- 2 days ago
The Sioux Charley Lake Trail has always been one of the premier highlights of fantastic outdoors areas in the Custer Gallatin Forest.
For many people, it has always been a destination to get out and revisit at least once in the busy summer season. Its well known for it's scenic trail that starts off squeezing hikers between the raging white-water rapids of the fast-flowing Stillwater River and the towering rocky cliffs that it carves through.
Unfortunately, if you've been interested in visiting the Sioux Charley Lake Trail recently, you may have heard or discovered on your own that the trail head has been blocked off.
On June 14th of 2022, the Stillwater River (and many other nearby rivers, including the Rock Creek in Red Lodge) violently flooded after days of unseasonably warm weather and persistent rain on the mountain snow. The flooded rivers rose to record breaking heights and destroyed many houses, bridges, and other river-adjacent infrastructure - cutting off some areas entirely. Among the list of damages was the Sioux Charley Lake Trail and its parking lot area. While the parking lot was quickly rebuilt and finished in the summer of 2024, the Sioux Charley Lake Trail remains closed and it's repair unlikely in the near future.
Despite this, the Sioux Charley Lake Trail lives on through it's bypass trail and I'm glad to have finally gotten a chance to check it out.
The 'Gorge By-Pass Trail No. 24A' can be found a bit off to the right of the parking lot's vault toilet when viewed from the parking spots. It features some large metal cylinders at its entrance which seem likely to be used to hitch horses and a wooden sign labeling it as the 'gorge by-pass trail'. Most people have usually referred to this trail as 'the horse trail' in the past, as it has mostly been used for horses and mules.
Shortly after entering the woods at this trailhead, you run into an intersection in the trail. Continuing forward will guide you up into the bypass trail while the other direction seems to just lead you back over to the closed gorge access.
The first remark to make about the bypass trail is that unlike the gorge trail's gradual incline along the river that eventually reaches the forest after you exit the ravine, the bypass trail maintains a steeper and more challenging angle as it puts you directly into dense forest right away and has you stepping up a few purposefully placed log stairs in some places. The bypass trail is pretty close to half a mile long, so if you're not quite in hiking-shape yet, taking breaks is recommended. However, if you've hiked up the nearby Woodbine Trail before, I'd say this is pretty comparable.
The majority of the hike upward could be described as following a trail that mostly hikes you up against large lichen-covered boulders and cliffs on one side and dense areas of tall, looming pine trees on the other.
The trail moves away from the ravine for most of the hike up and the sound of the raging river nearby is fairly muted or absent until you reach the top.
During my trip, the smell of pine seemed to get stronger closer to the peak of the trail and creaking trees in the wind created a very cozy forest atmosphere - very similar to the upper portions of the Woodbine Trail.
Once you reach the peak of the ascent of the bypass trail, it seems unfortunate that it has to be the bypass of the grand and renown gorge trail as the views at the top are pretty spectacular in their own right.
You escape the dense trees and instead find a landscape mostly composed of just pure rock - large mounds of smoothed stone that occasionally have junipers, pine, and other foliage growing straight out of them. A few small ponds are found up here and lots of large boulders create shady over-hangs throughout the area. You'll find open areas on top of the protruding rocks where you can easily walk on top of them and take in a very wide open view of the valley and in some of these places (particularly as you get closer to where the trails connect), you can look into the ravine and see where the main trail runs through.
Pretty shortly after reaching this point, the trail quickly slopes downward until it connects back up with the main gorge trail. From that point, you more or less carry on with the trail as usual - much easier hiking.
The Sioux Charley Lake Trail isn't the same as it used to be and it never will be. The river redefined itself in 2022 and very few places along its banks on this trail or in the Nye area look as they did before the flooding. Despite that, this trail and this entire area of the Beartooth mountains is still very much an awe-inspiring experience and is still the most picturesque hiking area that I know - even in a part of Montana well known for such places.
If you've treasured the hike up Sioux Charley Lake Trail before or just really love the wilderness areas of the Beartooth mountains, I highly recommend this trail. Your legs might get more of a work out than they might have on the main trail but the experience is very much worth it.
