Fish Lake Loop w/ Mytoge Mountain

Dogs Off-leash

E-Bikes Unknown

Features Views

This is an excellent loop around Fish Lake and up Mytoge Mountain with fantastic views along the way. Best done CW.

Excellent aspen fall colors.

This route combines the Lakeshore/Fish Lake Loop Trail with the Crater Lake Loop Trail to take you up Mytoge Mountain and along its crest until you rejoin the Lakeshore/Fish Lake Loop Trail that will bring you back down to the lake. The best place to start is the Fish Lake Lodge on the west side of the lake.

Warm up with the nice and easy Lakeshore Trail Section 1 as it takes you along the shoreline of Fish Lake. Then it begins a warm-up climb as you ascend to Pelican Point on Lakeshore Trail Section 2 and then gradually descend to Lake Creek. After crossing the road, you'll come to the Lake Creek TH.

From the Lake Creek TH, head south for 0.2 miles until you reach a bridge across Lake Creek. After crossing the bridge, you'll come to a trail intersection. Go straight, leaving the Lakeshore Trail, onto the Crater Lake Loop Trail/Crater-Ivie Canyon Trail. Now you'll begin a short climb into the forest and over a ridge and then down into another meadow valley. You'll ride along this valley for 0.75 miles.

Once the trail swings to the south, you'll begin the big climb (800', 1mi) up Mytoge Mountain. Once atop the ridge, the grade mellows until you get to Crater Lake where you'll then encounter the doubletrack Mytoge Mountain Road (FR045) which you'll follow for 1.75 miles until you come to a junction in a meadow. Turn right and then in 0.1 miles turn left onto the Lakeshore Trail Section 3. You'll begin to climb again and will gain 400ft in ~0.75 miles until you reach the almost 10,000'-high summit ridge of Mytoge Mountain.

Once on the summit ridge, and for the next two miles, the topography will stay fairly level with some small undulations. Once at the end of the ridge, you'll begin a steep (1,100' in 1.7mi) and sometimes technical descent with switchbacks back down to the Fish Lake basin.

Once down in the basin, the Lakeshore Trail Section 4 flattens out as you curl around the south side of Fish Lake. You'll continue to follow the lake shore as you make your way north back to where you started at the Fish Lake Resort.

Fish Lake, from which the surrounding National Forest takes its name, is the largest natural mountain lake in the state. It is considered by many to be the gem of Utah and offers trophy fishing and bird watching.

Fish Lake lies in a "graben," a block of land that slipped downward between two fault lines. It's the origin of the Fremont River. The Sevier Plateau is covered with volcanic deposits, dating from the last 20 million years, on top of lakebed deposits from the Tertiary Period (age of mammals beginning around 65 million years ago). The plateau was lifted up in the mid-Tertiary. The Great Basin subsided, creating the dramatic elevation change between the I-15 corridor (5000 feet) and the plateau country just a few miles to the east (9000 feet).