Tuesday August 30th sitting at my desk and staring at the paperwork I had to do, I glanced out the window and thought that life is just too short and I should go for a hike. I called my buddy Kelly and 2 hours later we were in the Uinta mountains looking for a new adventure. We ended up at the highline trailhead, pulled out the map, and decided that this looked as good as any. We were right.
On the mirror lake highway just past mirror lake itself is the highline trailhead. The highline trail eventually follows the ridgeline of some of Utahs great peaks and eventually will dump you out somewhere over by Vernal. From the mirror lake side to the Vernal side it is about 1oo mile trip. But for the less ambitious there are many short versions and destinations along the way.
Our destination for the day was Blue lake in the Naturalist Basin area. Roughly somewhere between 10-12 miles round trip from the parking lot. Following a snaking trail down through the pines we passed Scudder lake off to our right, and finally found the fork in the trail to Natural Basin. From the fork the trail winds up the mountain into a great little basin. The streams is about 4 feet wide and crystal clear. We saw little minnows enjoying the slow flowing water. Meadows with tons of wildflowers, and knee high grass that is still green, green, green. At Blue lake you sit in a pine forest with the lake backed up against Mount Agassiz and know that this is definitely worth skipping work for. At this point I was wishing that I had planned for an overnight trip.
We had left the truck at 3:30 and were back in the truck and headed home that night by 8:30. Had a nice little down pour on the way home to clean the windshield and almost ran over a biker in the dark with no reflectors and no lights during the rain. I have no idea what he was thinking. Scared the crap out of me and my heart still hurts. Probably him too.
