East Rosebud Lake
— a lake the mountains keep.
Not only on a wall.
“A glacial lake at about 6,200 feet, held in a granite cirque at the eastern edge of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. The county road from Roscoe ends at the lakeshore; the trail beyond it climbs twenty-six miles over the divide to Cooke City along the route called the Beaten Path. Most summer afternoons the surface goes still after the wind drops at dusk.
East Rosebud Lake, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
East Rosebud Lake sits at roughly 6,200 feet at the eastern edge of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness in Custer Gallatin National Forest, about thirteen miles southwest of the town of Roscoe in south-central Montana. Forest Road 177 follows East Rosebud Creek up the valley and ends at the lake. A cluster of historic cabins on patented in-holdings lines the north shore. Beyond them the road becomes the Beaten Path trailhead and the wilderness boundary. The Beartooth Range rises abruptly behind the lake to peaks over twelve thousand feet.
The lake is fed by East Rosebud Creek, draining a chain of higher tarns (Elk, Rimrock, Rainbow, and Dewey) strung along the wilderness divide. Water stays cold most of the summer, with surface temperatures rarely above the mid-sixties. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks stocks cutthroat trout, and the outlet creek runs clear over rounded granite cobble. After a quiet evening the surface mirrors the cliffs above the south shore for an hour before the canyon shadow falls.
Day use at the lake is free; the small Forest Service campground at the head of the road takes reservations through the federal system. The Beaten Path trailhead at the lake is the eastern end of one of the longest unbroken alpine trails in the lower forty-eight, a twenty-six-mile traverse to Cooke City along the Stillwater divide. Most through-hikers take three to four days. Day visitors typically walk the first two miles to Elk Lake.