5-6 Days, High Uintas

[DCUnit]

I'm planning a trip for the High Uintas for 5 or 6 days in July or August for 4 people.
I was wondering if anyone had some favorite spots or good trip suggestions. We'd be open to either doing a long loop or setting up a base camp and doing different day trips, though I think we'd prefer the day trips option. I know there are a lot of lakes in different parts of the Uintas and we'd be doing a lot of fishing as well. So, any suggestions?

 

[Nick]

Welcome to backcountrypost DCUnit!

You have a lot of options with that much time. The big kicker will be whether you can pull together the resources to do a shuttle trip or if you need to do a pt to pt. A lot of the alluring shuttle options involve some pretty significant drive times between, making them not so desirable. Where have you been in the Uintas so far?

 

[DCUnit]

We're thinking point to point. Once we get to the Uintas I want to park the car and leave it. We went to the Washington Lake area last year with the intention of just hiking around for a week without a lot of destination planning, but I got sick the first night and we had to leave. So I really haven't been anywhere in the Uintas yet. I want to do a little more planning this year and actually have some destinations in mind. Because I haven't been anywhere I was wondering what some favorite spots were.

 

[Nick]

You didn't miss much. There are a lot of short trips in the Washington Lake area but with more than a couple days to spend, I wouldn't even consider it.

One of my favorite point-to-points is to hike between West Fork Black's Fork and the Highline Trailhead, crossing Rocky Sea and Dead Horse Passes. It's about 35 miles point to point. I've done it in 3-days but it could easily be stretched into 5-6 if you were exploring, fishing and relaxing along the way. Or, if you're feeling more adventurous, a loop combining West Fork Blacks Fork and either fork of the East Fork Bear River would be even better on the scenery scale. So the long version would be up WFBF, over Dead Horse Pass into Rock Creek and then over the old 'Priord Pass' and down to Priord Lake and back to the East Fork Trailhead. That would be awesome. Shorter version would be combining Allsop and Dead Horse by crossing the untrailed unofficial 'Allsop Pass' between those two lakes.

After those options, I'd consider a loop combining Red Castle and either Henry's Fork or the Little East Fork. Either could be stretched into a 5-6 day trip and offers excellent scenery. You could toss in a summit of King's Peak with a Red Castle-Henry's Fork combo.

Here are some of my trip reports for some of the mentioned areas. There are others from these areas on BCP, just do some searching. Lots of good stuff.

Highline to WFBF:
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/threads/uintas-highline-th-to-west-fork-blacks-fork.50/#post-280

Priord Lake Trail Guide & Trip Report
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/trail-guides/priord-lake.4/
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/threads/priord-lake-uintas.1146/

Allsop Lake Trail Guide & Trip Report
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/trail-guides/allsop-lake.46/
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/threads/allsop-lake-high-uintas-wilderness.137/

Red Castle & Little East Fork Loop
http://backcountrypost.com/forum/threads/red-castle-little-east-fork-blacks-fork-uintas.823/

 

[DCUnit]

Thanks, that helps out a lot!