Sack Lunch at Surveyor Lake

Sometimes, simple is the best way to go, especially when you have a long ways to go.

He said: When facing a long, winding, two-hour drive followed by a demanding but short (thank goodness) hike, you don’t need to get fancy with what you eat. Simple, filling and tasty works best. And on this day, that meant a ham, turkey and cheese sandwich with a large honeycrisp apple and a handful of Snickers bites. (Side note: Snickers of any size are my go-to when climbing mountain ridges and hunting elk and deer in the fall. They provide a sweet, tasty, nutritious pick-me-up.)

She said: (out of state)

By the way…located high above the Fish Creek drainage 23 miles south of exit 66 on Interstate 90 and about 65 miles west of Missoula, Montana, Surveyor Lake was the destination on this day.

My brother, Alan, and I arrived at the unmarked trailhead at about 9:15 or so in the morning after a long, windy, dusty, bumpy drive. We pulled on our large, 40-pound backpacks complete with paddleboards, paddles, pumps, fishing vests, fly rods and lunches, and headed toward the lake. Though mostly uphill, we made the half-mile trek through pine trees and huckleberry bushes in about 15-20 minutes, popping out of the thick vegetation to view the lake at 5,956 feet in elevation. 

We took a moment to catch our breath before our next physical challenge – airing up the paddleboards. Once inflated with our portable hand pumps, getting to the water presented yet another challenge. There were downed, floating logs all along the eastern end of the lake. We eventually found an opening wide enough to launch our paddleboards and headed to open water.

It was a beautiful day. Temperatures in the valley below topped out at 101 degrees that day, but at Surveyor Lake it was an almost perfect, mostly windless 81 degrees. Since we were the only people at the lake for some six hours, you could hear dragonflies buzzing around our paddleboards, squirrels nibbling on and dropping small pine cones into the water and fish jumping for flies all around us.

Between the two of us, we caught almost two dozen rainbow and cutthroat trout. And when Alan wasn’t catching fish, he was catching some shut-eye by laying on his back, pulling his hat over his eyes and letting the board float across the water.

The hike back to the truck seemed a lot shorter than the hike in – probably because it was mostly downhill. We were tired but fulfilled. And with a hearty appetite building from a full day in the Montana high country, we couldn’t wait to get home for the steak and potato dinner awaiting our return.