Non-skiing, but there was snow. :wink:
Tcope and I decided to get out to the Uintas for the first time this year. Mrs. Admin was supposed to fly home for the long holiday weekend but couldn't get a last-minute seat at a reasonable price, so we did some quick planning and opted to head to a section of the Uintas that we'd never been to before - the Lakes District in the far western part of the mountain range - and camp at 10,200 feet at Island Lake. It was a 7.2-mile roundtrip without a lot of elevation gain and loss.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=p&ll= ... 31414&z=15
And we were rewarded with what was perhaps the prettiest of the Uintas lakes that I've visited:
For a few hours it looked like we'd have the lake to ourselves, even though it was the holiday weekend and only an hour's drive from SLC. A day-hiking fisherman passed through for a short while, but shortly before sunset another couple pitched their tent across the lake for the night. We hardly saw them, they were asleep by nightfall, and by the time I got out of the tent this morning they were already gone, so in reality we barely knew they were there.
The temperature was 61 degrees as we reached the trailhead at noon. The weather forecast had been for severe thunderstorms Friday afternoon, but we were only dampened by a five-minute drizzle a couple of times on the way in, and late in the afternoon the skies cleared. The trails were, however, the wettest that I've ever seen them up there. We set up camp atop a 25-foot overhanging cliff on the west side of the lake:
and found a refrigerator within which to stash a couple of treats that Todd snuck into his pack:
We fished for a couple of hours late Friday afternoon. I had a few hits but landed nothing. Tcope managed to score a 14-15" brook trout.
Before nightfall we filtered a few liters of water:
and cooked dinner - chicken mole for me, an Italian chicken noodle soup for Tcope, but with some ice cold accompaniments:
We built our campfire right at the edge of the cliff. Finding firewood was tough, which is unusual in the Uintas. Plus, all of the rain that we've been getting meant that most of what we found was damp. Tcope's fire building skills, however, eventually overcame the challenges and we called it a night around midnight after a roaring campfire for a few hours.
I got up at 8 a.m. this morning, and took a walk around the lake, shooting photos:
There's still plenty of evidence of winter in the area:
Trout were swimming up the tiniest of creeks to spawn:
You could practically reach right in and grab them, were they not able to hide in undercut banks whenever they saw you approach. I was lucky to get that photo.
All in all, a wonderful way to spend part of the holiday weekend!
Tcope and I decided to get out to the Uintas for the first time this year. Mrs. Admin was supposed to fly home for the long holiday weekend but couldn't get a last-minute seat at a reasonable price, so we did some quick planning and opted to head to a section of the Uintas that we'd never been to before - the Lakes District in the far western part of the mountain range - and camp at 10,200 feet at Island Lake. It was a 7.2-mile roundtrip without a lot of elevation gain and loss.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=p&ll= ... 31414&z=15
And we were rewarded with what was perhaps the prettiest of the Uintas lakes that I've visited:
For a few hours it looked like we'd have the lake to ourselves, even though it was the holiday weekend and only an hour's drive from SLC. A day-hiking fisherman passed through for a short while, but shortly before sunset another couple pitched their tent across the lake for the night. We hardly saw them, they were asleep by nightfall, and by the time I got out of the tent this morning they were already gone, so in reality we barely knew they were there.
The temperature was 61 degrees as we reached the trailhead at noon. The weather forecast had been for severe thunderstorms Friday afternoon, but we were only dampened by a five-minute drizzle a couple of times on the way in, and late in the afternoon the skies cleared. The trails were, however, the wettest that I've ever seen them up there. We set up camp atop a 25-foot overhanging cliff on the west side of the lake:
and found a refrigerator within which to stash a couple of treats that Todd snuck into his pack:
We fished for a couple of hours late Friday afternoon. I had a few hits but landed nothing. Tcope managed to score a 14-15" brook trout.
Before nightfall we filtered a few liters of water:
and cooked dinner - chicken mole for me, an Italian chicken noodle soup for Tcope, but with some ice cold accompaniments:
We built our campfire right at the edge of the cliff. Finding firewood was tough, which is unusual in the Uintas. Plus, all of the rain that we've been getting meant that most of what we found was damp. Tcope's fire building skills, however, eventually overcame the challenges and we called it a night around midnight after a roaring campfire for a few hours.
I got up at 8 a.m. this morning, and took a walk around the lake, shooting photos:
There's still plenty of evidence of winter in the area:
Trout were swimming up the tiniest of creeks to spawn:
You could practically reach right in and grab them, were they not able to hide in undercut banks whenever they saw you approach. I was lucky to get that photo.
All in all, a wonderful way to spend part of the holiday weekend!
