Photo Friday: Backpacking the Beartooths, Part III.

This is the 3rd and final post from my backpacking trip into the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness last August. Here's the report on the first two days  and here's the 2nd report, on days 3 and 4.

Day 5: Oly Lake to Rough Lake

This day started with another beautiful sunrise. For those of you who wonder, this is a big part of why I haul a heavy load into the mountains and sleep on the ground--because it's darned hard to see sunrise at a remote lake on a dayhike.

Early light reflected in Oly Lake.

Sunrise reflections in Oly Lake. Our route leads up that cleft in the rocks across the lake.

It was a relief to wake to calm winds and mostly clear skies, because we'd had a pretty impressive storm at bedtime the night before. Little did we know, that was just the warm-up.

  

We had a short hike before us, though we knew it wouldn't be fast, so we didn't leave camp until 8:15. We were heading up the creek and over the mountain (back across the divide anyway), and it would be all off trail. 

 

A wildflower garden among the rocks.

Butterfly on the DYC.

We'd been prepared for a nasty scramble up lots of talus or difficult terrain. In fact, much of the way it was a stroll up a meadow, or at least an easy walk among the boulders.

Alex working his way up alongside the nameless creek.

One of the nameless lakes on the east side of the divide. Looking back the way we came.

We climbed about 1000' up the drainage, with no exposure, hardly any rock-hopping--really ideal off-trail conditions, with incredibly pretty tarns scattered along the way.

 

This might be the "scariest" thing we did. A couple of stretches of walking over the kind of talus across the creek slowed us down as well. 

Another pretty tarn.

A cheeky bird checking out Second Breakfast.

Thanks to taking our time to enjoy the scenery, we didn't reach Skytop Lake until nearly noon. The wind was really picking up by then, and we had to find someplace sheltered for lunch.

 

Skytop Lake. The pointy thing in the distance should be Mt. Villard.

 
The wind kept us from lingering over lunch. There were also signs that our afternoon rains might come a little earlier this time. We still had to make our way down to Rough Lake and find a camp. There's a trail, but we failed to find it, and ended up across the creek. In fact, that was a good route and took us right to our chosen area for camping.

We descended on the right, which involved a little extra "climbing around" but no scary stuff. We found a camp in the rocks on the near shore, center of the photo.

 

 We had to hunt a bit to find a site, and scrambled to set up camp before things got wet. The weather changed pretty fast--there's only 30 minutes between the photo above and the one below.

 

Weather over Rough Lake from our camp area.

 

After the early afternoon showers, the sun came out long enough for us to eat an early dinner.

 

Camp. I'm the middle tent.

You can see from the photos that we were now camped at or above tree line, at 10,200'. This is not the place you  want to be when the heavens open and thunder and lightning get wild. Nonetheless, it's where we were. The gap between lightning and thunder got down to 2 or 3 seconds--way too close--and the winds were ferocious while the rain pelted us more or less sideways. No way could we communicate between our nicely spaced tents, or even look out to see if the other tents were still standing. A three minute break about 8 p.m. let me race outside to do what had to be done, before the next line of t-storms hit. I finally drifted off to sleep after 9 p.m. with rain still falling heavily, but no more thunder or lightning.

 

Stats: about 3 1/4 miles, 900' up and 200' down. 

 

Day Six: Rough Lake to Lower Aero Lake

And in the morning... 

My first hint that the storms have passed.

I leapt out of bed (and if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you...) at half past six to catch the morning light and calm water before breakfast.

Sunrise at Rough Lake.

Breakfast time.

We took our time over breakfast and packing, letting wet gear dry in the sun and a light breeze. We only needed to cover about 4 miles, though it would be off trail again, and we were among the scenery we'd come to see, so had no reason to hurry and didn't leave camp until 9. Our route took us along the shore of Rough, then up a couple of hundred feet to the ridge between Rough and Upper Aero Lake. 

Looking back at Rough from partway up the ridge.

Finally got an almost-okay photo of a pika. My favorite adorable critters are hard to photograph.

Looking down on Upper Aero Lake. Second Breakfast and more soaking up the scenery.

Our traverse of the lakeshore--we had to get to the outlet--was made somewhat easier by a use trail that was frequently present on the ground. There were still some interesting bits where the rocks dropped steeply into the lake. 

Looking back up Aero from our elevenses break near the outlet.

After eating, we picked up an actual trail (mostly) and dropped down the creek to Lower Aero Lake. 

 

Copious wildflowers growing in the wet areas by the stream.

Our route in fact left the stream about this point, though hikers wanting to really get away from others might find camping around the east side of the lake.

A few bits of the trail were kind of interesting, but not really difficult.

A second climby bit.

Even with all our breaks and taking our time with both the scenery and the rough parts of the trail, we were hunting for a camp by half past two, having reached the area where the trail drops from Lower Aero into the lowlands.

Camp--another strung out set of tent spots. 

Widely separated tent sites like these are largely good--even aside from issues of snoring, the inflatable sleeping pads we all use tend to be a little noisy. We were still at 10,000' and very exposed to storms.

 

The clouds were building by late afternoon, and we kept an eye on the weather, but it never did rain on us--our only camp without rain.

 

Lower Aero Lake

Day 7: Lower Aero Lake to Lady of the Lake trailhead

I was up at six this time, to catch the early morning light. It was a bit of a schlepp down to the lakeshore, so I chose to find my shots up on the hillside. 

A sliver of moon over the lake at dawn.

There were a couple of great little ponds above our camp.

The sun is up.

The first part of the trail was hard to follow and very slow--we had to drop down through a steep cleft in the rocks, about 800' in .8 mile. After that it was all trail, for a total of 6 miles to the car.

Alex, about to drop off the edge into the valley.

We hammered out the trail miles with our thoughts on showers, burgers and ice cream (available in Red Lodge for those of us going that way). It's amazing how much that improves my hiking pace. Once at the TH, we had to drive back to the one where we started so Craig and I could get our cars. Then it was off to home, another great trip in the bag. 

 

Farewell to the trail from Petey Possum!

 

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 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2026 

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