familiar ground

Sunday marked the beginning of Salt Lake City's latest heat wave, with triple digits that would stay in place into Wednesday.  H thought he'd rather do an early road ride and get out on the empty, quiet, relatively cool streets before the sun came too much over the mountains.  Me, I decided I'd go up to Alta and do a little hike there.  It's been ages since I've just gone up to do my "regular" Alta loop - I can't even remember when the last time was.  I managed to get up to the Albion parking lot around 7:40 a.m. and was surprised at how many cars were already there ahead of me.  It's past-peak season for the wildflowers so I guess it's just a sign of how greater Salt Lake's population has grown.  The cars lining the canyon road on either side of the White Pine trailhead were proof of that.

Still some snow in the Apron

I started passing uphill hikers almost immediately on the steep slog out of Albion and up the Sunnyside area.  In all, I would pass seventeen up-hikers and only get passed by one trail runner when I was on my way down.  I didn't count the downhill hikers but there were a lot of them; I imagined that Sunset Peak is a good place to watch the sun rise.  I also passed two good-sized moose about halfway up the Sunnyside chair.  They were too far from the trail for me to get a good photo but one had a decent rack of antlers and they were both enjoying their breakfast of greenery.

There's been a lot of trail work done at Alta since I was there last, including some nice, smooth switchbacks leading up to the Catherine's Pass trailhead.  The pass was my next stop and the flowers were less sun-scorched the higher I went.  When I got to the pass, there were about five MTBers, badass dudes who'd ridden up the steep trail I'd just hiked.  I gave them their duly-earned props and kept on hiking up.

Flowers at the top of Supreme

When I got to the Sunset/Dry Fork intersection, I turned right and walked across the ridge of Catherine's Area to the top of the Supreme chair.  From there on out I didn't see anyone until I got back down to the campground.  They've been doing a lot of work up there too: nearly doubling the width of the cat track leading down from Supreme.  I was sorry to see the construction, because I liked it the way it was, but with the increase in skiers to the new Supreme chair - and particularly the increase in newbie skiers - widening it should help with the crowding.

Fireweed

The campground was full, with campers packing their things to head home, and the trail back to Albion base was pretty full of hikers too - I couldn't imagine how busy it must have been up at Cecret Lake and was glad I hadn't added that spur to my hike.  Instead I got back to the car, changed out of my boots and sat for a while with my late morning/post-hike beer, watching the mountains and the people flooding in to experience them.  It's so beautiful up there - even though I hate to have to share it, I can understand the draw.