The Wasatch wildflowers are in full swing right now. In fact, the 2025 Wasatch Wildflower Festival is going on July 12 (Brighton) and 13 (Solitude) and then July 19 (Snowbird) and 20 (Alta). If you're up there then, be warned that there are just oodles and oodles of people. And also please don't pick the flowers and do stay on the trails.
In any event, after taking Milton on a foreshortened neighborhood walk (only a mile, he's so deprived), I drove up to Alta for a solo hike. I didn't get up there until 8:15, wanting to wait for H to get done with his early morning bike ride so I didn't have to put the dog in his crate, and it was already busy. I had decided on a different loop so as to avoid the Supreme lift construction, so after parking up above the Albion base area, I walked down to Wildcat base - along the road so as to avoid additional construction along the rope tow. There's a lot of construction at Alta right now (and they're paying for it by raising lift ticket prices AGAIN).
From Wildcat base, I went up the Collins Gulch access road. That is such a slog. It's very steep from the base area to the angle station. But I actually prefer going up it because I find the steep dirt road slippery for descending. I also preferred it because there were so few people on the front side of the mountain: I passed one hiker going up and only saw four other people going the other way. That time of morning the access road is also pretty shady, which is welcome when youre churning your way up.
At the top of the Collins lift (3.75 miles), I had a snack and then dropped over into the Sugarloaf side, following the cat track down through Sugar Bowl and under the lift. Then I turned left, and followed the access road around the bowl and down the long switchbacks under East Greeley. I started seeing a few more people, including six MTBers heroically biking up those long switchbacks. The flowers were fantastic.
When I passed Alf's and continued down the Homerun trail below the Albion meadows proper, the hordes really started horde-ing; I had selected Homerun rather than the main trail to try to keep away from most of the crowds, but even so I stopped counting at 70 people. (Two people I was happy to count was a hiking/running/dog mom woman, whom I follow on Instagram, and her husband: I recognized her and introduced myself, then let them continue on their way.)
Back at the car I had a beer and some peanuts while I changed my shoes and watched the continuous stream of cars looking for parking place. I may have been late getting up there but I wasn't as late as they were. Note to self: be earlier next time though.
Hike stats: 7.4 miles round trip (which is almost the same mileage as my regular Catherine's Area loop) in 2 hours 50 minutes.
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