on thursday morning, we got up early to go up to the high uintas. it's not too far of a drive, so we started on the hike around 7:30am. brian and i were carrying the big hiking backpacks that his parents gave us a few years ago. we weighed them the night before, and they were only about 22 pounds, but that started to feel pretty heavy pretty quickly. the hike up is 4.5 miles and is fairly steep at times. it took us 4 hours.
about 3 hours or so into the hike, i started not feeling very well. my stomach was feeling off. by the time we were almost to the lake, my stomach had gotten really bad, and i found a convenient place to quickly take off my pack, run to a nearby log, and throw up. i felt a bit better at that point, but not much better. when we got to the lake, i stationed myself on the ground by the side of the lake while b and w fished. i tried to sleep it off for about 1.5 hours. when i got up to move to the shade i had to find another convenient place to throw up. but after resting again on the ground for another hour or two, i was pretty much back to normal. our self-diagnosis is that i had altitude sickness. we were in the 9,000 feet range by the time we made it to the lake--so that seems like the most likely culprit. thankfully it didn't last the whole trip.
while i was resting by the side of the lake, b and w fished on two lakes. between the two of them, they caught enough fish for brian to tin-foil cook them for our dinner (me and brian--william doesn't like eating fish too much). note: by this time my sickness had subsided so i could enjoy eating the delicious trout they had caught.
later that evening, brian scaled the nearby mountain ridge to see what was on the other side. he knew there should be some lakes, and he was right. it was a rough-going hike, but it sounded like a lot of fun. he found a crushed balloon on the ridge (one we imagine someone let go of who knows where and made its way to the high uintas), and he saw piles of snow twice his height. i'm sure it was a beautiful view from there too.
that night we pitched the tent and set up our food/good-smelling stuff so a bear couldn't reach it. we were on our own at the alpine lakes, which was very nice. the ground that night was hard and a bit sloped, but we all slept pretty well. and there was no rain and there were no bear encounters--two very good things.
on friday morning we got up early to try our hand at fishing the upper and lower lakes. we didn't have a whole lot of luck, but b did catch a few good ones. we then cooked those up (a nice brunch for me and b) and then set off on a hike to find another alpine lake. brian had seen where it was on google earth. we set off without the benefit of a trail, which was most of the fun of this hike. it was a challenging hike with a lot of rock scrambling, but brian took us straight to the lake. it was a beautiful alpine lake with lots and lots of trout. we were catching fish on nearly every cast. there was also a really amazing view from the edge of the lake. ah, the high unitas.
after being at that lake, and seeing a deer pound down the rocky mountain escarpment, we headed back to our original lakes and set off back on the 4.5 mile hike back to the car. the hike back was considerably faster and easier, although by the end, all of our feet and shoulders and backs hurt pretty bad. but it was all worth it. even the altitude sickness. it was such high adventure--carrying the packs, backcountry camping, catching a lot of trout, rock scrambling, blazing trails, etc. our camera is out of battery power, so i'll post more pictures later. but below are a few other highlights.
w caught the biggest fish on the first day. b caught the biggest fish on the second day.
we got to see several pikas while were there. this was w's first time to see those cute, little animals.
the high uintas were even more beautiful than i had remembered from last summer. constantly i was blown away by how amazing the scenery was. one thing that was neat about going up earlier in the season that was that there were a lot of wild flowers in bloom. one down side to going up earlier in the season was that there were a lot more mosquitos.
