Uinta Highline Trail

Two days after I got back from Washington, Mariah, Jose, my dad and I were leaving for a 60 mile trek through the Uinta Mountains. We filled our packs with the essentials: sleeping bag, mat, tent, stove, rain jackets, toilet paper and water purifiers. I was in charge of the food for the trip. We ate like kings and it ended up being pretty lightweight - about 6 lbs. per person!

We drove to our trailhead on Sunday, tried to wait out the rain, ended up hiking in the rain anyway and made it about 7 miles before we called it a day. I'll admit, at this point I was not a happy camper. I wasn't really expected what I had gotten myself into, but I'm not usually one to quit something I know I can accomplish so I kept on.

The beginning of the trail - rain gear on!

Food for four people for 5 days.

On top of Dead Horse Pass.

Dead Horse Pass was the first and I'd say the worst pass. It was nearly 3 miles of climbing and down climbing through a boulder graveyard, heavy rain and entirely sore feet. The lake we camped next to was beautiful and made it kind of worth the drag.

Lunch on day 3

Entering the Wilderness Area

After the hail and rain, playing dice games in the tent

On the top of Anderson Pass - Kings Peak (tallest peak in Utah) is in the background.

On top of Anderson Pass. We thought it was our last, but we had one more small one to conquer.

We hiked as far as you can see here.

On top of Dead Horse Pass. I'm not pleased with the situation.

On top of Rocky Sea Pass (day 2)

At the end of the trail - we made it!

What our trip pretty much looked like the whole time.

Dead Horse Pass. So Epic.

We hiked 60 some miles, camped 5 nights, hiked 6 days, went through a bajillion bandaids and tylenol, ate like kings, almost ran out of toilet paper, got rained on a lot and had an EPIC ADVENTURE! I doubt I'll be able to top this trip any time soon. 

Backpacking Adventure

The pictures are from the end to the beginning: 1. A cool tree that tipped over in a stream bed.
2. One of the many beautiful views 3. Glacier Cirque 4. Our campsite the first night - cool lake 5. Part of the steam Mill (I think) that was on the trail 6. Cole and I before we started out - see how fresh we looked...

We started our trip Friday afternoon after a couple backtracks to get items we forgot but we were finally on the trail at about 6. The terrain was steep (kicked my butt for sure) and I was slow, but the landscape was very pretty. We hihked through wildflowers and aspen groves. Finally two and a half hours later we made it to the lake. I set up the tarp with mats and sleeping bags while Cole cooked mexican rice (yum!). We had a pretty satisfying meal, considering our intense first leg.

The stars started coming out and man, was it beautiful! I love stars anyway, and the fact that they were out in such abundance with no moon and a very vibrant milky way just took my breath away.

The next day camp was collapsed by 10 and we were on the trail by 10:45. We hiked through the glacial cirque (see photos) which again, was some stunning landscape. Three hundred feet of fast verticle gain later was yet another gorgeous view. We pretty much wandered peak after peak with nearly no luck at finding a trail so we just went which way seemed right. After about 4 hours of hiking we came to a place the seemed familiar. We had done some kind of loop and had no idea how we ended up there. We had planned a two night stay on the Steam Mill/Steep Hollow Canyon trail but somehow ended up a day early back to the car.

So after washing off my dirty feet and legs in the cold, refreshing stream we took off to Bear Lake for raspberry shakes and then back to Logan for a night of nice clothes, dinner and a movie. What a way to end the backpacking trip ;)!