2024 To-Hike List – Rocky Mountain National Park’s Lawn Lake & Crystal Lake

I had just finished 7th grade when I first fished inside a National Park. My dad and I were outside Gardiner, MT, and he’d set us up with an outfitter who was going to take us into the northern section of Yellowstone National Park for a couple nights of camping and a couple days of fishing strategically dammed ponds just south of Electric Peak.

If my memory serves me correctly, the one main pond we were to be fishing had been restocked with native cutthroat trout in the wake of the fires that burned some 800,000 acres of Yellowstone back in 1988, as the ash and mudslides that came with the fires had blocked creeks and drainages and threatened their entire existence. The outfitter, whose name I wish I remembered after all these years, had a particular agreement with the NPS to fish the area so as to track the health, size, etc. of the trout population so they could best determine when, and how, to release them back into the wild.

I think I understood it was a honey hole at the time, but the sheer number of fish we caught over those two days looms larger within my memory as every year passes. I make no claims to be even a competent fly fisherman, but I walked away from that trip with a confidence that I could catch trout with the best of them – a confidence that, in hindsight, was merely hubris born from a stocked lake and outfitters who set us up with precisely the right rig and pointed us in precisely the right direction.

I’ve hardly caught a fish on a fly rod since, though recently I can at least blame that on the lack of time spent trying. Even when I did try, though, it was damn hard and my days being completely skunked almost outnumber the total number of trout I’ve brought in.

One of my goals this year is to re-engage with my old fly fishing habit, and that’s precisely why I’m elated that I landed a two-night permit to backpack in to Rocky Mountain National Park’s Lawn Lake later this summer. The lake, which sits at 10,987 feet above sea level, is an approximate 6.3 mile hike in from the Lawn Lake Trailhead that gains some 2,500 feet of elevation on its way. And while the lake and basin itself are completely gorgeous, the lake is merely one stopping-point pool on the path of the Roaring River as it descends off the sides of Fairchild Mountain (13,502 feet), Ypsilon Mountain (13,514 feet), Hagues Peak (13,560 feet), and Mummy Mountain (13,425 feet) down the drainage.

The Lawn Lake Trail actually only runs up 5.4 miles of the trek, as at that point – about a half-mile short of the southern most point of the lake – it runs into the Black Canyon Trail. The two trails converge at a junction that forms the Crystal Lake Trail, and it’s on that where each of a) Lawn Lake, b) the Lawn Lake patrol cabin, and c) the Lawn Lake campground actually sit. Both the patrol cabin and campground sit on the eastern shore opposite Fairchild Mountain (and it’s southerly peripheral peaks), Lawn Lake actually serving as something of a gateway into cirque that contains both Little Crystal Lake and the larger Crystal Lake itself.

As if I hadn’t buried the lede enough, Crystal Lake (and Lawn Lake, to its credit) are home to some of the absolute best trout fishing in Colorado. As Cory and Alyssa of Aspiring Wild found out back in 2017, some of the cutthroat in the drainage grow to be absolute hogs.

Hard-to-come-by backcountry permit? Check!

Strenuous-enough hiking to make it feel like you’re really out there? Check!

Gorgeous campground for a two-day base camp? Check!

Some of the best fly fishing around? Check!

Assuming the incredibly fickle late-July Colorado thunderstorm schedule throws me a bone, that’s got the makings of a pretty incredible trip. So, I should probably add that I’ve still got a couple of spots left in my group should you want to come join me on this trek.