Dirty Thirty Summer

This summer has been a busy one! We’ve been hiking and camping and burning ourselves out at work. We also celebrated my 30th birthday, my “dirty thirty” as we like to call it. Both Ian and I are in desperate need of a vacation, which thankfully is only a week and a half away. Work continues to be a constant stressor for both of us. I think we had one or two low-stress weeks in July, and then the work stress blew up again. We’ve been doing our best to escape into the mountains on the weekends, but the weekends are never long enough. Fortunately, we have a big trip to the Pacific Northwest coming up in September and several smaller things planned for the rest of the year. It’s a constant work in progress, but we need to do better about not getting hung up about the little things in the day-to-day.

Let’s see, what else is new?

We continue to go back and forth on whether or not to get a dog. We have once again landed on “no” for now.
I have not been enjoying watching the O’s abysmal season, but we are excited for football.
We’ve enjoyed watching A Man on the Inside and Nobody Wants This on Netflix, as well as Tour de France recap videos on YouTube and the Netflix series about the Tour.
Lessons in Chemistry is an excellent read.
Half the state has been on fire this summer, so the air quality has been terrible. Last week we had a significant amount of rain by Pootah standards, which helped the fire situation a bit and was a refreshing change of pace.
A got a new water bottle and socks for my birthday, so that’s pretty exciting.

I know it’s not much, but that’s pretty much all of the life updates I have to report. Please enjoy this photo dump of this summer’s adventures!

Ibanik Lake

This is not Ibantik Lake, but a different lake on the way to Ibantik Lake. The Uinta mountains have A TON of high alpine lakes, most of which you can hike in and camp around.

I honestly don’t know what this is a picture of, but here you go.

On this hike I somehow managed to get both feet caught on rocks and fell on the rocks on my knees. I am 99% sure that I had bone bruises on both knees, which have significantly improved but still aren’t 100% after about 2.5 months.

This lake doesn’t have an official name, but we dubbed it “Kneecap Lake” because we passed it after I fell and busted my knees. We will backpack here and camp overnight later in the photo montage.

Brighton Birthday

We’re gonna try a new technical feature with the photos for this one - a photo grid! Hopefully you don’t hate it. The only problem is the photos are in reverse order, so the first one is the BBQ we got after the hike and then all the other photos are in reverse order chronologically within the hike. They’re all still pretty, so it’s fine.

I had to work on my actual birthday, which was on a Thursday, but I took off four the fourth of July and we went to Brighton resort for a three-peak hike and enjoyed the live music and freshy smoked salmon they had afterwards. That rock scramble was GNARLY in the photo on the bottom row. We climbed up the scramble, which sucked, but I’d much rather hike up than down on terrain like that. It was definitely a type two fun kind of celebration.

My actual birthday really sucked because of work stuff, but we spent the weekend in the mountains and went out to a nice dinner (which we never do). All in all, not a bad dirty thirty.

The highlight of the birthday dinner was the flaky potato brick. I don’t know how they get potatoes to flake like that, but it was amazing.

Later that weekend we hiked up to the top of Snowbird and took the tram back down. Pro tip - if you hike up (an arduous and steep four miles) you can ride the tram back down for free and don’t have to pay.

Ian’s favorite tree on the Snowbird hike.

Ruth Lake

Our first adventure into backpacking for the year took us to the Uintas, about an hour and a half away. We hiked to Ruth Lake and found a nice camp spot off the beaten path. We saw a family of weasels and were surprised by a moose (from a relatively safe distance).

Alta Brighton Adventure

The Alta Brighton loop is one we’ve done several times. You start at one resort and hike to the top, then take a connector trail to the other resort and then hop on a third section to loop you back to where you started. Easy peasy. Except when the connector trail is closed but you didn’t know that. What should have been a 7-8 mile hike turned into almost double that as we circumvented the connecting trail’s closure by cutting through a third resort, Solitude, and walking back on the road for the last mile or so. This was supposed to be our “rest day”… oops.

You’ll have to tell me if you like or hate this grid format. It’s easier for me to upload photos this way, but if it sucks for you as a reader I will gladly switch back to the one at a time method.

Kneecap Lake

Backpacking adventure #2 bought us back to Kneecap Lake so I could redeem myself and not fall this time. Mission successful. Not pictured - we also saw a mountain goat.

Mount Timpanogos

This one we hiked with one of my friends and saw the most mountain goats we’ve ever seen. We’ve summitted this peak before, but opted to only hike to the beautiful wildflower field and not do the last very steep and very crowded section to the summit. It’s just not worth the effort and traffic. The wildflowers this year were not as vibrant and abundant as last year (thanks, draught), but the mountain goats were EVERYWHERE.

We respect wildlife and didn’t get in the mountain goats’ way to take their picture outside of the one included in the grid. Also not pictured, a moose sighting.

Meet our new rooftop tent! After flip flopping on getting one for the last couple of years, we decided to finally do it in preparation for our upcoming camping/hiking road trip in the PNW.

We were never in immediate danger of any wildfires, but it was weird to be able to see one actively burning from our window.

Backyard Adventures in the Cottonwoods

These pictures are from this weekend. It’s crazy to think how much nature is an hour or less away from our house. Friday evening we went for a hike on a trail we’d never done before in Big Cottonwood Canyon. About 3/4 of the way through the hike (short but a stair stepper) a man told us there were “a bunch of moose” up ahead on the trail. Okay, cool, no worries. Eyes and ears open and we’ll be fine, right?

This was the closest moose encounter we’ve ever had. One bull moose munching away a little too close for comfort off the trail. We made ourselves known. He didn’t seem to care and was more preoccupied with simultaneously chowing down on a tree branch and pooping, so we continued on. Then we saw two more moose, one bull and one cow. No calves, fortunately. These moose were also a little too close for comfort off the trail. We decided not to hedge our bets by passing the moose, especially since we would have to pass them again on the way back. We turn around, and the first moose we passed is actively eating right in the middle of the trail.

He sees us, stares directly into Ian’s soul, and stops eating. We bushwhack to slightly higher ground off the trail and get behind a tree. This moose starts walking down the trail towards us. He stops at our 12:00 where he’s on the trail and we’re behind this fairly small tree and he’s staring right at us about 10 feet away. At this point, we are in full panic mode but trying to keep it cool and yell at the moose to go away. It takes him what feels like an eternity to finally run off down the trail, fortunately in the direction we had just come back from and not in the direction where we were going (back to the car).

That was the closest call we’ve ever had as far as wildlife encounters go, and hopefully it stays that way. I’ll take a moose over a cougar or a bear any day of the week (hooves over claws), but moose are huge and no joke, especially since it’s the start of their mating season. We hightailed it back to the car and called that enough adventure for one day.

Not pictured (for obvious reasons) are up close and personal photos of the moose. These were taken while the moose were still majestic and reasonably far away.

Red Pine Lake

Ian’s ankle has been a little wonky after he ran the other week. Doesn’t he know our running era is over? After the short hike on Friday and fighting for our lives against this moose, he took a rest day yesterday and I went on a solo adventure to Red Pine Lake in Little Cottonwood Canyon.