: Goose Lake Jeep Trail — 3.6 mi, all off-trail; 999 ft up · From Anvil Lake — about 1.5 mi north · From Sourdough Lake — about 0.3 mi north

Elevation: 9,794 feet
Fish: Brook trout (FWP)
Coordinates: 45.11887, -109.96516
Bugs: Minimal on our visit

Getting there

Getting to the start is half the trip. The Goose Lake Jeep Trail needs an ATV, an off-road buggy or a genuinely capable off-road vehicle. Nothing standard will make it.

Your driving ends at the turnaround near the Goose Creek waterfall, where you park and shoulder packs. Just before the trail ends near the falls, look for a hard right that points you north. That is where the walking starts.

Park with the marten in mind. They are active in this basin and they chew wires and cables underneath parked machines. That is a risk to your ride home.

From the turnaround it is 3.6 miles to Spider, all off trail, with 999 feet of climbing.

The hike

The climb out of the Anvil basin is the difficulty. Once you clear that slope and pass Lake Aries and Sourdough, the cross country walking straightens out and you follow the bench north to Spider.

Spider is 6.3 acres at 9,794 feet, the largest of the four brook trout lakes on this bench. Fly sits at exactly the same elevation a short walk west, so that stretch is level ground.

There is a clean split in this basin worth knowing if you are fishing it. Aries, Sourdough, Spider and Fly all hold brook trout. Beauty and Anvil below, and Courthouse and Wrong beyond, are all Yellowstone cutthroat.

Tips & safety

• The climb out of Anvil is the whole difficulty. Everything on the bench above it is easy walking.

• Navigation: no maintained paths anywhere up here. Continuous route finding between the bench lakes.

• Weather: high country with nothing to break a front. Come prepared for sustained cold rain rather than a passing shower.

• Fishing: FWP lists brook trout, and at nearly ten acres Spider is the largest brook trout water on the bench.

• Camping: Spider sits at 9,794 feet on the open bench, above the last real shelter, so no timber and nothing to break weather. At 6.3 acres there is more shoreline to work with than Fly or Sourdough, which makes it the better of the three if you are staying up here.