Moonlight hike to Cecret Lake: Trip Report

Last night, my son Sam and I went on a hike to Cecret Lake, in Albion Basin, high in Utah's Wasatch Mountains. The point of the hike was to hike by the light of the full moon. We got to the trailhead just as it was getting dark. The moon hadn't yet risen. I was hoping to get some good pics of it, so I brought my zoom lens and my tripod.
We started up the trail. It's about a mile to the lake, so we took our time, glancing up at the eastern horizon for the imminent rise of the moon. The first indication that the moon was getting close to appearing was a touch of light on the undersides of some clouds. As the moon made its way into the clouds, it was beautiful. I tried taking some pics of the clouds with the moonlight streaming through them, but they were hand held as I didn't want to get out the tripod at this point, and they ended up being blurry.
Once the moon came out from behind the clouds, I took a hand held shot of it. It looked like this:

That was likely my best shot of the night. We made our way up to the lake and I got out the tripod. I have my camera set up so that I'm looking through the little viewfinder to focus the camera, instead of the screen. I do that to save battery power, however, I wish I'd have switched to viewing in on the screen, something I would need to look in my instruction book to figure out how to do it has been so long since I changed it. Looking through the viewfinder, it was very hard to tell if I had it accurately focused. I actually didn't as you can see from this pic:

I don't know if my eyes are just bad, or what happened. I just couldn't see for sure if it was in focus. The photography, though disappointing, was a learning experience. As for the rest of the hike, it was amazing. The object of the hike was to hike by the light of the full moon, and that we did. I will definitely do it again sometime, and hopefully it will give me another opportunity to figure out what I'm doing wrong when I take my moon pics. I know I've got the settings pretty close on the camera, it's just the focus issue and I'm thinking that looking at it on the screen should take care of that. If not, then I'm just not going to get any real good shots of the moon. I'm not prepared to concede that. The bottom line is that it was a great adventure and I'm always looking forward to more of that.

Albion Basin hike

For at least half of my 56 years, I've heard tales of the wildflowers in Albion Basin. For whatever reason, I had never hiked there. I don't know if it was because it seemed like too short of a hike for me, or what, but after shoveling rocks for hours to finish my parking strip on Monday and Tuesday, what I needed was a short hike.
I got up there early for a couple of reasons. First, I'd heard that the parking lots get full. I'm not one to dawdle about getting up before others to stake my claim to a good parking spot. Second, the best photos are usually shot in early morning light or early evening light, and that was my main objective--to get some good pics of some of the legendary wildflowers. I was not disappointed in the flowers and I hope you're not disappointed in the pics.
There were four or five cars in the parking lot when I arrived. So far, so good.
The hike itself took me through a large chunk of Alta ski resort. I got to see most of the runs I'd gone on during the past winter, including the spot where my brother, Mike had been standing on level ground and had fallen. That was still funny, just thinking about it.
The main trail begins at the parking lot at the end of the road in Little Cottonwood Canyon and heads basically south from there. You can eventually wind up at Cecret Lake if you take this trail, though there are trails going everywhere up there. I took a fork in the trail heading east, winding my way up toward the cliffs. Along this trail I saw no one. But there were still plenty of flowers to see along the way.
This trail eventually heads north and I suppose if I had continued on it, I would have connected with the trail to Catherine Pass and been able to look down into Brighton.
Anyway, let's start with some of the pics.

I thought this would make a great jigsaw puzzle.

I had told Ann that there was still some snow left and I found it.

I decided to make a snow angel, but it was solid ice.

And this one would make a great puzzle too. Very challenging.

More snow pockets, way up high.

Lupines

It was very crowded as I wound my way back to the fork in the trail. I still had some time left, so I decided I'd check out Cecret Lake since I had never been there. Here's a pic of the lake.

The parking lot was full and other cars were driving around waiting for someone to leave when I returned to the 4runner. As soon as I left my spot was filled. It had been a nice hike and one that I'd remember for a long time. And I found a place or two for a nice picnic.