Hell Hole Lake, August 2015

[Dave]

Work on the Kim and Carole project occupied most of my time in the Uintas last summer, but I was able to slip in one quick overnighter at Hell Hole Lake.



Hell Hole sits in a nice little valley nestled between A-1 Peak on the east and Kletting Peak on the west. It's accessed either via the Mirror Lake Highway or a gated road that spurs off the Stillwater road and plows right through the forest to a drill pad site. Either way, part of the approach hike involves a tedious and thoroughly un-beautiful walk on this road.

The official trailhead for Hell Hole Lake sits a laughable 2.5 miles from where hikers start on the Mirror Lake Highway approach.



According to this archived Deseret News article, Chevron agreed to build the trailhead and adjacent parking area as part of the controversial drilling project.

They did that... but also placed a gate on the road at the Stillwater bridge, 3.5 miles up the road. These kinds of games on public lands, in my mind, exhibit why people oppose any oil and gas exploration/drilling on the north slope of the Uintas. It often comes with the promise of improved/increased access, but the reality is more restriction.



Anyway, off the soapbox and onto the trail.

Wildfire haze and a prevalent high pressure system combined to make photography conditions less than ideal.



Several people were fly-fishing the shoreline of Hell Hole when I arrived at the outlet. I worked around the eastern shore looking for a campsite. There's a nice one at the south end of the lake in a grove of trees, so long as you don't mind the rotting sheep remains.



Since I wasn't sleeping on the ground, this site sufficed.



[PARSEHTML]<iframe src="http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3847512/GPS/Hell_Hole_ascent.kml&t=t4" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="800" height="800"></iframe><br><br>[/PARSEHTML]After pitching camp, I walked around the lake to check out the west shore. All of the great sites there were covered with human excrement and toilet paper. Gross.



Sun started to get low.



With little cloud cover, the sunset skies didn't do much for me.





I wandered up the basin a little farther in search of a compelling composition.





The light retreated up A-1 and vanished, so I headed back to camp and stoked a fire before heading to bed.



Morning dawned early with a fresh coat of frost.



The area south of Hell Hole begged for exploration. Large open meadows full of deep grass hid the snaking paths of streams. Walking across the dew-covered expanses, I found large areas where deer or elk had obviously bedded down in recent days.





Following the water south and west led to a small pond right at the base of rocky slopes.



From here, a convenient ramp headed south up toward a bench below the Uinta ridgeline.



On the bench, I briefly toyed with the idea of making a run at A-1. That slope looked awful steep though, and I was alone. Probably not best to try it.



At one point, pushing through the brush, I accidentally flushed a big buck deer from its hiding place. It was maybe 15-20 feet away when it bounded away from me. Startled, a few choice words escaped my lips. My heart rate was already up from the elevation and exertion. Fight-or-flight pushed it even higher.

The views over the Hell Hole region were great, though they'd have been better with clearer air.



Perhaps the most interesting point of the hike came when, up on that saddle, my toe kicked something unexpected. It wasn't rock. It wasn't wood.

It was metal. Thick, heavy and half buried. I picked up and turned it over in my hand.



The item was six or eight inches long, about an inch wide and a quarter-inch thick. The flat edge had obviously been tooled, leaving it with diagonal grooves. The surface, which looked like a file, was pitted and degraded by rust. One edge had been pounded flat.



How, I wondered, did such a thing end up at the very top of a mountain basin at 11,200 feet above sea level? It's not the kind of thing a hiker or peak-bagger would carry. My best guess is it's some sort of tool from the tie hacking era of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Even then though, there wouldn't have been much need for a tie hack to visit that bench. It's above tree line. Mysterious.

I dropped the object where I'd found it and headed for home.

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[JoshuaDyal]

I was there a year and a half ago, and those sheep carcasses were much more fresh. There were so many of them, that I was effectively chased out of the campsites in the trees. Because I arrived as it was getting dark and under a light rain, I ended up setting up camp on an "island" in the middle of the boggy meadow beyond the lake, and spent the next morning exploring the basin.

The saddle between Kletting and A-1 is supposed to be relatively easy to reach, and from there, either peak is a decent walk-up, but I was turned around by a few degrees and thought that one of the sub-peaks just to the north of Kletting along the ridge actually was Kletting peak, so I went straight up the fairly steep ridge slope most of the way to the top before I realized my mistake. I tried to side-hill it over towards Kletting from there, but walking along a loose, 45-degree scree slope was... well, it was about as fun as it sounded. After trying to go up and over after cliffing out twice, I had slipped and nearly turned my ankle twice. My morning weather after all of this exploration was starting to get rough; cold winds and clouds were starting to blow in (and it started raining again shortly), so I bailed on my attempt to summit either of the peaks, but I could easily see from where I ended up where I should have gone from the little unnamed lake nearest the saddle up the bench.

One of these days, I really want to make it back to Hell Hole, though, and summit both peaks. I wonder how well you could reach the saddle from the West Basin side, too?

 

[andyjaggy]

Cool. I've been curious about that area, it looks prettier then I had thought it would be.

 

[Vegan.Hiker]

besides tne human excrement, looks like a nice trip.

 

[Dave]

My morning weather after all of this exploration was starting to get rough; cold winds and clouds were starting to blow in (and it started raining again shortly), so I bailed on my attempt to summit either of the peaks, but I could easily see from where I ended up where I should have gone from the little unnamed lake nearest the saddle up the bench.

That's wild. You can absolutely see the path I took... right up that ramp next to the pond then gradually turning east up onto the bench below the saddle. I've also read that it's supposed to be an easy go right up to the saddle but the verticality made me nervous. There's nothing on that slope to arrest a slide if you lose your footing. Bummer too, as the view into West Basin looks awesome from pictures I've seen.

besides tne human excrement, looks like a nice trip.

The road walk is a real drag but the basin is nice. Though, I did take to calling it S**t Hole Lake for awhile.

 

[ogdendude]

I did this a couple of years ago. I too was miffed at the whole locked gate fiasco. I called the ranger office and they knew nothing about the road or the gate. I did the same approach from the Mirror Lake Highway and had to pick my way across a few streams and bogs to get to what was clearly a road at one time. On USGS topo maps it clearly shows there was a road there.

I didn't see any sheep dead or alive when I did it. I did enjoy that the trail and lake were pretty much empty. Way off people's radar screen when you compare it to the Highline Trail or anything else in the area.

The hike itself to the lake was pretty unremarkable as I recall. But the lake itself is gorgeous. I would like to go back and enjoy the solitude.

 

[Aldaron]

I started noticing more and more toilet paper/crap piles in the Uintas the past few years. Trash will drive me from a wilderness quicker than anything. I'll always pick up what I can, but I'm not hauling out someone else's toilet paper.