Backpacking to Naturalist Basin

This year's backpacking trip was to Naturalist Basin in the Uintas. What an awesome trip this was. Sometimes you have to brave the crowds to go see beautiful places like this. My original plan was to do a 4 day 20+ mile loop starting at the Highline Trailhead going to Naturalist Basin, Four Lakes Basin, the north end of Granddaddy Basin, and back to Highline, but nobody could go for that long. Fortunately my neighbor was able to do 3 days, so we decided to do just Naturalist Basin from the Highline on Thurs Jul 30 - Sat Aug 1. It turned out perfect because we were able to do the grand tour of the basin, whereas if we'd done that 4 day loop we wouldn't have been able to. We hiked the 6.5 miles in on Thursday and camped at Jordan Lake. It was a bit busy, but it had the most campsites below treeline. The next day we did the grand tour going up to Shaler first, then to LeConte and on over to Blue Lake, then down to the Morat Lakes and on down and back over to Jordan. We saw and fished 10 lakes, saw some beautiful country and scenery, and had most of it to ourselves. Blue Lake was also quite busy, but the rest we had to ourselves. I'm glad we went that way instead of up to the Morats and Blue Lake first because the trail up to those is steep and looked like a bear to hike up. Much better going down. The alpine terrain above tree line is beautiful with the soft grass and low vegetation, all the views all around are awesome, and the brook trout are vibrant, colorful fighters. We caught around 20 brooks and cutts on spinners and flies. LeConte Lake was my favorite due to the beauty of the lake and surrounding alpine terrain and the fish we caught out of it. All together it was about 17.5 miles, 6.5 in and out, and 4.5 on the grand tour. No fatigue or blisters (like last year), beautiful weather, saw 2 deer, got a checkmark on my list of places to go, and can't wait to go backpacking again.

Wes and I at Shaler Lake, the first on the grand tour
The alpine terrain above Shaler Lake
The approach to LeConte Lake, my favorite lake
View of the Morat Lakes and the valley from Blue Lake
One of the brookies caught on a fly and bubble. I love the colors.
There's beautiful sights like this all over up there. This is a stream coming down into Jordan Lake, near where we camped.

Backpacking to Kings Peak

I decided to go bag Kings Peak, the highest point in Utah at 13,528 ft, for my backpacking trip this year. Kings is in the beautiful High Uintas, where we go camping every year. My brother Cam, my sister Kait, and one of Cam's buddies, McKay, came. We went for 4 days, Tues - Fri Aug 19-22 to avoid the weekend crowds, up Henry's Fork because it's the shortest route (about 13.5 miles to the peak according to our calculations), but that also makes it the busiest. We saw many wild human beings. Altogether we covered about 30 miles. It was crazy awesome. The first day we hiked 7 miles in to Dollar Lake and camped there. The next day we left at a ridiculously late 11:30am to hike the peak. We didn't do the chute/toilet bowl, we followed the trail over Gunsight Pass, cut across Painters Basin, then trail again up to Anderson Pass. It was about 6.5 miles to the peak. I had a fairly rough time of it with huge blisters on one foot and fatigue so I didn't make it to the peak until 6pm. But I made it! Cam looked out for me, making me gatorade and resting with me when I didn't think I could go any further. I'll forever be grateful to him. We left the peak at 6:30pm, and because it was already so late, we decided to shortcut it back, so we went down the southeast ridge and straight down to Painters, hiked back to camp in the dark and arrived at 10:45pm, about 5 miles back. The next day we hiked a mile over to see Henry's Fork Lake and spent about 2 hrs watching 2 big moose lumber around. The scout troop camping there said they'd been there all week. We hiked out the next day, stopped and fished the river for a while and caught several small fish on flies. None bigger than 6-8 inches, but beautiful cutthroats. We did Freezer Bag Cooking that I discovered from Backpacker Magazine and the Deseret News for food and it was light and delicious! The country up there is stunning, amazing, and beautiful, and the views from the peak are incredible. You can see all the way to I-80 and the huge windmill things in Wyoming. We also saw what we think was an elk from a distance, a deer, and a yellow-bellied marmot. The weather was clear and in the 70s the whole time, just perfect. I love the outdoors and love backpacking and hope to go at least once every year.

On the trail going in, doing Capt Morgan


Kings from the trail. It's the one in the middle.


Struggling up to Anderson Pass


View of Henry's Fork where we came in from below the peak. You can see Dollar Lake where we camped and me at the bottom.


On the top of Utah