Hiking: Bald Mountain and Fehr Lake

This past Tuesday I wanted to get out, get hiking and try some fishing. Mostly, I wanted to get into the Uintas as I hadn't had the chance to go there yet this year. I had debated which lake I wanted to hike to in order to fish, and I kind of wanted to try somewhere new. Then I decided to hike to the top of Bald Mountain, a relatively short hike, and come back down, then hike to one of the lakes off the same trailhead that goes to the top of Baldy.
I had told my wife that I'd be back at around 4:00, so I had to keep that in mind as I was figuring things out. I driven out of the gas station parking lot in Taylorsville at around 6:20 and it was just shy of two hours drive time by the time I got there. I had stopped to go through the McDonald's drive thru at Park City, and to pick up a fishing license, some worms, and some Power Bait at the grocery store in Kamas. I didn't need to pick up a pass at any of the kiosks or whatever you call them along the Mirror Lake Highway, as my pass that I had purchased the day before, when my wife and I took a drive up there, was still good.

Saw these deer on the drive up. Just did a drive by experiment with my zoom.

As I began hiking, I started thinking that maybe I should've brought the short-sleeve shirt instead of the long-sleeve, because I was working up a sweat. And I had not been up at altitude like that all year--Bald Mountain Pass clocks in at over 10,700 feet, and the trailhead itself is just a bit lower than the pass. My legs were fine from all the stair climbers I've been doing, but I found myself lightheaded as I tried to adjust to the thinner air.
There was only one other car in the parking area when I began, which was quite a change from the day before, which was Labor Day. That day, there was wall to wall people all through the Mirror Lake highway area. In fact, on Monday we had got caught in bumper to bumper traffic coming back from our ride--people from the Uintas, and likely Strawberry Reservoir and other areas too. Tuesday was completely different and back to nearly normal levels of people, though there were still a few campers and motor homes belonging to people who probably wanted to stay up for a few more calmer days.
As I began my ascent, I could tell it was going to be a low visibility day due to the smoke from all the fires that had accumulated amongst the peaks. At that point I was not aware of the Weber Canyon fire, and thought that most of the smoke was blowing in from other states.

It's quite a slope, both to the right and left as you go up the trail.

I kept it slow to better adjust to the altitude and took a lot of pics along the way.

This is about where the woman who had climbed it 100 times passed me.

One woman passed me on the way up and then, just as I neared the top, she passed me on her way down. We stopped and chatted for a few, and I found out that this was about her 100th time climbing this particular peak. I had just heard a couple of weeks ago about a retired mail carrier who had hiked to the top of Mt. Timpanogos more than 900 times. It made me wonder. I mean, there are so many different trails to take, why do one particular trail that many times? But to each his or her own. I have hiked several of the trails in the Wasatch around five times and Mt. Olympus maybe ten times. That would be my personal record. The most times I've hiked any one particular peak. And I don't necessarily see me doing Oly again. So many trails, so little time!

After talking to that person, I got up to the top and hung around for a while, finding the exact top with my GPS (this mountain tops out at 11,943 feet) and then going to various points to see the 360 degree view.

Looking to the southeast. That's Mirror Lake directly below.

A little to the northwest is the Notch.

Another view of Mirror Lake and Highway 150

To the west. Among those lakes are Trial and others.

Reid's Peak

Large cairn on top. The actual high point is where I am taking the picture.

After eating my second breakfast, I headed back down. On the way, I met a couple of people from New Zealand who were camping nearby and enjoyed my visit with them. before I even got to the trailhead, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to hike into even the nearest lake along the other fork of the trail. This trail eventually leads to the Notch, and one can do a point to point hike if you start here and end up at the Crystal Lake trailhead, or start at that trailhead and end up at the Bald Mountain parking area. I certainly want to do that one some day. I have hiked from the Crystal Lake trailhead over the Notch and down to Ibantik Lake and that is a fabulous hike.
Anyway, I had spotted a lake on my map on top that was only about a half mile from the main highway, and I drove down the highway to the parking area, then hiked into Fehr Lake. I figured I had about an hour and a half to fish in order to get home by the time I had told my wife.
Fehr Lake is a Beautiful little lake.

Can you find the guitar in this image?

There are other lakes further back in. As I said--there are so many hikes, and I love Timp and all, but could never see me doing it even 100 times--just too darn many other places to see. One of these days, I'll get back on that trail and see the other lakes that were further in.

Views along the trail to Fehr Lake

Since I had an hour and a half, I just decided that my best course of action in catching fish was to try something for 20 minutes, and if there were no bites, to try something else. I first used worms. After all, I had stopped and bought them in Kamas, so I figured I'd better give them a try. Nothing. The Power Bait was next--rainbow with sparkles. Again, nothing. I decided to try a fly with a bubble. I used a brown scud and a fish took it, right after it hit the water. I reeled it in. If I had my backpacking stove with me, I would have cooked and eaten it on the spot, but I didn't, so I let it go. I let nearly everything go when I fish as it's rare for me to have my stove along, and I never take them home.
I tried the scud a few more casts, but got nothing. I figure that the fish hit it on that one cast because it was still basically dry and they were feeding on the surface, but after that first cast, it was waterlogged and sunk. Something to think about for the future. I should take my fly rod next time and that stuff that makes flies float.
I switched to spinners and caught nothing except an empty plastic cup that some uncaring person had thrown down, either in the lake, or on the land and then it had blown in. Either way, I didn't like it.

You can stop leaving your trash in the mountains at any time. I won't complain.

The trail back out afforded me a great view of the peak I had summited earlier that day.

Bald Mountain

I knew I would be back to climb it a fourth time some day---probably in my golden years--and then stopping in the forest below for a picnic or something. One thing I knew for sure--I would never run out of places to hike, for the first time, or for the seventh. And it's always a new adventure.

Hiking and fishing the Uintas

Another day, another great adventure.

I believe, but I'm not certain, that this is Little Lily Lake.

I had originally wanted to do a backpacking trip this week, but after not being able to find anyone else to go, decided on a longish day hike to some great fishing in the Uintas.

My plan was to go to Little Hidden Lake and Divide Lakes which are accessed via the Crystal Lake Trailhead.

I started off on the trail and the first thing I noticed was that neither of the trailheads that start from that parking lot had the name of the major lake in the area that I was planning on hiking to. I was looking for Clyde Lake to be on the sign because that's near the Divide Lakes, which are near Little Hidden Lake etc. I started up the trail not knowing where I was going really. I'm glad I didn't attempt it in the dark as I had originally planned. My Uinta maps are buried underneath tons of rubble in the basement (my daughter and her family live down there), and I didn't want to buy another one knowing that those were down there, so I just thought I could manage without. I did, but I ended up spending a lot of time traveling cross country and trying to figure out where the actual trail was and which lake was which. My GPS was helpful with that, but some of the smaller lakes weren't on my GPS map. I think part of my problem is that I get too involved in looking around, and miss the obvious trail.

I found myself looking down at Wall Lake where I had camped in the 1970s just after Christmas one year.

Anyway at about 7 am, I hit the trail,  heading up the right one and took a fork to Cliff Lake, which I remembered was along the path to Clyde.

Somehow though at Cliff, I got off the real trail (probably by looking around at the amazing scenery--and I was trying to find some wild roses in bloom for pics).

No wild roses, but there were flowers in abundance. These will have to do.

The area is so close to the highly popular Trial Lake Campground that there are trails heading everywhere and most of them vanish after a while, or turn into deer trails and peter out. Using the GPS, I determined where Clyde was from there and set off cross country to find it. Clyde Lake is beautiful and it looked highly fishable as I passed it by—I could see fish swimming and eating insects near the shore. But, I wanted to get to Little Hidden Lake, because the book I had read had said that there were some larger fish in it and it was excellent fishing. I had to pass by the three Divide Lakes in order to get to Little Hidden Lake, and there were some people camping there and I asked if they knew where Little Hidden was. One of them said, “yes” then pulled out his map and explained how to get there. What he actually showed me was "Hidden Lake". Nice guy. I found it a few minutes later with no problem. I had found another nearby lake which I assumed was "Little Hidden Lake", but now that I think about it, I'm fairly certain that "Hidden" and "Little Hidden" are the same lake. At any rate, there are many lakes up there and I wasn't able to positively identify all of them. The one I thought was Little Hidden Lake, may have been James Lake

I'm not sure if this is James Lake or what...

or one of the many other unidentified lakes that are found in the Uintas.

I decided to head back to the Divide Lakes.

Divide Lake 2

I ended up at Divide Lake 2 where I could see tons of fish eating bugs off the surface. I ended up catching six fish there, but didn't catch my first one until 1:15.

My first fish

After a while it seemed to slow down so I decided to try Divide 1 and caught one more fish. At about 3 pm, I thought I'd try Clyde Lake. The first spot I tried at Clyde I caught one, but that was it. So I decided to move. I went around the lake and saw a place where there were some old trees in the water, and some fish swimming nearby and sat there. I caught five more fish, bringing my total to 12 by about 4:30.  By the way, the fish in Clyde Lake are larger than the ones in Divide Lakes. I was fishing near the southwest corner of Clyde, right where the trail comes into it from below. There was a group of guys fishing along the south edge, stretching east who also seemed to be catching fish.

Clyde Lake close to where I caught five fish

My feet were hot. I decided to stick them in the lake.

Just one more reason to bring a bandana along--drying feet.

 Because of the trail situation, I had decided that I didn't want to attempt descending after dark, so I had made the decision to go down earlier while it was still quite light, and fish at Crystal Lake, which is near the trailhead.

Again, I was glad I made that choice because I got off the trail again when it vanished into some rocks. I heard some guys below though and thought that they were probably on the trail, so I waited until I could see where they were and started toward them. They were on the trail, and I talked to them for a couple of minutes. They weren't sure where they were either, so I told them where Clyde was etc. and they said, “good, we're on the right trail.”

I talked to an elderly couple further down the trail. They said they had come up to Clyde Lake 35 years previously and wanted to visit it again. I gave them general directions, mentioning that I had lost the trail up there, but showing them where it was up over which ridges and stuff. I'm pretty sure they weren't going up there to have a picnic, but it was kind of romantic anyway.

When I got to Crystal Lake I had some memories flood back because I had been a Scout leader several years (10 maybe) ago when I had last been there. I looked for the lean-to the boys had made, but couldn't even find the right spot. I didn't spend a great deal of time looking though, because I wanted to get fishing. The waves were choppy because a breezed had kicked up and one thing I'd noticed at some of the other lakes I'd fished was that when the wind was blowing, the fish didn't want to bite as much. I ended up catching one, making my total 13, but that one was different from all the others. It was an Arctic Grayling—the rest had been trout—and that beast really fought me. It jumped out of the water three times as I reeled it in. Of course, I was doing catch and release, so I let the fighter go to live another day.

Arctic Grayling. He's the fighter!

As for the day itself, it was beautiful. The sky, however, was a bit murky due to all the forest fires in California, Nevada, Oregon, etc. We always get that smoke trapped in our mountains for a while. There were no clouds in the sky, and I was treated to a rare Uinta day that didn't include an early afternoon rain storm. I really enjoyed listening as the breeze came through the trees. It's interesting how you can hear it coming from a long way off, before a particular blast reaches where you are. That's an amazing thing about being in the forest. The temperatures were nice, though I got a little cool sitting in the shade at Clyde--I also got a little hot in the early evening sun at Crystal.

Never leave your hip belt buckled for pics...it always makes you look like you have a pot belly.

I ended up leaving at around seven, stopped in Kamas and got a personal pizza, and began the drive home, arriving at around nine. Just another great adventure in the wilderness. I couldn't be happier.

Hiking near Heber, Utah

Heber Valley, Utah, is a place where many choose to stay for family reunions, etc. Heber itself is really a gateway to numerous outdoor adventures. If you're an avid hiker, Heber is a location that makes hiking in both the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains accessible. Within just an hour or so drive time, you can be into the heart of the Uintas, up along the Mirror Lake Highway (Highway 150), or up along the scenic Alpine Loop Road, with access to Mt. Timpanogos in the Wasatch Range and more. To say nothing of various walks and short hikes along the edges of the Heber Valley itself. For some great hiking in the Uintas, check out this link: http://www.utah.com/heber/hiking_trails.htm

Of the hikes mentioned in the preceding link, I've done the Bald Mountain Summit, the
Cascade Springs Interpretive Trails (some of them), Crystal Lake Area Hikes, the
Currant Creek Nature Trail, and the Provo River Waterfalls.

Some comments on the hikes mentioned above. The Bald Mountain hike is one of the most spectacular hikes in Utah when you factor in how easy it is to do. Within just an hour or so from the trailhead, you are treated to an amazing view of the many surrounding lakes and peaks of the High Uinta country. Incidentally, you can also join my "High Uinta Lovers" page on Facebook. Here's the link: Clickety-click

Another one in the high Uintas are the various trails that can be taken via the Crystal Lake Trailhead area, just off the road that heads to Trial Lake. I've gone on the trail that heads over to Weir, Duck, Fire, Beaver, and other lakes, as well as the other trailhead from the same parking lot that heads over toward "the Notch", Lovenia Lake, and other spectacular lakes. Amazing scenery along any of these trails, but if you can make it as far as Fire Lake, you're really in for a treat.

A short one, just off Highway 150, is the Provo River Waterfalls Trail. If you are short on time, this is an enjoyable short hike that basically parallels the highway.

The Cascades Springs Trails are nice shaded trails past, of course, Cascade Springs. You won't get a lot of exertion out of this one, but you will enjoy the peaceful nature of the trail. And it's beautiful in the fall. Great for adults and young children.

The Currant Creek Nature Trail winds its way up from the Currant Creek Campground facility, through aspens and then some evergreens to top out with a great view of the reservoir below and the surrounding countryside. This too is great for both adults and young children.

Another great hike is Mt. Timpanogos from the Aspen Grove Trailhead. On this hike, you can go all the way to the top, or do a shorter hike up to the waterfalls. To get to the trailhead, drive out of Heber down Provo Canyon to the turn-off to Sundance Ski Resort and the Alpine Loop Road. Just up past Sundance and a bunch of cabins, you will find the trailhead. Here's a link to a good description of the hike: Mt. Timpanogos, and a map that shows the route to the trailhead: Route: Heber City to Aspen Grove Trailhead

Remember, that most of the high country in Utah has a lot of mosquitoes, until about mid-August when the colder nights of approaching autumn seems to get them on the run. Take bug spray with you for sure if you're going earlier in the season.

Finally, for the real adventurous, and you're going to need a four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle to even make it to the trailhead, there's Pittsburg Lake, up American Fork Canyon. Here's a description of the trail, written by yours truly: Pittsburg Lake Trail. This is a very cool place. On second thought, I will be your guide. I'm always up for a hike to Pittsburg Lake. Then again, I'm always wanting to go to any of these places. Utah is just amazing.