Backpacking Yellowstone National Park – Sportsman Lake, High Lake, Crescent Lake

I was 12 years old the first time I set foot in Yellowstone National Park. It was a summer trip with my dad, all on the road, and we covered just about every paved inch within park boundaries.

We watched Old Faithful erupt. We spent an hour watching the high clouds cast shadows across the Lamar Valley over a herd of slow-moving bison. We smelled the sulfur at Grand Prismatic and Mammoth, marveled at the breadth of Yellowstone Lake from the porch of its grand hotel.

It was two summers later, though, where I first got a taste of the Yellowstone backcountry.

Dad hooked us up with a southern Montana outfitter, and we lit out of Bozeman to meet them for a trail ride into the remote northwest corner of the park – an area where the Gallatin mountains rise high and caress a handful of the most pristine alpine lakes that part of the country has to offer. We rode in some 12 miles on horseback, set up camp in a huge meadow beside a small lake, peaks flanking us on almost every single side.

For three days I took the fly rod they rigged for me and watched as Yellowstone cutthroat trout rose from the lake’s depths to give me a fight. I caught more fish in those three days than in any three day period in my life, the quantity of trout landed on that respective trip easily outpacing the entire total of others I’ve ever landed on my own fly rod.

While the majesty of that particular trip (and its insane success rate on the rod) never left my memory, it took years before I realized I’d never really known where we’d been. Before I cared, I suppose, as at that age ‘The West’ was one giant amorphous entity with no bounds, whose surface I’d barely scratched. The features were all ingrained – the meadow, the ‘very giant bear’ the patrol cabin ranger pointed out to us, the lake’s shape and shadow, the ominous ‘Electric Peak’ above us – but I failed to ever file away the name of said lake, the trail we traversed, the input and exit points in the park. But as my interest in backpacking and map-reading picked up as I got older, it dawned on me that it was high time to put those memories to work as evidence and pinpoint where, exactly, I’d had such foundational memories.

When I put one and one together, Sportsman Lake quickly became two. As it hit me just how remote it was – with a mandatory ~11+ mile hike to get to it regardless of which trailhead I used as the entry point – I knew that I’d one day find a way to go back to it.

And when I did, this time I’d do so on foot.

Over a quarter-century later, that trip began to come together in 2024. I landed the permit in April, set up a route that would include the bulk of the High Lake/Crescent Lake loop, and shoot off for a spur night at Sportsman. I put together what was set to be an epic crew with which to make the trip, picked up the recommended flies, and even purchased my Yellowstone fishing license the week of the trip…only for local fires, fire restrictions, and heavy smoke to roll right over those best-laid-plans.

At the last minute, we called an audible on that 2024 trip while assembled in Jackson, WY and opted to do a big trip further south in the Wind River Range instead.

I had until the next April to ruminate on the scuppered plans, though my intent was to once again aim for a big trip back to the park’s NW corner if the permit gods gave me one more chance. Sometimes, those gods smile on you, and such was the case this past April when I landed a permit that took me to many of the same highlights that I’d had on the previous year’s, even if the route itself was much more convoluted.

Leaving out of the Fawn Pass Trailhead some half an hour north of West Yellowstone, MT meant there was a minimum of 10+ hours of road between my home in Denver and the first step of the route. When my good friend George said he was in for the trip, a side-trip through Vail to scoop him up for the drive meant it’d be over 12 hours of driving in total before we ever began. Rendezvousing with two more old buddies in Jackson, first, meant a day and a half of overall coagulation and travel first, and that paired with the permit pickup in West Yellowstone (and requisite bear video watching) meant I scheduled a short hike on Day 1 as logistics dominated the day.

That was fine. Campsite WC2 along Fan Creek is generally considered a 5-star site, and it sits just over 3 miles in from the Fawn Pass TH. It would allow us to lop off enough of the trek up to Sportsman Lake to make Day 2 more palatable, give us a cool spot to set up shop for the evening, and even provide front-door access to a bit of creek fishing to begin the trip.

Little brookies abound in the creek, though we’d discover the next morning as we moved further up drainage that a recently completed series of beaver dams had actually flooded much of the meadow above where we’d been fishing, and certainly explained why the flow was low (and the fish were mostly small). Still, the weather was hot and dry – so dry that the park had put in Stage 1 fire restrictions just days before our trip began – and it was a great evening to be knee-deep in cool mountain water in a brilliant meadow.

As we retreated back under a lone pine on the banks of Fan Creek’s floodplain to get dinner together, however, we noticed a series of low clouds rising to our west along the park’s boundary, above a ridge that rises along the western banks of the Gallatin River. It didn’t take long to realize they weren’t actually clouds at all, but rather smoke plumes rising from a very obvious new-start wildfire.

It kept our gaze for the rest of the evening, though it became clear the prevailing winds were blowing out of the south due north, and we were just southeast of where the fire was billowing. We stayed awake long enough after dark to make sure a) there was no glow and b) the winds weren’t shifting our way, but it took forever once I crawled in my tent to fall asleep knowing we could well wake up to a rager and evacuation plan at any moment.

(Turns out we watched the start of the West Fork Fire, and fortunately it stayed away from our route – and left us unimpeded.)

Day 2 immediately greeted us with a Choose Your Own Adventure, as we were facing a map discrepancy. At the Yellowstone backcountry office, I’d cross-checked both with their in-house map and the discretion of the ranger on site, and they both confirmed the route up to the eventual trail to Sportsman Lake included a 0.7 mile backtrack from WC2 to the Fan Creek Trail and a cross of the creek/meadow there. However, two separate digital maps showed a trail that continued north in the direction we were headed that eventually crossed the creek/meadow without a backtrack needed, and we decided we’d take that way instead.

So, we set out on our route. Pretty quickly, we got to swim it.

Beavers had blocked both main channels of Fan Creek in the location we were aiming to cross, pooling ponds that flooded the meadow for several hundred yards across. We were pretty pot committed after just a few steps – meaning we got ourselves wet enough to not care about getting wetter – and therefore decided to power through the high-grass, the bog, and even across the tops of two separate beaver dams. There’s no telling whether we actually saved time once we finally reached the other side – we never tested the other route to confirm – but it was not exactly the swiftest cross of a meadow ever. Complications aside, though, it gave us the kind of unplanned Type II fun I won’t soon forget.

We’d end up covering some ~8.5 miles on the route up to Sportsman Lake on Day 2, including a near 1,000 foot climb (and eventual descent) into the cirque where the lake resides. Along the way we passed campsite WC4 – which had an active alert for a bear that’d been frequenting the area – and decided we’d stop there for lunch, the meadows surrounding the campsite itself so vast and pristine that it was instantly obvious why a bear would want to hang out there all the time.

It was hot – easily in the low to mid 80s. But as we began our ascent along the Sportsman Lake Trail heading due east, the more dominant weather impact came in the form of wind. It was blowing steadily 20+ mph with gusts far above that, and it became evident as we descended into Sportsman’s cirque that the winds were not just isolated on the high ridge above us.

Every minute we spent for the rest of the afternoon in that otherwise glorious place featured a strong, steady wind, so much so that we set up our tents deep in the trees at campsite WD3 instead of on the meadow’s edge. It was far from a problem for merely existing up there – the breeze kept you cool in the otherwise abnormal heat, and the tall grass swaying in the meadow was a painter’s dream. Beyond that, it kept the bugs away – while the mosquitoes weren’t bad at all during the trip, the biting flies had been a pain before the wind came in.

The problem, though, was precisely about flies. We’d come all that way to fly fish the dream lake from my youth, but the idea of casting flies on light tackle in that kind of wind became foolhardy. In addition, the heat spell had dried the lake basin to the point where the waterline was tens of feet lower than it had been the last time I visited, and the heat itself had mostly pushed all the fish to the deeper portions of the middle of the lake.

I had even opted to bring a spinning reel and some heavier spoons with which to fish, and tried tossing those as far from shore as I could. Stubbornly I stood out there casting over, and over, and over again for hours trying desperately to pull out something, anything from those otherwise pristine waters, only for the elements to send me back to camp a fishless, broken man. As they say, there’s a fine line between fly fishing and waving your rod around like an idiot.

To the credit of the rest of the crew, they weren’t too bummed. Yeah, we’d all had high hopes about fishing this particular lake and had come from far and wide just to then hike a dozen miles to get to it. But the scenery itself, the camaraderie we shared, and the concept itself were enough to keep spirits higher than I’d worried they’d be.

Sportsman Lake giveth, Sportsman Lake taketh. Though as Thoreau famously opined, ‘many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.’

I slept well that night, even as the breeze persisted past dark. The previous night’s restlessness paired with the longer hike helped that, I’m sure, though half our party wasn’t afforded the same opportunity. Two had a 5 AM alarm set to get up, break camp, and hike back out to the car at the Fawn Pass TH as work and a mid-day flight back east awaited, leaving just me & George to further explore the park’s NW corner offerings for the next three days before getting back to where I’d dumped my car at the Specimen Creek TH.

It’s not quite the wheat field where Maximus walks into his afterlife at the end of Gladiator, but the wispy grass blowing in the morning sun across the Sportsman Lake meadow is the kind of scene that’s difficult to condense into words. Electric Peak (10,969 ft) flanks the eastern side of the cirque, with peaks and high ridgelines surrounding the others. The lake sits tucked in a corner below cliffs, the pines and crags seemingly jutting right up out of the fog hovering over the water.

That was the scene for our now two-person crew as we hit the trail towards High Lake on the morning of Day 3, a day that would feature some tactical decision-making about where we’d ultimately try to set up camp.

High Lake sits on the border of the National Park itself and the Custer-Gallatin National Forest to its north on a shelf just below 8,800 feet. The border between NP and NF is a pretty natural one, as there’s a several hundred foot ridge that drops steeply off – first to the east, and then to the north as you wrap around west towards the absolute corner of the park and the Sky Rim Trail. If and when you make it to High Lake, there are two designated backcountry sites within NP boundaries – WD4 on the south short, WD5 on the north – but it’s well established practice to actually cross over into the Custer-Gallatin and camp more freely sans permit, per NF regulations.

While the ‘camp anywhere’ law of the land in the NF is there, the reality is that particular location didn’t provide a ton of options. I mentioned that steep cliff band – the trail and park boundary effectively follows it, so crossing over the boundary to leave the park in most spots up there literally puts you over the cliff edge. There are two to three pretty good spots that are known, however, and the idea for us was to try to find one of those.

We were seeking one close enough to where we could a) hang out at High Lake and fish all day, b) not have to carry tens of pounds of water to a dry camp, and c) stay roughly along our future route within the NP the next day that would send us west towards Crescent Lake. That meant it could be a ~6ish mile day, or even as far as a ~9.5 mile day, the latter option taking us much closer to Day 4’s destination of Crescent Lake but would require us carrying up to 4 liters of water, what with the ridgeline and narrow boundary not leaving us infinite options. On top of that, unlike reserved sites within the NP where you know before you get there that nobody else has occupied it, there was every chance we’d get up to High Lake and the boundary and find that others had long since claimed the NF sites for themselves.

Sportsman Lake, where we began our morning, sits in its beautiful basin down at 7,700 feet. If we were forced to hike all the way to the furthest known camping spot over the boundary in the NF that day, we’d be pushing not only 9.5 miles, but also climbing up to over 9,400 feet, with a total of over 2,500 feet of ascent (and 800 feet of decent) along the way. Water carries, elevation, mileage, location…all of that was up in the air from the moment we began the climb up the Sportsman Lake trail on the morning of Day 3, and it would remain up in the air until we turned north and reached High Lake later that afternoon.

Those were enough variables to get us up early and on the trail, but not enough to clutter the mind. Day 3 featured perfect weather with much less wind, and as we opened up into the meadows along the upper portions of Specimen Creek, we came across a bull moose on the opposite side – our first big wildlife encounter of the trip.

After hanging back at treeline across the meadow from the moose and observing it in its own little private pond for several minutes, we got back to walking. The rest of the route up the Crescent Lake/High Lake Trail along the East Fork of Specimen Creek was mostly gradual incline, keeping us within eye and ear-shot of running water throughout the otherwise steamy August morning.

We reached the park boundary with the National Forest just after noon, and quickly began to scout out options for camping in the Custer-Gallatin. As was expected, the Mill Creek drainage heading east away from the park and into the NF was both dry that time of year and without established camps, and we began to wonder if we’d actually have to haul water to the dry camps several miles north (and several hundred feet above) High Lake itself. As we turned north to head to the lake to eat lunch and reassess, however, we walked right into a camp so established it might as well be listed on the maps.

Tucked into a pocket-sized space within the NF just feet off the trail within the National Park, it was clearly marked with signs saying it was outside of the park boundaries. ‘Dispersed’ it was not, as it featured a fully constructed stone fire pit an well-used tent pads, and while it was way closer to the trail than is alway suggested with doing dispersed backcountry camping, it was evident that camping there in lieu of creating a new camp from scratch on otherwise pristine backcountry land was the preferred thing to do.

So, we claimed it, dropped packs, and set up tents. We were less than two-tenths of a mile south of the southern shore of High Lake and campsite WD4, but we figured we’d head there to eat lunch and fish the outlet up until the point where someone came along to claim that as their reserved site for the evening. Lucky for us, that never happened, and we were able to hang out on the shore in the sun and breeze and fish the remainder of the afternoon, with this lake – and the breeze being much more mundane – actually providing this particular angler with the chance to land a few fish.

Our camp was tucked a bit in the trees and the gradual rise of Meldrum Mountain (9.469 ft) directly to our west meant we’d lose sun a tad earlier that night than the others. We loaded up on water and headed back to our nook in the National Forest, which at that point remained without fire restrictions despite the National Park just a couple dozen feet away being entirely in Stage II restrictions. It was a microcosm of the massive overlapping bureaucracy in charge of protecting our federal lands, where boundaries between National Parks, National Forests, BLM land, National Monuments, National Recreation Areas, and even Forest Service districts look clean on maps but are muddied in so many ways once you get out on them on foot.

The stars were glorious that night, our camp in just enough of a small clearing to have them blanket us directly overhead. We stayed up later that night than any other – the conditions and lack of a camp canopy providing impetus – and I think I crawled into my tent just before 11 PM and fell asleep almost immediately.

For as quickly as I fell asleep, though, I awoke twice as fast at some point around 2 AM when something large came branch-snapping into earshot and clearly turned onto the trail just a few paces from our tents. The lack of wind or moving water close to our camp meant you could hear everything with pristine intensity, from its breathing (and my own heart racing) to its steps. As I sat upright in my tent with bear spray in one hand and my air horn in the other, the sound and cadence of its steps began to make clear it was an ungulate, the trail being just rocky enough where hoof clacking rendered it decidely not-bear. It could have been an elk passing through, though there was no bugle. It could have been the same moose we saw a few miles down the trail earlier in the day, or one of its moose brethren.

It eventually walked far enough down the trail that we lost its sound, at which point I think George and I exchanged some de-adrenalined that was cools and a that was close before we both crashed back out. For as cool as seeing the one moose from afar for ten to fifteen minutes was earlier in the day, experiencing one (or an elk) while letting your imagination fill in the details was far more exhilarating, even if it almost scared the poop out of me during the first few seconds.

We made a hot breakfast and broke camp early on Day 4, lugging our stuff around to the northern shore of High Lake to fill up on water at the inlet where the East Fork of Specimen Creek entered the lake itself. From there, we’d head up to the highest point of the trip along the south side of Shooting Star Mountain (9,652 ft) while walking ridglines with views north towards Emigrant Peak (10,915 ft), Ramshorn Peak (10,213 ft) and the rest of the spires within the Gallatin Mountains of southern Montana. Rumor has it you can see all the way to Big Sky on the clearest of days, and though our weather was mostly good, there was just enough cloud cover where our views had to land a few miles short.

Still, as we climbed up north onto the plateau before turning west towards Crescent Lake – where we were permitted to stay for a fourth night in the park – two things became clear. First, the views up there were legendary, and pretty clearly a highlight of the trip itself. Our camp the night before had been cozy and easy, but had we had more gumption to walk up and camp high, there were several locations where the views at dawn and dusk would have been memory-searing. Second, though, was more objective – with this high point (both literally and viscerally) filed away, fish caught, and moose experienced, we decided we’d just make Day 4 a ~13 mile push all the way back to where we’d stashed my car at the Specimen Creek Trailhead, with a jaunt down to Jackson (and burgers and beers) sounding too tasty to pass up as we made good time.

Crescent Lake, I’d read, was absolutely gorgeous, and precisely the kind of place where I’d otherwise love to camp. That turned out to be precisely the case when we got there, though the existence of the fire ban had begun to soften my desire to spend another night out camping – even in such a beautiful cirque.

When we reached Crescent – just about our halfway point of the day – we ran into a father/daughter who’d camped there the night before and had an enjoyable chat with them as we snacked and they packed up, finding out that it was her first overnight backpacking trip (and that they had another two nights to go). My oldest daughter will turn 5 in a month and is already over my shoulder and in my ear each time she sees me pull out a map to plan trips, and it was a heartwarming reminder that there will be a chance for me – for us – to replicate such a trip at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Crescent Lake sits just shy of 8,600 feet above sea level, and my car was dumped at the trailhead around 7,150 feet some 7.25 miles to the southwest along the Gallatin River. There was a short and to-the-point descent out of the lake’s cirque before running into the North Fork of Specimen Creek, at which point we turned south and followed it out through its wide flood plain in the valley between Meldrum Mountain and Big Horn Peak (9,934 ft) and Black Butte. It was hot – easily in the low to mid 80s despite it still being the early hours of the afternoon – and we sweat our way back to the car as quickly as we could.

Under different circumstances – cooler weather, lack of fire restrictions, infinite time to waste – the camping along Specimen Creek would have been a draw all itself. Both WE4 and WE1 are situated in spacious meadows with great views both up and down valley, and feature plentiful access to water at the creek. Our plans, though, included a push to the car, a roughly 3 hour drive back south through Yellowstone itself to Jackson, WY, a gluttonous dinner, good night’s sleep, and a further 8+ hour drive south to Colorado the next morning, so it was onwards quickly as we tried our best to beat the heat.

It was an uneventful end to a beautiful trek through one of the more remote portions of our nation’s first National Park, an area I’d gladly go back to – and hope to under some different conditions. The moose encounters were absolute highlights, and while we saw no bears (only the occasional scat) while on foot, literally a half-mile into our drive through the park after entering at West Yellowstone we encountered a roadside traffic jam as dozens had stopped to view a pair of young grizzlies eating berries along the north banks of the Madison River.

Turns out they were just right there all along.

If You Go…

• This route was approximately 32 miles, give or take a little exploring, and given the time of year when we visited (August), there was enough daylight for us to probably accomplish it comfortably in just 3 days had pushing it been the mantra of the trip. You could spend a week and a half up there simply enjoying the beauty, fishing epic streams and lakes, and still find additional things to do.
• We did not head north to Shelf Lake, though that’s a common spur on the Crescent Lake/High Lake loop. We also entered at the southern end of the trail and finished at a different trailhead a few miles north on US-191, though I once planned this trip hiking it in the opposite direction altogether. Both have their perks, and there’s no right or wrong way to attempt the varying versions of this loop.
• This route is entirely within Yellowstone National Park, meaning you’ll need a permit to pull it off. Here’s my previous-year guide for how to land one of those backcountry permits, as well as my guide to choosing routes and campsites should you land a permit. The early-access window for 2026 backcountry permits opens on March 1st – just a few months away!
• For my money, the best map of the area is Trails Illustrated #303 (Yellowstone National Park NW/Mammoth Hot Springs). The entirety of the route we took (and its variations) are clearly visible on the North Side of this map.
• 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.