Went on my longest to date hike today.

I needed to scout out some potential campsites up the canyons so I headed out late this morning for Big Cottonwood canyon looking for Bear Trap Trail which heads up to Desolation Lake. My map shows a 4 mile walk to the intersection of Bear Trap and a mtb trail, then another 1/4 mile or so to the lake. Driving up Big Cottonwood I had trouble finding the trailhead and ended up seeing Willow Springs trailhead so I decided I would check it out being a really short walk at .8miles. The trail weaves through some really nice aspens (so much better to look at then rocks) and ends up in a meadow with a small lake about 1.5acres in size. A couple nice camp sites available, one of which is right next to the lake which totally pisses me off since this is a watershed canyon and you aren't supposed to camp within 200ft of any water...oh well. Here's one pic, some more on my smugmug site (click on the pic to take you there).


I took off back down the road looking for the Bear Trap trailhead and eventually found the rather elusive gate to the trail. After eating the second half of my nutritional bar I headed up towards Desolation Lake. Not far up the trail I spooked some mule deer that were browsing just off the trail. It was the first time I've seen mule deer not dead on the side of the road...cool. As I climbed the trail back into some pines bits of snow appeared ahead in the shadows. Soon the trail was completely underneath snow I had no way to tell which direction to head. I pulled my map out but all I could tell was that the trail followed the stream, so I decided to head straight up the hill and hope that I would be able to spot the lake. Well that straight up hike was a tad bit harder than I thought. After a solid one mile up a hill at probably around a 30-35deg I reached the ridge line well above my starting point, but no lake was within sight. Here is a view looking back towards my starting point...the road is on the other side of the hill, the trail is down and to the right.

I decided to moved up the ridge a bit more, but first I had to cross some snow

Once across the snow I moved just a bit more up the ridge and spotted the lake down below me, still covered in ice and snow

Needless to say I didn't venture down the steep snow covered slope to the lake, instead I enjoyed the view from the highest point I've climbed to date

The way back down was tough on the ole knees. I took a slightly different route that may not have been the best decision as it was as close to a mountain jungle as you can get between the shrubs and aspens. The visibility was about, oh, maybe 25ft ahead
So total I did about 11 miles, which means 5.5 miles up hill, which is tough on an ole Midwesterner. Tomorrow I hit up the bike trails again in Park City furthering my quest to get into the best shape of my life and ready for the real high altitude summer riding ahead. Life's good.