Camping

 Last weekend my brother and I took our older daughters on a backpacking trip into the Uintas. We had wanted to do this since last year, but we never could find a good weekend. We finally settled on a date and gathered up the girls and headed into the mountains. I was a little worried that our daughter would be a bit apprehensive about hiking. It turns out she was fine and did a great job. 

We were planning on going up to Three Divide Lakes and started out at the Crystal Lake trailhead. The parking lot is huge and was pretty full although there were not a lot of people around when we got there. There were menacing clouds around and on our way up, we went through a heavy rain storm, but this did not deter us. 

We left the trailhead around 4 pm and started hiking enjoying the scenery and the girls enjoying each other's company. We were stopping more than I would have liked, but I knew this would probably happen so I was fine and we weren't in an danger of this causing problems. 

Eventually after about 40 minutes we passed a guy who asked us where we were going, and I told him Three Divide Lakes. He had a puzzled look on his face and said he thought we were going the wrong way. I stopped and looked at my GPS and sure enough we had missed the turnoff. The great thing about the Uintas is that there are lakes all over the place. So we looked a the map and found we were pretty close to Long Lake and decided to just go there. 

This turned out to be a happy mistake in the end because we really like Long Lake. We headed down over the saddle to the lake and began looking for a place to camp. The east side turned out to be sloped and not a great place to camp. John and his oldest daughter walked to the west side of the lake to see what it looked like and found a great, wide-open spot that was flat and right next to some cliffs. 

We set up camp and did some exploring and fishing. I caught a brook trout and John caught nothing. I released it and did not catch anything else that evening. 

The next day we had some sun and the girls went out exploring and "rock climbing" around the lake. I walked around the lake and came back for lunch. After lunch the sun was out so we decided to so some swimming and cliff jumping. The water was cold, but it was not the cold that makes you hurt so it was fine to spend some time in. We also heard the sonic boom from a meteor that went over head and was widely reported in the local news. 

Soon the sun went away and it started to rain, it rained off and on until we went to bed. We fished some more and I caught another fish that I let go. After dinner we played card games for an hour and then it started to rain. We all went to bed and it rained for about 9 hours straight in a pretty steady down pour. I was concerned about the three girls in one tent, but I never heard them so I thought they were fine. I started to get a little water in my tent by the morning time, when it stopped. 

The three girls finally got out of their tent and they were wet and freezing. They were so packed into that tent that the rainfly did not work so well and the tent leaked pretty heavily and most of their stuff was soaked.  

Luckily it stopped raining and we were able to have breakfast and pack up without rain. The girls were in a hiking mood and flew out of there in record time. It was probably more to warm up, but they covered the same mileage in an hour that had taken us and hour and 48 minutes to cover on the way up.  

We will have to do it again. Fun.