Uintah’s Backpacking

So, here is our trip in cell phone pictures. We met up with our friends at the Smith & Morehouse Trailhead outside of Oakley on Thursday morning.

Look at the poor saps. Thinking they were all ready, not realizing the full depth of what they’re getting into.

And our friends, the evil masterminds themselves. Ha ha. Unfortunately, the road to the trailhead was locked, so we had to walk the extra 3/4 (my guess) mile to get there. Not a lot in the long run, but more than expected…

The way up was mostly uneventful. I had a hard time with elevation at times, and had a bit of a panic attack when we went over the “next ridge” and still couldn’t see the end. I kid you not. I was hyperventilating. The hike up was fairly steep in parts. It was only 5-ish miles, but not easy. We stopped multiple times for lunch and breaks, and a little bit of stream fishing. Finally, about 4:00 in the afternoon, we made it to Erickson Lake. The North one, as it turned out.

Pretty, huh? We ended up setting camp up at this lake. I inadvertently found the camp area when the hubsters came over to see why I was wading in the shallow freezing lake (my line had gotten stuck on a rock while fishing so I was trying to loose it, and sorta fell in…)

There were pretty lily pads and flowers all over the lake, but over the 3 days, not one of us caught a fish. So, I’m fairly certain there are no fish in that lake. We had dinner that night of beef tacos.

Then, decided to hike over to South Erickson and see if there were any fish there with the remaining sunlight.

Oh, yeah, I caught the first fish there. Woohoo! I kinda went wading there too. After that dip, I gave up trying to save my lure and just cut my line. The next morning, my hubby left saying he was going to try fishing. He ditched me, thinking I might sleep more. Yeah right. Our friends were already gone fishing, and I couldn’t find anyone. They had talked about another lake, so I wasn’t sure where to look for them, so I just sat at camp. But I had a visitor.

I think our campground was this deer’s house. It came by a ton. That yellow is our little 2 man tent. So that was fun. When they all finally came back, we ate breakfast and got ready to go find another lake.

This is North Erickson. But you see that rocky ridge across? Not the full mountain, but the ridge? That’s where we went over to get to Big Elk Lake. We had heard the fishing was great there. It was about 1-1 1/2 miles there. Here we are on top of a ridge, overlooking the lake basin with it.

And a geeky picture of me

So we fished the day there, and were having fairly decent luck. Hubby caught 7, I caught 5, and our friends got 3 each, I think.

Some were decent sized, but this was a lil one. Around 3 that afternoon, some darker clouds rolled in. We just kept fishing around till we started hearing thunder. Then we decided to start heading back to camp. We got back around 5, and took care of putting some things away, then it started a rainstorm. We went in our tents to wait it out, and it was crazy loud thunder and flashes of lightning. Kind of crazy! Just after 6 it cleared out, so we had our meal of chicken alfredo with breadsticks (dehydrated stuff, pretty good!) Hung out for a bit, then went to bed.

Next morning, we tore down camp, and got a picture just before the hike down. You can barely see the lake through the trees. All the way down, the boys kept stopping to see if the stream looked good enough to fish:

While we girls hung out and rested a bit.

Then we finally reached the bottom trailhead.

I had moleskin on the back of my heels the entire time after I felt like I might get blisters.

This is in the car at the end. When I finally got them off, I had a ton of blisters.

I promised my feet the whole hike down that I’d sell those *$#&# shoes. Anyone want to buy them?

We had a late lunch at this crazy diner in Oakley. It was fun, hard, and draining, so I’m still trying to recuperate. See you next time with something fun!