White Pine Lake Hike

This was one of my last true weekends of the summer before going back to school, so we decided to make a long drive North of Logan to hike White Pine Lake in the Bear River Range.

The drive was almost two hours, so we woke up as early as we could. There was a minor cat attack in our household the night before, so we ended up sleeping in a little more than we wanted to; we planned to leave by 6:30am, and we were out the door about 20 minutes after that.

The drive to the trailhead wound through several canyons and was gorgeous. It was almost 9:00am by the time we started out on the trail.

We picked this hike because we read that it was filled with wildflowers this time of year. The first mile or so was just blanketed with all sorts of red, yellow, blue, white and purple flowers. The first part of the hike was mostly through meadows at about 8,000 feet. The views were incredible and the temperatures were at least 20 degrees cooler than in Ogden (this is a good thing).

About halfway to White Pine Lake, the hike dipped into a forest area on the way to the White Pine Basin. We saw two huge deer and a lot of other wildlife.

With a half a mile left to the lake, the storm clouds we had been watching all hike started to roll in. There were only a few rumbles of thunder that seemed far away and no lightening. Still, two hikers were just in the news because they took a romantic hike and one was killed by lightening, so we were pretty concerned.  We debated back and forth about what to do and decided our best bet was to take shelter in some trees and wait it out. Heading back would be almost as dangerous as continuing on since we would be exposed to lightening either way.

It poured for about 20 minutes, but we stayed dry and comfy under a few huge pine trees. After the storm things cleared right up and it was blue sky and sun for the rest of the day.

When we got to White Pine Lake, we were glad we waited out the rain. The basin and lake were breathtaking. We explored the area a lot, including the campsites for backpackers. We picked out a few campsites in case we backpack in sometime in the future.

Because the lake is in a basin, the hike back was mostly uphill. By the time we got the car, it was almost 1pm and we were starving. In the grand tradition of Utah, all the restaurants we had looked up as potential lunch spots were closed.

In a twist of luck, Dirk spotted The Beehive Grill on our way out of town. It looked brand new and was miraculously open. They had homebrewed root beer and awesome food. (Actually, they had great microbrews too…but we were too beat to drink any alcohol.) The Beehive Grill was the find of the summer and the perfect ending to a great day outside.