With our change of plans we now had two days for day hiking before meeting my parents in Cooke City. Last year Steve and I had hiked to Albino Lake and thought a hike along this same trail would be perfect for acclimating to the elevation. With a relatively flat trail and several lakes along the way, it was also a great hike for Norah.

We started at the trailhead at Island Lake on the Beartooth Plateau. The great thing about hiking on the plateau is that you start hiking at high elevation (Island lake is around 9500 feet), so there's no killer elevation gain to reach the open meadows and alpine lakes (almost feels like cheating!).

We followed the trail around the western shore of Island Lake past Night and Flake Lakes to an unofficial trail that would lead us to Becker Lake. Despite the hike only being around 7.5 miles round trip with negligible elevation gain, we were tired from hiking at altitude.