Allsop Lake - 7/6/10-7/7/10

[Zep]

I'm finally getting around to posting a few pics from my Labor day excursion into Allsop Lake. I don't think my pictures add much new to those posted from Ibenick's trip, but there's probably no such thing as too many pictures of the Uintas.

I'm already feeling the Uinta withdrawals. I make it out to Utah maybe once or twice a year and it's usually for the purpose of an annual backpacking trip into the Uintas. These pictures are from a quick overnight trip 7/6-7/7.

The trail is well-worn with the average amount of boggy areas made into muddy pits by all the traffic (human, horses, cows, etc). You get to traverse the areas recovering from the fire several years back and there are some good views of the peaks, especially as you get closer to the lake. We saw a fair amount of animals - cows, mountain goat, moose, deer... in that order of frequency. I tried to get a photo of a nifty bull moose ~50 yards away across the stream at one area, but he got nervous and bolted just before I could snap a photo. It was amazing to watch the mountain goats descend the vertical slopes of Yard peak. When we arrived at the lake you could see them as small moving dots on mid slope. In about an hours time they had descended what looked like sheer cliffs to me, to the grassy area at the inlet to Allsop.

A few photos from the trail of the peaks and arrival at Allsop Lake:



The fishing was good. It seems unusual to me now-a-days to find a basin in the Uintas that is purely cutthroat. I kept expecting to find some brook trout... but they never showed up. In some ways that's refreshing. I'm sure there are some brooks lower down in the basin, but at least above the falls it appeared there were only cutthroat. We only had fly rods and caught fish off of a variety of patterns... sticking mainly with dry flies. We fished both the stream (Left Hand Fork of the East Fork of the Bear River) and the Lake. There were an amazing number of color/pattern variations of fish on the stream. Here are a few pictures demonstrating the spectrum (now I wish I had taken more since they were so varied):



It was a great quick trip with beautiful weather. Worked well as an overnighter. We saw a couple of other small groups, but it was actually much less crowded than I expected around Labor day. A pretty tame hike with only one main area of elevation gain as you ascend the switchbacks at the falls.

Time to start planning for next years trip.

Zep

[ibenick]

Zep, Thanks for posting those pics and the trip report. Excellent stuff. I think you should be able to start a fresh thread even with only a few posts under your belt. If not, maybe a mod can split that out into it's very own. Keep 'em coming, Zep!

[poiboy]

I like those pix, especially of the different strains of cutties. I got plans in the works for this lake come August.