Dog Lake Counter-Clockwise

Last week I hiked up Butler Fork in Big Cottonwood Canyon to Mill A, and eventually on to Dog Lake, descending back down via the Mill D North trail. Today I hiked to Dog Lake from Mill D North and came back down Butler Fork. Aside from being essentially the same hike done in opposite directions, the two hikes were completely different.

Last week I drove up the canyon after work and had to hurry to get back to the car before it got too dark. Today I started early in the morning (about 6:00) and had most of the day to enjoy the scenery. Last week I went alone, and this week I went with my neighbor and his two sons.

It was a beautiful hike again, just like last week. It was interesting to see it all from the other direction.

It was also interesting to see everything in the morning rather than the evening. The lighting was completely different.

After arriving at the lake we decided to try to get up to Little Water Peak. I'd heard that there's no real trail, but I figured there would be at least a game trail we could follow and that it wouldn't be too hard to get up there. After 30 minutes--and only making it about 1/4 of the way to the peak, we gave up and headed back.

On our way back to the lake we found some great views of Millcreek Canyon. 

To get back to the car we decided to go down the Butler Fork trail to see something new. It's boring to head back down the same way. In a change from last week, though, we went straight down Butler Fork Canyon rather than contouring 3 miles around to the Mill A Basin. 

There weren't very many other people on the trail when we started, but it sure got busy by the time we headed back. Fortunately the Butler Fork trail was a lot less traveled than the Mill D trail (probably because it's so steep!).

We had great views all the way down to the road, then hiked up the street a half mile or whatever it was back to the car. I greatly preferred doing that part of the hike in the clockwise direction last week. This time I had to go uphill to get to the car.

In all, I hiked 6 miles on trails plus whatever it was on the road, and climbed about 2200 feet. So far this year I've hiked 35.8 miles in 8 hikes. I'll need to step it up to beat last year's total.

Dog Lake via Butler Fork/Mill A Basin

When I woke up Friday morning I knew I wanted to go for a hike right after work, but I had no idea where to go. I didn't feel like climbing to any tall peaks, and didn't feel like driving up the steep Little Cottonwood Canyon road. I thought that maybe there would be a hike worth doing up Millcreek Canyon, but worried a little about finding a spot to park, and then still having to pay the $3 fee to drive through the ugliest of the three canyons. Did I just say that?

After a little lunchtime research I determined that Big Cottonwood Canyon held the answer. I still wasn't completely sure where I'd go (I thought maybe Little Water Peak) but I knew I could get there (and there would be plenty of parking) from either Butler Fork or Mill D North. I also saw an intriguing post about going up Butler Fork to the Mill A Basin, then returning on the Desolation trail to God Lake. That seemed like the way to go.

I've gotten to the point where I don't like hiking back down the same trail I hiked up. Sure, the scenery changes a little because you're walking the same way, but if I'm out to explore new trails why would I walk the same one twice? So this year I've been trying to find loops that I can do, or arrange to have someone pick me up at the end of a long trail and take me back to my car. I hate inconveniencing people, though, so I try to do the loops whenever possible.

I had never really even heard of the Butler Fork trail, but I remember wondering why all those cars were always parked just West of the dogleg in the main road. I'd read that the trail was really steep at first, but that didn't prepare me for how steep the trail actually was.

The picture I took of the steep part ended up a bit blurry, but believe me, it was steep. The steepness only lasted a little while, though, and then it got really pleasant. The trail was a bit overgrown, though. Maybe the steepness scares people off so it doesn't get the use it should. With how pretty the trail is it should be getting a LOT more use. 

The trail heads up the canyon for about a mile and then splits; the trail on the right continues up Butler Fork, and the trail on the left heads toward the Mill A Basin. I stood there at the sign for quite awhile weighing my options. Taking the right fork would lead me to Dog Lake in under two miles and I could take the Mill D trail back down with about 4 miles of hiking. Not a bad after-work hike. Taking the left fork would guarantee at least 7 miles of hiking, and would likely be on less-traveled trails. I don't know why it took so long to decide. Obviously the path less traveled by is the one to take, even if it doubles the length of the hike.

After another half mile (1 mile total, though it seemed like much farther) the trail begins the first of 15 switchbacks to get up onto the ridge. I don't know why they couldn't have added a few switchbacks in before that, but it was nice to finally have some levelish trail. About halfway up the switchbacks there was a great view up the canyon (above) and a pretty good view down the canyon (below).

On one of the last switchbacks (maybe the last; I lost count) there's a faint trail leading to Circle All peak. I decided to take the short (0.2mi each way) detour to see the views (and to say that I climbed to the top of a peak). The short trail was mostly level, and got really steep right near the end. It wasn't at all difficult and the views were amazing. I called Annie to let her know my updated plans just in case things went badly (spoiler alert: they didn't).

The above picture is the view from Circle All peak to the north. You can sort of see the trail I'd be taking later just below the rocks.

Look at all those trees. The above picture is looking West from Circle All peak toward the Mill A Basin. There are so many trees in there.

Annie always encourages me to take pictures of myself while I'm out hiking (probably to prove that I'm not just lifting pictures from the Internet and watching movies or something. I dunno) So here's a picture of me.

Back on the main trail I continued up to the top of the ridge where the trail turned North. After about a quarter mile walking along the top of the ridge, the trail split. To the left was the Mill A Basin; to the right was Dog Lake. I went to the right. 

This section of trail was absolutely beautiful. It may be my new favorite place in all of the Wasatch mountain range. There were so many trees and great views and birds chirping and complete solitude that it's hard to imagine a better place to go hiking. Well, except that the trail is a bit overgrown. Maybe "a bit" is underselling it a little. The trail is very overgrown, but it was always easy to find; it just took a bit of extra effort to push the bushes that looked like they may be poisonous out of the way.

I could seriously spend all day staring at trees like this.

The above picture is my favorite of the 50+ pictures I took on this hike. It's my Sacred Grove picture.

The trail contoured around the mountains back to the East. In the above picture, you can see Circle All Peak just to the right of the tree in the foreground (the big one). To the right of the peak is the ridge I hiked North on, and from there I hiked 3 miles to where I took this picture. The canyon at the bottom of the picture is Butler Fork; that's where I would have come up had I taken the right fork in the trail early on.

Is it possible to get tired of seeing pictures of trees like this? Maybe. This is the last one, I promise.

The Desolation trail met up with the Butler Fork trail about a half mile before Dog Lake, which meant that I had to make another choice: go down Butler Fork or continue on to the lake and descend Mill D. At this point I had already hiked 5 miles; it was only about 2 miles to descend Butler Fork, but I'd miss the lake, and I knew it would be at least another 3.5 to take Mill D (1/2 mile to the Lake, 2 miles to the road, and another mile ON the road). The fact that you just saw a picture of Dog Lake should let you know what decision I made. And if you zoom in on the picture of the lake you may be able to see a deer right in the middle.

I watched the sun set through the trees over the lake, then headed down the trail.

It was interesting to finish the hike a mile up the road from where I started it. It started to get dark as I walked back to the car, and there were cars speeding down the canyon, so I decided to put my headlamp on backward with the red lights flashing so nobody would run me over. Or at least so nobody would accidentally run me over.

I made it to the car just after 9pm, having started the hike just before 5pm, for a total time of 4 hours 15 minutes. I hiked 9 miles (almost exactly) and climbed 2,600 feet (most of that in the first 1,5 miles) to reach an elevation of 8,850 feet. I also stood on top of Circle All Peak and walked around Dog Lake. And I reaffirmed that Big Cottonwood Canyon is definitely my favorite of the three.

Red Pine Lake

This weekend I was able to get out and do my first overnight camp as an adult. I did a lot of camping as a scout, but it's a whole different experience when you grow up you're the one that's responsible for surviving the night and not getting lost. My sibsprother (wife's sister's husband) Shawn and his son (my spephew) were able to come along and I'm glad they did; it's nice having someone out there who knows what he's doing.

When we first talked about wanting to backpack someone together Red Pine Lake came up early in the conversation. I had never been there, and Shawn hadn't been in a long time. It's a little lower in elevation than a lot of lakes so there was a chance that we'd be able to get to the lake without hitting too much snow. I think we were about 2 weeks too early for that, but it was a lot of fun anyway.

To get to Red Pine Lake head up Little Cottonwood Canyon to the White Pine trailhead. (Yes, I know my colors. Just trust me.) There's a pretty big parking lot there and more parking on the street if you get there later in the day. There were only a half dozen cars in the parking lot when we arrived Friday about 5:00pm, but there were cars lining the street when we came back down around 11:00am Saturday.

The first mile of trail is easy. Really really easy. First you go downhill to the river, then gradually gain elevation on a wide, mostly smooth trail. You don't even have to stop for people going the other way because the trail's so wide. After about a mile the trail splits; the trail to White Pine Lake goes off to the left, and the trail to Red Pine Lake goes off to the left. Yes, that's right. They both go to the left, but there's about 20 feet between the turnoffs. 

We took the second left to Red Pine, and soon came upon the bridge over the creek. I tried to get a picture of Shawn and Mikey going over the bridge with the water rushing beneath it, but the screen on my camera doesn't work and this is how it ended up. Just imagine a raging river mere inches below the bridge.

As we wound around the ridge to get to Red Pine Canyon there were many great overlooks of the canyon. This is one of the many pictures I took on our way up. You can see the windy road all the way down the steep canyon.

As we rounded the corner up into Red Pine Canyon the trail got much, much steeper, and we started seeing our first patches of snow. At first it was sort of fun to climb up over the snow banks and slide down the other side, but after awhile the snow got so deep and so frequent that we started doubting we'd make it to the lake.

About 2 1/2 miles in we reached the bridge that goes over to Maybird Gulch. We weren't going there, but it was nice to see the bridge. We knew the bridge was pretty close to the lake and we didn't have much farther to climb.

Unfortunately, not more than a couple hundred feet past the bridge we ran into an impenetrable snowfield. Okay, so it wasn't that bad. It was, however, enough to make us stop and think. At this time it was about 7:30pm. We still needed to find a place to camp and cook dinner before the sun set. It's a new moon so we knew it would be dark quickly after the sun went down. We calculated that we could probably make it to the lake, but that it would take us so long that we'd be scrambling to get ready for bed, and we still weren't guaranteed that we'd find a dry place to camp if we kept going.

So we backtracked to the bridge and checked both sides of the creek for a level camp spot. We found a place overlooking the trail and the river with an old fire pit (fires are currently not allowed in the canyon). We immediately set about getting camp set up.

On this trip I wanted to test out my backpacking set up. It's all easy enough to set up and make work in the backyard, but I wanted to make sure I could do it all out in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that I was able to. Not surprising, really, but reassuring.

The sun dipped below the trees about the time dinner was finished cooking. For dinner I brought up a Mountain House meal. It was Teriyaki chicken and rice, or some such thing (I could zoom in on the picture or walk ten steps to the garbage and tell you for sure, but it really doesn't matter). I heated up 2 cups of water with my homemade alcohol stove and dumped it into the bag, then blew up my sleeping pad while waiting for it to rehydrate.

It was a tasty meal, and I think it still would have been tasty even if we hadn't just hiked 3 miles up the canyon.

One of my big fears of this trip was that I would be cold at night. I was asleep by 10:00pm and at 1:30 woke up completely covered in sweat. I spent the rest of the night with my upper body completely out of the sleeping bag and the bottom half of the bag unzipped. It was plenty warm. The above picture (with my foot) is the view from inside my tent. It was a perfect spot to camp.

In the morning we got out of bed around 8:00am, reassured ourselves that we had indeed survived the night, ate some breakfast and packed up to head home.

There were just as many great views on the way down as the way up, There seemed to be a bit more water on the trail going down though.

We made it back to the truck by around 11:00am (again, I could check the time for sure but it doesn't really matter) and went home.

We hiked just under 6 miles, climbed nearly 2,000 feet in elevation (most of it in the last mile), saw a lake's worth of water on the trail in both liquid and solid form, and didn't get eaten by any bears. This trail is one of the prettiest I've been on (I know I say that every time). Maybe we'll try to get up to White Pine Lake later this year when the snow's gone.