Jewel Lake, Uinta Mountains- June 2015

This trip came together last minute so destination before dark was crucial. I wanted a place that I could shoot a very nice star trail with the moon being almost half full. I decided after a slight delay getting out of Salt Lake that Jewel Lake was going to be the spot. We set in about 6:30 PM and the skeeters were buzzing us at the car. I'll get to that in a minute. I tried the dryer sheet method as I did not want to put on deet. They seemed to be put off by it as we departed in to the Ruth Lake trail. We made a quick push up to Ruth where I took some pics on the way in. We then pushed up to Hayden Lake and followed the trail down to the next pond, and finally down to Jewel Lake.

As we hit the boulder field that gets you to Jewel Lake the mosquitoes were horrible, swarming us like I have not had since Alaska. We made a quick jaunt to camp and pulled out the non-deet bug spray and put on long sleeves. They eventually at dusk thinned out, and we got camp set and a fire going in a jiffy. We enjoyed the evening, and I got some nice shots out on the shore of the lake. After a few hours both me and my buddy Jason were tired and it was time to turn in. We awoke to beautiful weather, and the bugs not being too terribly bad- yet. The clouds billowed up and in came a pretty thick thunderstorm. We seemed to be right on the edge of the storm, never getting the full brunt of it, but still getting a couple of hours of on and off showers. Taking a nap during a thunderstorm is pretty awesome.

Finally it broke and we put together the day packs and headed up to Cutthroat Lake. I finally broke the curse I was having in the Uintas this year and landed a couple of nice Brookies. After some more fishing and talking to the nice folks camped up there, we returned to camp to find the mosquito problem had for sure multiplied. I crawled into my tent and just fired up my Goal Zero speakers and took refuge from the blood sucking flying mob! Eventually at dusk, they once again subsided, and we got a fire going and made dinner. Jason was tired and he turned in and I closed out the campfire party about 1 AM.

Dawn brought beautiful weather, but our skeeter problem had gotten even worse. I tried to make coffee, but there were so many on me and getting in the water I was trying to boil I gave up. We both packed it up in a hurry and got the hell out of there. The hike out was nice as the bugs could never really zero in on you because we were moving. Once we arrived at Ruth Lake the bugs seemed to have thinned out. There were a lot of climbers at Ruth Lake. We talked to a few of them then pushed to the car. A nice outing, three weeks in a row to start off the season. Not bad if I do say so myself. Enjoy the pics and slideshow below. More adventures to come!