Parking
Use the small gravel turnout on the dirt road beyond Hauser Lake Trailhead. Walk a few hundred feet along the dirt road, then turn left onto the unsigned trail; turnout capacity and facilities are undocumented.
Overview
About Dollar Lake Trail
Why go
- Two lakes reached through open alpine meadows
- Views toward the southern Beartooth skyline
Heads up
- Faint tread can make route finding difficult
- The return retraces the same long high-country corridor
Map & elevation
The route
Loading the Beartooth Highway map
Full mapElevation8,921–9,514 ft
Plan your hike
Before you go
Parking
Safety
1 active Beartooth Highway alert
- ClosureBeartooth Highway seasonal closure and falling-rock advisoryBeartooth Highway (US-212) is closed for the season between Cooke City and Red Lodge; do not plan to travel the highway as a through route.Official details
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Beartooth Highway Tour Guide
Your drive to Dollar Lake Trail, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Beartooth Highway. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Beartooth Highway audio tourMore stories near here in the app
- The Songbird That Dives
- Hauser Lake Trailhead
- When Snow Turns Pink
- Island Lake
- 62 audio storiesacross Beartooth Highway’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Grizzly Bear, Gray Wolf, Bison, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 82 trails, 36 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Trail guide
Hiking Dollar Lake Trail
The routeDollar Lake Trail is a 7.
Dollar Lake Trail is a 7.5-mile out-and-back from the unsigned Dollar Lake Trailhead to a junction with the Little Rock Creek and High Line trails. Each leg follows the same roughly 3.73-mile mapped branch. It rolls down into the lakes' basin and climbs back toward the junction; allow about four to five hours at roughly 9,000 feet.
The lakesThe trail crosses open alpine meadows to Top Lake and Dollar Lake, with scattered conifers,…
The trail crosses open alpine meadows to Top Lake and Dollar Lake, with scattered conifers, rocky shorelines and views toward the southern Beartooth Mountains. Top Lake's open, boulder-edged shore is the clearest place to pause and take in the setting.
Finding the branchThis is a branch of a larger Beartooth trail network, separate from its loop itineraries.
This is a branch of a larger Beartooth trail network, separate from its loop itineraries. Some tread is faint and can be easy to lose. Follow the route carefully through the meadow and lakes basin, and turn around at the mapped junction unless you've planned a longer route on the connecting trails.
AccessThe described access is a small gravel turnout on the dirt road beyond Hauser Lake Trailhead.
The described access is a small gravel turnout on the dirt road beyond Hauser Lake Trailhead. Walk a few hundred feet along the dirt road, then turn left onto the unsigned trail. Parking capacity and facilities at the turnout aren't documented.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Beartooth Highway
42 sightingsGrizzly BearMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
22 sightingsGray WolfMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
49 sightingsBisonMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
122 sightingsMooseMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
260 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
16 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 7 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Beartooth Highway. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
