To-Hike List: Yellowstone’s Sportsman Lake & Electric Peak

Sportsman Lake may not be the most remote spot in Yellowstone National Park’s vast backcountry, but it sure feels like it’s one of the most isolated.

If you approach it from the east and the many trailheads around Mammoth Hot Springs, it’s a nearly 13 mile trek to reach it, with campsite 1G4 (at over 7 miles away) the last spot you can stay the night before pushing all the way to the lake. If you come from the west, it’s a roughly 11 mile trek from either the Specimen Creek Trailhead or Bacon Rind Trailhead, with the last non-stock campsites sitting ~5 miles removed from the lake.

The lake itself isn’t huge – just a handful of acres. Near the lake sit a lone stock camp (WD2) and backpacker camp (WD3), and that’s it. Unlike camping around the larger lakes in the southern portion of the park – Heart Lake, Shoshone Lake, or Yellowstone Lake itself – you won’t gaze across the water and see the campfires of your many neighbors as the sun goes down. At Sportsman Lake in the extreme northwest corner of the park (and across the Wyoming border into Montana), you’re out there all by your lonesome.

At least, you’re out there with no other humans around. There’ll be plenty of other stuff that walks on more feet than you and goes bump in the night.

Sportsman Lake sits at the heart of the Gallatin Bear Management Area (BMA), one of several BMAs within the park that are specially designated to preserve the wilderness even more than elsewhere, keeping humans exclusively on-trail for much of the year to reduce their interactions with the many grizzlies and black bears that live within the park. As a result, The Sportsman Lake Trail (through the northern section) and both the Fawn Pass Trail and Bighorn Pass Trail (running east/west to the south) are the only real through-ways across this BMA, with some 10 miles of non-trailed wilderness south of Sportsman Lake left to the devices of the furrier mammals within the park.

That area includes Joseph Peak (10,441 ft), Gray Peak (10,305 ft) and, further to the south, both Bannock Peack (10,323 ft) and Antler Peak (10,063 ft) – all are part of the Gallatin Range, a roughly 75 mile subrange of the Rocky Mountains that runs north/south and dips into Yellowstone’s northern portion. The tallest peak of the Gallatin Range, though, is Electric Peak, towering over the area at 10,969 feet above sea level. And if you’re going to get to Sportsman Lake from the east – from the more prominent Mammoth Hot Springs area – you’re going to have to go right over Electric Pass on the shoulder of the peak itself.

It’s an area of the park that doesn’t typically get as many visitors as, say, the southern sections. It’s also an area where I formed my first real memories within the park, as I rode in on horseback to Sportsman Lake with my dad for a four-day, three-night guided fishing adventure there half a lifetime ago. The lake itself is loaded with native cutthroat trout, and since we had guides there who knew exactly what to set me up with, I walked away from that trip thinking I actually knew how to fly fish.

(In the years since, I’ve proven that to be oh-so-false.)

The Routes

From the East

The route from the east is the longer of the two, with both out and back criss-crossing the Gallatin BMA with mandatory long days bookending the trip.

Ideally, it’s done as a loop that starts and ends at the Glen Creek Trailhead just about 4 miles south of the lodge, restaurants, and amenities at Mammoth Hot Springs. From there, it’s on-trail heading northwest up Glen Creek towards Sepulcher Mountain (9,646 ft) before turning west at the intersection of the Sportsman Lake Trail after roughly 2.8 miles of hiking. After another 2.1 miles on foot comes the split-off that takes you up to Cache Lake, should you choose to visit it, with Electric Peak towering over its northwest shore.

Staying left at the fork gets you the one and only opportunity to camp and break up the trip to Sportsman Lake into a two-day effort, as both campsites 1G3 and 1G4 sit along the Gardner River before the climb up and over Electric Pass. Should you have foregone that option in your permit process, though, it’s another mandatory 7 miles to the next site – WD3 just off the eastern shore of Sportsman Lake, with a climb of over a thousand feet up (and back down) smack in the middle of that stretch.

After a night (or two, if the permit gods are willing!) at Sportsman Lake, the planned route opens up, with the High Lake/Crescent Lake Loop the prime destination for both camping at alpine lakes and doing some fishing. The thing is, hiking that loop comes with numerous options.

As part of this overall journey, the loop would be done in counter-clockwise fashion, meaning a hike from Sportsman Lake west for 4.2 miles to the junction of the Crescent Lake/High Lake Trail would leave you 3.3 miles from campsite WD4 along the southern shore of High Lake. Or, if you chose, you could camp close to the trail junction after just the 4.2 mile intial section at campsite WD1 along the East Fork of Specimen Creek. To me, though, the ideal route would be to push on even past High Lake – campsite WD4, while gorgeous, does not allow campfires – and press on an additoinal 5.9 miles to campsite WE6 on the western shore of Crescent Lake.

That’s a 13.4 mile day, albeit one spent mostly without elevation gain and finishing with a descent into Crescent Lake that’s gorgeous with Meldrum Mountain (9,553 ft) towering above its southern shores. Perhaps more importantly to my own aesthetic taste is that campsite WE6 allows campfires, something I always appreciate when the evenings still have a chill (and when you’re deep in the heart of bear country). The alternative to that large of a push, however, is crossing over the boundary between the National Park and the Gallatin National Forest and camping at a dispersed site just south of High Lake. The lake itself sits within a quarter-mile of that boundary, so if stopping there is a better option and either a) WD5 is already taken or b) you’d prefer to have a fire, you can hike your way out of the park and set up shop in the forest on more of your own terms without derailing the rest of the trip. In other words, you’d add an additional night/day as you worked to Crescent Lake.

Crescent Lake could serve as the western-most destination on this route; however, a roughly 4 mile one-way add-on to the north gets you to Shelf Lake, again on the boundary between the National Park and National Forest underneath Sheep Mountain (9,855 ft). There are two designated backcountry sites near Shelf Lake inside the park – WE5 and WE7 – and, like at High Lake, neither allow campfires. That said, it’s a similar situation in that you could cross over the boundary into the National Forest and camp with fewer restrictions, though it’s worth pointing out that the most direct route into the National Forest puts you on the windward side of the ridge west of Shelf Lake. If storms and wind are in the area, you’re pretty exposed out there.

If you’re adding it up, that puts you some ~30 miles back to the Glen Creek Trailhead if you were to turn heel and head back the way you came. If you want to loop it – meaning no backtracking and seeing all new trail – the most direct route takes you south on the Specimen Creek Trail for roughly 6 miles before veering east back on the ol’ Sportsman Lake Trail, the first campsite along the way coming roughly 4 miles down that trail at WD1. Should you choose to pass up that option, an additional ~2 miles down trail brings you to the junction of the Fan Creek Trail, and turning southwest on that gives you access to stock sites WC3 and WC4 before eventually reaching backpacker site WC2 – making the trek from Shelf Lake all the way to WC2 being a grueling ~16 mile day.

From WC2 back to Mammoth becomes the choice between two long stretches that span the BMA – the Fawn Pass Trail and the Bighorn Pass Trail, each eventually spitting you out at different (but close) trailheads south of the Mammoth amenities. Down the Fawn Pass Trail from WC2 it’s a 13.7 mile trek before the next campsite (1F2), and that site sits 5.3 miles from the trailhead – a 19 mile exit back to Glen Creek Trailhead. The Bighorn Pass Trail splits off from the Fawn Pass Trail after about ~5.5-6 miles of hiking from WC2, with campsite WB1 at the intersection of the spur trail and Bighorn Pass Trail alongside the Gallatin River (and WB6 further down the Bighorn Pass Trail some 2 miles). From WB6 back to the Indian Creek Trailhead is 12.8 miles, with only campsite 1B1 (just about a mile from the terminus at Indian Creek) the only spot to camp – in total, about a ~21 mile exit from WC2.

That loop gets you somewhere in the range of 50 miles round trip, and is most rationally done as a 6 day, 5 night excursion. Due to the long stretches across the BMA with no camping options, it almost automatically bakes in a very long first and last day, so how much you chose to break up the days in between to stay off the trail becomes a vital part of your planning process.

From the West

The route from the East is longer, and the description of said route will be a lot longer too, I promise.

The route from the West incorporates a lot of what was already mentioned, including the entirety of the High Lake/Crescent Lake loop. The difference is that you can enter from three separate trailheads on the western boundary of the National Park along US-191 – the southernmost Bighorn Pass Trailhead, at Fawn Pass (or Bacon Rind, since they’re right next to each other), or more north at the Specimen Creek Trailhead.

From Specimen Creek, it’s only a 2.0 mile lollipop spur before you reach Sportsman Lake Trail and, if you go clockwise it sets you up for a 5.1 mile entry to campsite WE4 along Specimen Creek or a ~7.5 mile trek all the way to WE6 on Crescent Lake. The overall loop here is just about 22.2 miles, though adding on a day at Sportsman Lake (and campsite WD3) would add 6.0 miles round trip.

From Fawn Pass Trailhead (or Bacon Rind right next to it), you have access to the 18.2 mile High Lake/Crescent Lake Loop minus the 2.0 miles each way to the Specimen Creek Trailhead. Instead, the spur to reach the loop becomes the Fan Creek Trail (and 1.2 miles on the Sportsman Lake Trail), with an overall 9.2 mile trek each way to do the loop. Campsite WC2 is along the Fan Creek Trail (and on Fan Creek itself) giving you a great site in which to break up the entry or exit day. Should you choose to enter and exit from Fawn Pass Trailhead (and add the 6.0 miles out and back for a night at Sportsman Lake), it’s a 42.2 mile round trip.

Entering from Bighorn Pass Trailhead would overlap all of the paragraph above while also adding on 8.8 miles in each direction, with five-star campsite WB1 (along the Gallatin River) along the route. That’s 59.8 miles in total.

Each of these three routes, it should be noted, keep you completely outside of the Gallatin BMA (and avoid the grueling long days in and out across it). The lone exception is if you choose to go to Sportsman Lake for a night, since it’s located within the BMA.

If You Go…

• The entirety of this particular route is contained within Yellowstone National Park, and you’ll need a permit for specific backcountry campsites to pull it off in this manner. The window to land early-access permits has lapsed, so you’ll have to check Recreation.gov beginning on April 26th, 2024 to reserve what you can for this summer.
• That said, much of this particular route can be accessed by starting outside the park, as this area bumps up against the northern border between Yellowstone and the Gallatin National Forest. While you would still need a permit to camp within Yellowstone, in theory you could set up a dispersed camp in the Gallatin National Forest and day-hike in and back out of the National Park to see the likes of Shelf Lake, Crescent Lake, or High Lake. Regardless, practicing Leave No Trace principles while camping in either the National Park or National Forest is paramount.
• If you’re planning to fish within park boundaries, you’ll need to obtain a fishing permit to do so. Also, be sure to review the very specific regulations surrounding the various regions of the park as they try to be quite specific about battling non-native species waterway by waterway. Here’s a link to the 2023 regulations booklet, and I’ll update it with the 2024 edition once published.
• As for a map, I’ve been planning this trip by using Trails Illustrated #303 (Mammoth Hot Springs/Yellowstone National Park NW), which I’d highly recommend.
• Plan at your own risk. Even the most straightforward on-trail day hikes in Yellowstone can involve varying terrain, changing weather, and off conditions. Every additional variable added to the most basic of hikes – overnight camping, food storage, unpredictable wildlife, water conditions, etc. – ony serves to augment the risk. Always check with Yellowstone backcountry rangers for updated conditions before beginning any trip, and I’d advise you to consult with them before booking one, too.