miners basin

Sunday morning, we three got in the car a little after 7 a.m. and drove up to the Warner Lake campground in the La Sals.  We were pretty sure that enough time had passed to melt the snow on the trail down into Miners Basin.  We were the first car in the parking lot and it was a gorgeous morning: 52 F under sunny skies.  We could hear range cows bellowing in the forest nearby.

 Entering the pine forest

Because of the range cattle, we kept Milton on the leash for much of the hike; the soundness of this plan was put into effect almost immediately when we scared up two big mule deer.  Milton doesn't bark but he pogos up and down like a kangaroo on his hind legs and pulls like crazy.  If he hadn't been on the leash, he likely would have chased them.

Mining ruins

We hiked up the steep drainage and then the steep switchbacks to the Gold Knob/Miners Basin trail junction on the saddle, then went over the ridge and down the other side.  This was an east/northeast-facing slope and the forest was all pine trees, which made for a cushiony, pine needle-coated trail underfoot.  We descended quickly via steep switchbacks and as we left the pine forest for aspen groves lower down, we started finding mining ruins and tons of wildflowers.

Miners Basin

After we passed the collapsed mine, the trail became an old mining road that took us into the bowl of the basin: a grassy meadow with a creek and lots of cow prints.  The Trans La Sal Trail is signed here; those folks looking to do the TLS should definitely bring a water filter as the cows frequent the creeks in this area.

Foot travel welcome

We turned around there and retraced our steps.  Getting back up to the ridge via those steep switchbacks was a grind but went quicker than we expected (40 minutes bottom to top).  At the saddle, we decided to do the little out-and-back to add Gold Knob to the route.  This turned out to be a good idea since (a) we could see down into Miners Basin where we had just been and (b) a couple of hawks circled us as we came back down through the wildflowers.  Milton even got to get off-leash for a while.  There may have been some ground squirrel chasing.

Grinding up to Gold Knob

There were just a few other cars in the parking lot when we got back.  Temperatures had only come up to the low 70s so our post-hike beers were in extremely pleasant surroundings.  The aspen grove in Warner Lake campground is one of the prettiest I think I've ever seen.  One other very pleasant thing: on neither of our hikes this weekend did we saw anyone else out on the trails.

Free range Milton

Hike stats: 7.03 miles; 2:46 hours / 2.9 m.p.h. moving average speed; 3:31 hours / 2.5 overall; 2,590' of elevation

So pretty