8-6-2015
Big Cottonwood Canyon – Salt Lake City, Utah

I’m currently staying at Solitude Resort, which is up Big Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake City, Utah.  It’s the off season, and the whole place definitely has an eerie, empty vibe to it.  It’s Stanley Kubrick-esque.  Luckily, I’ve yet to see any twins in the hall while riding my bigwheel around.  Also, being the off season, the place is cheap! If only I could keep all of that blood from pouring out of the elevator every time the doors open up…

Last night was the first night that I noticed that the sun was down before 9:15 p.m.  I guess I’ve moved pretty far south over the past couple of days.  Up in Canada, the sun was setting well past 10 p.m., and rising around 4 a.m.  I liked the long days, and it’s going to take a bit of time to adjust back to more “normal” days.

So what did I do today?  Well, being in Big Cottonwood Canyon, I decided to stay in the area and hike to some of the lakes found within.  Like I said in yesterday’s blog entry, Salt Lake City’s where I lived from 5 to 10, so visiting these lakes was like taking a step back to my childhood.  My parents started having me hike these trails with them at a pretty young age.  In fact, I can probably trace the development of my desire to explore (and my healthy lifestyle choices) to those early days.  I’m very grateful that they showed me early on that there was more to life than what the cities were selling.

I grabbed breakfast at a diner just down the road.  Honestly, the food was pretty bad, but everything being closed where I’m staying, it was the only option available.  After breakfast, I drove up to Brighton, to hike into Lake Mary and its sister lakes.  The trail started in a non-threatening fashion at the Brighton lift chairs.

Honestly, everything about this trail was bumblebees, applesauce, and Winnie-the-Pooh.  It offered no challenge at all.  Probably the perfect trail for small kids, but not so much for a fully grown Rob.  I stopped by Lake Mary (which is a reservoir and down due to drought) and Lake Martha (which had ducks) before deciding I needed more challenge.  All-in-all I think I hiked around 3 miles here roundtrip.

 “These aren’t the lakes you’re looking for.”

Bumblebees

Ducks.  Yawn.

I decided to next take on a bigger challenge:  Lake Blanche and its sister lakes, Florence and Lillian.  Lake Blanche was a challenge for my family when I was a kid.  It remains a challenge today.  About 6 and a half miles roundtrip, the trail climbs non-stop on the way in and requires you to scramble over various large rocks at the end in order to get to the destination.  But it is beautiful.

Finding the trail is kind of a pain.  The trail is not called the Lake Blanche trail from the road, but the Mill B South Fork trail.  It took me a while to figure this out, but when I did, I could tell I was on the right path.

Yup.  This is the one.

The trail immediately starts ascending in a moderate fashion, and maintains its incline for the remainder of the trip.  It goes through three stages.  First, there’s the “Jurassic Park” stage, where everything is overgrown and you can almost hear someone in the background warning you not to go into the tall grass.

Assuming you are not eaten by a velociraptor during this part of the journey, you next reach the aspen forest stage, which is stunningly beautiful in its own right.

Finally, you reach the scramble, which separates the aspen forest from the final part of the trail.

Wait…where’d the trail go?

The final portion of the trail is stunning – a combination of grass and red rock cliffs that carve the landscape into something dramatic.

Whoa.

Then, after all of that, you’re there.  Lake Blanche.  And all of that sweat, and muscle, and jungle work pushing up the mountain becomes worth it.

There weren’t many people when I made it to the lake, but there was one family, and they were loud and obnoxious, so I continued to push forward to the sister lakes of Florence and Lillian.  The short hike to the sister lakes was just as jaw-dropping and green as the final part of the hike into Blanche.

Finally, I made it into the sister lakes, and found myself alone.  I sat here forever, eating lunch, relaxing in the cool breeze, and watching the fast-moving clouds above.  The spot left me feeling completely at ease with the world.  I can almost guarantee that someplace, somewhere, some horrendous troll of a human being was screaming this or that about politics on some cable news outlet.  But up here none of that mattered.  All that mattered was the quiet whisper of the wind.

After letting the mountains instill all of their wisdom into me, I made my way back down the trail.  I made it back to my car around 4:30 p.m., and drove down the canyon and into town for gas, a quick dinner (Chipotle), and some beer and breakfast food for my place.  Now I’m holed back up here at my retreat in Solitude, and I plan to spend the rest of the evening figuring out what I’m going to do tomorrow during the last day of the trip.  Someplace, somewhere, a bunch of men are arguing with one another in an effort to run the country and other people’s lives.  Here though, none of that matters.  I am free.  My life is my own, and the world is boundless.  This isn’t a thing of money, social class, race, or anything else.  It is something that can be achieved by anyone, from any walk of life, simply by putting down the phone, stepping away from the tv, getting out of the cities and the towns and the endless squabbling of it all, and getting back to nature.  That is what being American is about.  That is what the dream was when those pilgrims set sail all of those hundreds of years ago, when the pioneers made their way across our great frontiers, and when we put a man on the moon.  The world is yours.  Hell, the universe is yours.

Explore it.

Cheers,

Rob