Our wedding anniversary was Wednesday and to celebrate, H and I took the day off of work so the three of us could go for a hike. (I had also planned that the three of us would go out to dinner at a new-to-us place in SLC that has a dog-friendly patio, but the blown-in wildfire smoke and 90 F heat made such a prospect less than appetizing. We'll save that for later.)
It had been over a year since we'd gone out to the Uintas. Even though it's a fairly long drive from SLC, I like hiking there because it's cooler, there's lots of water and dogs can go. After some research, I found an out-and-back to a lake that sounded good: Ibantik Lake, from the Crystal Lake trailhead. We'd been in this general area on our very first Uintas hike, back in 2009 with Captain Mike.
We got up at 6, were out the door by 6:45 and on the trail at 8:30 a.m. under sunny skies and 40 F temperatures (that felt warmer). Crystal Lake is an extremely popular trail head as the locus for numerous trails; even early on a Wednesday, there were about ten other cars in the lot. (It's so busy on the weekends that we've had to park in the overflow/horse-trailer lot before and, as we drove in, they're putting another parking lot in to accommodate hikers.)
We started out on the Wall Lake trail #229 towards Notch Mountain and Clyde Lake. This is one of the trails that is graded for horses so (1) it wasn't quite as rocky as some of the other Uintas trails and (2) it never got super-steep. We walked between two small ponds, then started gently climbing towards Wall Lake. At Wall Lake, we crossed over the footbridge and continued on the Notch Mountain trail (no sign), past several small ponds and over a boardwalk that Milton enjoyed racing across.
As the trail went up, we started to come out of the trees and, at a signed trail junction, headed towards the Notch pass. The trail got rockier and a little steeper - but still with switchbacks - as we went up and over the Notch. It was quite windy here and even though the sun was shining and the sky was blue, it felt a little ominous with the wind and the looming cliffs and audible rockfall.
We descended on the other side of the pass, pausing at little Lovenia Lake. As we got closer to Ibantik, the trail became a small stream - there's so much water in the Uintas, compared to the rest of Utah - which eventually turned aside to join a larger creek that poured into the lake. A carved wooden sign let us know when we had reached Ibantik and we walked across the rocks, past a backpacker's tent tucked into the trees, and down onto the lake's shore.
Ibantic isn't a big lake, although it is larger than most of the others we'd hiked past. With trees on the far shore and cliffs and scree fields dominating the landscape, it's fairly dramatic. When the wind would pause, it was very quiet and the whole scene made me want to do a weekend backpacking trip. It has been literal decades since I've backpacked - wonder if I remember how?
Since we were doing an out-and-back (there is a loop option but you would need a shuttle car because it comes out at the Bald Mountain trail head), we simply retraced our route to go back. H and Milton pulled ahead of me - H is faster than I am on gradual slopes; and M is just fast - but I caught up to them back at Wall Lake, where they had just finished up a swimming lesson for Milt. He was pretty tired by the time we got back to the car: while we had a beer and talked to a flyfisherman, M actually climbed into the car to nap on the back seat.
Both H and I really liked this hike: easier on the feet than many Uintas trails; plenty of water for the dog; and done midweek, very few people so it really felt like we were able to get away for a bit. Cheers to Ibantik!
Hike stats: 8.64 miles; moving 3:05 hours / 2.8 m.p.h.; overall 3:46 /2.2; 1,610' of elevation
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