Lake Blanche Hike

In honor of Pioneer Day we decided to hike Lake Blanche and explore the wonderful country Brigham Young led his people to so many years ago. Actually, we just wanted to get the hell out of Salt Lake City and the parade chaos.

Lake Blanche is in Big Cottonwood Canyon, which I’d actually never been through. We spend so much time at Snowbird in Little Cottonwood that we’ve never made it over to big brother. We wanted to get to the trailhead early because it’s a State holiday today; Unfortunately, Dirk’s car had some unexpected engine issues and we ended up making a quick stop in Kaysville to buy oil.

Even with the delays, we were on the trail by 8:30am. The parking lot was packed and overflowing onto the Canyon road on both ends. One thing about Utah, you are never the first person to any outdoor destination. Whether it’s the lift line or the trailhead, someone is more diehard than you are.

Covering 5.6 miles and three lakes, the trail gains 2580 vertical feet on it’s way to the glacial basin that holds Lake Blanche. It was one of the better trails we’ve been on in terms of signs and trail condition.

We started along a rushing stream and hiked up through some beautiful Aspen groves. It’s been so dry in Uintah that it was great to get into a lush green area; it was also about 15 degrees cooler up in the Canyon.

The trail got pretty steep at some points, but it was much easier than the Malans Basin waterfall-climb-of-doom. Just before the lake is a huge area of glacial rock formations from thousands of years ago. The lake was cool and very pretty, but a little crowded. We hiked down to the more secluded Lake Florence to have a snack before heading back.

The whole hike took 4 hours, which was pretty fast considering the distance. Then we went to REI where we spent an obscene amount of money on equipment. We were hoping to go to the state liquor store while we were in the area, but it was closed in honor of Pioneer Day.