Pictures & Memories from a Walk in the Uinta Mountains

Red Castle Lakes from the ascent of Wilson Peak

Sorting through old photos from film days for an upcoming project I found a folder of colour prints from a trip twenty-four years ago when I spent eleven glorious days hiking in the Uinta Mountains. I hadn’t thought about this walk for many years and I was delighted to these pictures again. The area looks really spectacular! 

The Uinta Mountains form a long east-west running spur of the Rocky Mountains in north-east Utah. They are alpine mountains, snow-covered for more than half the year and with a myriad lakes and streams. Forests rise to around 3,354 metre (11,000 feet). Above the trees are vast open grassy bowls dotted with lakes, above which rise long, steep, rocky ridges. Most of the area is protected in the 460,000-acre High Uintas Wilderness, the largest wilderness area in Utah.

I’d gone to Utah for the annual Outdoor Retailer trade show, which was then held in Salt Lake City. After the show GoLite, one of the pioneers of lightweight gear though sadly long gone, had taken a group of us to the Uintas to try some of its new stuff at a high camp and on an ascent of 4,125m (13,528 feet) King’s Peak, the highest summit in Utah. After we’d climbed the mountain and survived an exciting thunderstorm at a timberline camp the others departed and I had the next nine days to myself.

I spent the time walking to the eastern end of the range and then back again by a different route. It was a wonderful walk. I was above timberline much of the time and climbed a couple more peaks including 3981 metre (13,060 feet) Wilson Peak. The weather was dry and mostly sunny until the last two days when there were more thunderstorms.

GoLite had supplied me with much of my equipment for the walk, including pack, tarp, sleeping bag, and most of my clothing. Its gear back then was some of the best around.

These photos were taken with a 35mm Ricoh GR1s compact camera with fixed 28mm lens, which I carried as back-up to my SLR camera. I used slide film with the latter. I’d forgotten I’d taken any prints until these turned up! Whether I took any more than the 36 I’ve just come across I don’t know. The prints aren’t captioned or dated so I don’t know exactly when or where most of them were taken. From internet images I have only identified the location of one picture, which is at the head of this piece. If anyone can identify any of the others I’d be grateful!

I wrote a feature for The Great Outdoors magazine after my trip which was reprinted in my book Out There: A Voice From The Wild if you’d like to read more about it.