By Scott Bay
From a young age, I turned to nature for life’s big questions: Which career path should I choose? What comes after death? Or, arguably most important at the time, will my seventh-grade crush check yes or no on the note I slipped into their locker? The answers usually lived within Utah’s Uinta Mountains.
Back in the 1960s, my grandfather built a cabin along the Bear River in the heart of Uinta National Forest. Because of that cabin, my version of the Uintas became inseparable from that A-frame, the lily-pad-covered alpine lakes, miles of trails, and the single highway threading it all together.
Into the Uinta Mountains
The range is vast—a corner of Utah where outdoor diehards go for real adventure. “There is nothing out there. It’s a tranquil escape from society,” says Caleb Christian, my guide and director of recreation and activities at Montage Deer Valley. This summer, he secured the first hotel guiding permit in the area, one of 10 total permits allowed in the Uintas. There is no cell service, and the hiking trails among the 2.2 million–acre wilderness are fully immersive—the kind of place where you’ll likely see more wildlife than fellow humans. It’s an escape from modern life, yes, but also a genuine mountain adventure, one that can quickly humble inexperienced outdoorspeople. The terrain can be challenging and unforgiving. “After your time up here, you feel like you’ve actually gone somewhere and done something,” Christian says.
It is this mix of tranquility, sheer size, and danger that makes the range singular. It holds more than 2,000 glacial lakes, with nearly 1,000 of them populated with trout, and lives up to its name—from the Ute word yoov-we-teuh (pine forest)—with lodgepole pines stretching as far as the eye can see. As a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, it is unusual for being the only range in the contiguous United States running east to west; it also contains King’s Peak, the tallest point in Utah at 13,528 feet. But it remains relatively unknown, even to locals.
With this new guiding permit, Montage Deer Valley is spreading the word with two hiking excursions to showcase this untouched backcountry. “You won’t find any crowds here—just pure nature,” Christian says. “Plus, for the evening excursion, you’ll see the Milky Way on display like it’s supposed to be seen.”
Since these trips are fully customizable, I opted for the four-hour daytime option for the more intrepid. The route unfolded in stages: a pit stop at the roaring Upper Provo Falls, a relaxed stroll to a picnic at Mirror Lake, and finally a steep push up Mount Baldy, which was particularly gratifying as the pines fell away above the tree line.
Over a picnic spread with Christian—which he aptly described as “straight out of an L.L. Bean ad”—I thought about my years living in New York City. When life felt a little too big in the concrete jungle, there was always one thing looming larger. I would think about how many Manhattans could fit in the Uinta range, or in contrast, how small One World Trade Center, my old office, would look if plopped at the base of King’s Peak. (In fact, the Uintas would hold about 150 Manhattans and it would take nearly eight One World Trade Centers to equal the height of King’s Peak.) Looking at King’s Peak between bites of local charcuterie, I couldn’t imagine the glass-and-steel monolith. Strangely, I never had a hard time recalling these high-elevation mountains.
For my grandfather, our family cabin was meant to create a legacy—an appreciation for the outdoors, the importance of gathering with family, but also, perhaps unknowingly, a refuge for difficult seasons of life. We went when I was a child and it was the first place, I drove myself when I got my driver’s license. The place became so important to me that I eventually tattooed it on my thigh. Back then, it was all too easy to find time to escape to the mountains, so I wanted a reminder of them when I moved to the East Coast.
Exploring Mount Baldy
After the 3-mile hike, taking in the blue sky 360-degree views at the summit of Mount Baldy, I felt welcomed back with open arms. Below was Mirror Lake, part of the Trial Lake loop, which we had hiked earlier, but also, down the northern side of the peak—my family’s A-frame cabin, and of course, the lily-pad-covered alpine lakes, miles of trails, and the one highway connecting it all.
As time passes, some things remain the same. Concerns are omnipresent—crushes (still), career decisions, and aging parents. But I know one place, one constant, that always holds the answers: the towering, and consoling, Uinta Mountains.
