Grandaddy Basin - High Uintas

It's gotten harder to go camping since we've been pretending to be responsible grownups. It used to be so easy--we'd decide to go, and an hour later, we'd be on the road. The car was usually half-packed with camping gear anyway, so all we needed to do was grab something to eat and drink and throw a few things into our packs. This year, with work and school and church and home responsibilities, it was nearing the final stretch of summer when we realized we hadn't yet spent a weekend in the mountains, a pity when they're so nearby and so inviting.

We had long intended to spend some of our summer backpacking with friends, so we set ourselves an ultimatum. In the end we couldn't manage a relaxing four-day hike; it was just a Friday-Saturday event, but that's as good as we had done all summer. We chose the Uintas for the venue and selected the Grandaddy Lake trail. We made sure we would be done at work by noon and scurried home to get together the things we hadn't yet packed. A few hours later we took off on our adventure.

The road to the trailhead was pretty rough, and when we arrived it was already the middle of the evening. We decided to hike in until we felt like stopping, then find a good flat place to sleep. It didn't take us long to feel like stopping. After an hour or so of consistent uphill trail and slowly fading sunlight we decided we had nothing to prove to anyone and we'd look for the next nice spot to thrown down our tarps.

We found a likely meadow a hundred yards off the trail and after a little scouting found a level spot with a few scrubby trees for protection from the weather. We put up the two tents and had our gear laid out and dinner equipment ready just as the sun disappeared. In that mountainous terrain it didn't take long for the light to disappear altogether. As we were watching our pots come to a boil it turned true dark. Luckily it was a fairly clear night and the moon appeared above the treeline in time for us to enjoy a moonlit meal of delicious pasta. If you look closely you can see the outline of the trees to the side and above the moon where it peeked through to share some light with us.

After hanging up our food bags and covering our gear it wasn't long before we were all asleep. We slept pretty well, despite some lumps of hard grass and a few rocks. The morning came far too quickly.

We enjoyed a delicious breakfast. E- especially liked her apricots.

Here's a view of our meadow in the morning. With a few streams full of snowmelt running through the middle and lush grass on all sides, it really was a beautiful spot. This is why we try to get into the mountains as often as we can.

We packed up camp and were ready to move on by mid-morning. Notice that E- is cheating. She made mom or dad carry her the whole way!

Half an hour up the trail we decided to cache our packs off on the side and day hike in with just our lunch and a few supplies. It was definitely easier going with the light loads we now carried. We reached the summit in no time and found ourselves on the shore of Grandaddy Lake. We were lucky enough to come in just after a bunch of Boy Scouts left. They had scared off most of the rest of the people so we nearly had this little section of the lake to ourselves.

After hiking all the way in to the lake we had to get in the water. It was a little chilly (there was still some snow on the surrounding peaks) but not as bad as it could have been. Stephanie wanted to enjoy a swim by proxy, so she convinced Mike to get in. (Note from Mike: I still don't know how this happened. I was perfectly rational at one moment and the next I was wading into mountain snowmelt.)

When he got to the other side of the cove Mike found a boy's dream come true-- a log perfectly shaped by wind, weather, and water. His hunter-gatherer instincts convinced him that if he could bring the prize back and present it to his wife she would be pleased (maybe pleased enough to stop convincing him to do crazy things for a while). He tried sitting on it and paddling across, but it kept rolling and dumping him in the water. After coming up coughing and spluttering a few times he tried wrapping one arm around it and swimming with the other and legs, but again it rolled on top of him every few yards. He resorted to pushing it in front of him as he swam and finally neared the opposite shore where his waiting wife was not as impressed as he had hoped. She had been wondering what on earth he was doing and trying to use the zoom lens on the camera to pick up the detail.

Determined to make some use of the new toy, we scoured the shoreline for comparable specimens and while E- slept and mom looked on, with the help of the only real engineer in the bunch...Voila! A Huck Finn style raft was born.

It turned out to be a little less buoyant than expected, or at least that's what appeared to be the problem when Mike took the raft out on its maiden voyage. It stayed afloat, but he wasn't staying very dry.

Trial runs with smaller passengers didn't exhibit the same problem and we determined that the root cause was the mysteriously stronger pull of gravity on Mike's mass. Everyone took a turn, even E- on mom's lap.

The sun was sinking towards the mountains again when we decided we had better head back. We hit the trail again, picking up our packs along the way and making it back down the hill with no disturbances. It's funny how downhill hikes seem so much shorter than uphill hikes. We made it home without incident and crashed for the night. It was a great weekend!