Hiking: Uinta Lakes near Bald Mountain

Clegg Lake with Reids Peak in the background

Bald Mountain, more affectionately known as "Baldy" looms at the summit of the Mirror Lake Highway, a huge sentinel among many.

I did my best to get at least some images of these Sandhill Cranes
that I saw along the highway.

As soon as I stopped my vehicle, the birds decided to walk away. I had no time to grab the longer lens.

The hike to the top of Baldy is relatively short (2 miles) with spectacular views of the Uintas, and over to the Wasatch. I had done that hike several times in the past. Friday I was up for something I hadn't done. Ever since I had found the trailhead to the top of Baldy though, I had wanted to take the fork in the trail that headed over to some lakes and see what that was like. I was not to be disappointed.
The trail begins as part of the same trail that will take you to the top of the peak, but diverges very quickly and is unmarked. There is a fork about fifty feet after you start up the trail. The left fork heads over toward the picnic tables that are visible. If you want to go to the lakes, instead of the top of Baldy, that's the trail to be on.

To get to the lakes, take the trail that heads toward the picnic table (in trees, top left).
To climb Baldy, follow those people in the pic.

A brown Forest Service sign in this pic (top right) shows the way to the top of Baldy.

Some shallow cornices still on Baldy's edges.

Bald Mountain isn't quite as bald from this angle.

Reids Peak left, and Baldy right.

For the most part, the only way to go on this trail is down as you are pretty much at the highest point when you begin. Nevertheless, the trail is only steep periodically and had both uphills and downhills, some rocky sections, some not so rocky. This time it had some pockets of snow across it in several places, after all, it's still early June. If we would have had a normal or heavy snowfall winter, there would have been even more snow remaining.
As it was, there was a lot of water both on and off the trail. I expected a lot of mosquitoes because of the amount of water, but I only saw one, and that was when I was getting my pack ready to start down the trail. I killed that one, so if that was the only one, you're good.
I was heading for four lakes or really to see how far I could get in the time I had allotted myself, and depending upon how long I spent fishing or doing non-planned explorations. The four lakes I had in mind were Clegg, Dean, Notch, and Bench.

Lots of water with these white flowers.

Closeup of one of the daisy-like blooms.

Spectacular meadows. A lot of dead trees--probably from pine beetle.

Since this is part of the trail that you can begin at Crystal Lake trailhead and hike up to the Bald Mountain trailhead, or visa versa, I could've conceivably gone quite a bit further. There was no way I was going all the way to the Crystal Lake trailhead though as I'd have to walk back, either up the road or back the way I had come on the trail. That would have made for a very long hike.

Patches of snow like this were frequent across the trail.

I was moving pretty slow for the first hour or so, taking a lot of pictures, and checking things out. I think I was forty-five minutes in before I made it to the first lake, Clegg, just behind a group of three that had passed me shortly before.

Clegg Lake

Clegg Lake II

I took several pictures and then headed on towards Dean Lake. However, the next lake I actually found was Notch Lake, my planned fishing destination. I had re-passed the three people at Clegg, who had stopped for some snacks and they caught up with me again at Notch as I was heading down to fish. The lake itself was Beautiful. I could have sat there all day and just looked at it, and I probably should have.

Notch Lake

Something about the look of things told me that fishing would be slow. No indication of fish feeding--no circles on top of the water, no jumping fish. I baited my hook and cast it out. A wind had picked up making it difficult to see the bubble. I didn't want to waste a lot of time if the fish weren't biting. That wasn't the main reason I had come anyway, so after about twenty minutes, I decided to pack up and head further down the trail to Bench Lake and see what that looked like.

Bench Lake

It wasn't far--maybe another 5-10 minutes and I was there. It had the same lifeless look as Notch Lake had, so I didn't even bother to get a worm in the water. But the landscape was amazing! I couldn't help getting into my virtual John Denver "Wow!" mode.
I wondered if I could make it down and around the short row of peaks and follow it around to Ibantik Lake, which was the furthest I had been on that trail from the Crystal Lake Trailhead and thus would allow me to say that I had been over the entire trail, but never from trailhead to trailhead. Ibantik though was a lot further than I had planned on traveling and it would have to wait for another day.
I started back toward the trailhead, planning on trying to find the missing Dean Lake along the way. On the map it had appeared to be set off the trail a ways, so I thought maybe I just hadn't looked at the right time through the trees to spot it. I had left my Garmin GPS at home this time and I really could have used it.

When I passed Notch Lake on the way back I began looking for Dean Lake. I never saw it and finally found myself at Clegg Lake. That must be Dean I thought. It looked like a straight shot down from there, so I headed down. When I got there, I was not disappointed for taking a little more adventure time to find it. I think it was the prettiest of all the lakes and all of them had been Beautiful.

Back at Clegg, I decide to go up the high rocks to the right to find Dean.

I went up to the top of these and looked down, spotting Dean Lake

Off to the right was a rocky ridge and I climbed that  hoping that from there I could maybe spot Dean Lake down below somewhere. It was a good plan and it worked. Far below in the distance, I saw the edge of a body of water.

I followed some rocks, then this meadow down to Dean Lake, (barely visible top).

There were a couple of fire rings around, so people had hiked in here and camped and since it was harder to find, it was probably a little more solitary than some of the other lakes as far as getting away from crowds. I noted in my mind that I might someday like to come back here and spend the night, or have a picnic or something. I was thinking too, that this whole area would be great for GPS hide and seek or something like that.--you know, someone saying "here are my GPS coordinates--come and find me"--that kind of thing.

If you follow this meadow by this curved bridge down, it will take you to Dean Lake.

I looked for any kind of trail leading away from Dean that went back to the main trail, but couldn't find one. I assumed people just walked through one of the many meadows or down the rocks like I had done in order to get there.

I stopped and took a final picture of Clegg Lake and Reids Peak.

I headed up to the main trail and back to the vehicle. I had begun my hike at 7:45 and was done a little after 1:00. I wished I could have stayed all day--even for several days--but that was something that would have to wait for the future.

Resting on a log near Dean Lake.

As for now, I was happy to have had a few hours escaping into "God's Country" and a few adventurous moments. The rewards are always worth the effort up there as far as I'm concerned.