Red Castle

Kristen at Red Castle Lake

Jeff and dinner

We closed out June by spending 3 days/2 nights in the High Uinta mountain range in Northern Utah.  The High Uinta is just that – really high.  The trailhead is at 9,500 feet, and our campsite at Lower Red Castle Lake was at 10,800 feet.  We chose this hike because it’s remote enough (3-4 hours from Salt Lake City) that we’ll probably never go anywhere near that part of the country again.  That’s what this trip is for!

Our destination was the Red Castle area – 3 terraced lakes flowing into a mountain river, set around a gigantic sandstone formation called Red Castle that looked like, well, a red castle.

Day 1 we hiked from the trailhead at China Meadows to Lower Red Castle Lake – a distance of around 9.5 miles with a total elevation gain of 2,000 feet.  Not a super hard hike, but we were pretty exhausted and blistered by the end nonetheless.  After we made camp, I tied a spinner on to my new fishing rod and went over to the lake to screw around.  After failing to cast the thing in Jackson Hole, I had watched a youtube instructional video about spin rod casting, so I was ready to go.  On my 3rd or 4th cast, I had a bite!  I reeled in a ~12” trout.  We were thrilled – fresh fish for dinner!  Then we realized we had no idea how to clean it.  After some discussion of where to cut and how to pull out this and that, we ended up with two mostly whole fillets and some bits that looked like they got caught in a meat grinder.  But it was delicious, and a great reward for our hike in.

Our first night was interesting.  The mosquitoes were awful (hello hiking in June), and at around midnight we heard heavy footsteps and rocks rolling around near our tent.  Something big was out there, and nobody else was camping at the lake, so it wasn’t people.  Was it a bear??  We were both too scared to find out what was out there (though the ranger told us there hadn’t been much bear activity up there lately), and ended up with a mostly sleepless night.

Regardless of what it was, there was no way it was getting our food.  We had done the single greatest bear bag hanging job ever.  11-12 feet off the ground, at least 5 feet away from the tree trunk on a branch that could support no more than the food weight.  It was a beautiful sight, so please excuse our self-congratulation.

The next day over breakfast, we debated hiking back out to avoid another sleepless night.  However, a couple other groups of campers showed up, one with 7 horses.  We were comforted that bears probably weren’t going to mess with our area with so many people and pack animals around, so we sucked it up and went for a day hike to Red Castle Lake, situated at around 11,300 ft.

I don’t know what it is about altitude, but it seems like there’s a very distinct breaking point where you’re fine below it, and get the effect above it.  For some reason, our day hike to Red Castle Lake did it.  It was only an additional 500ft gain, but we were both drowsy and slightly lightheaded up there.  We attempted to hike to Upper Red Castle Lake (11,800 ft) but there was no real trail, and the slow slog over a loose boulder slope was just too much in our altitude-tired state.  We hiked back to camp and had a nice afternoon of failing to catch anymore fish.  Looks like the first day was beginner’s luck.

Our second night was uneventful, and we packed up camp the last morning relatively quickly.  Kristen was not feeling well – it was looking like her week in Guatemala was finally catching up with her – so she didn’t eat much of anything for breakfast (or dinner the night before).  She started to bonk part way through the hike out, but eating was tough because she was nauseas.  The last few miles were tough – we re-arranged the packs to transfer most of the weight over to me, Kristen forced down some energy bars, and we finished it off.

Needless to say, we were VERY happy to spend the night at a hotel and get some sleep.

Picture album here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22845041@N08/sets/72157630552686348/