Ryder Lake | High Uintas Wilderness, Utah

Each year my family gets together on the first weekend of summer for a family campout. This year we were in the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. This National Forest just happens to backup to one of my favorite places on earth to go backpacking - the High Uintas Wilderness.

After the campout, a few of us grabbed our packs and set out into the wilderness. The plan was to go in for 5 days (4 nights) and hike in to Middle Basin. There are a bunch of ponds and small lakes up there, but we hoped to stay at Ryder Lake.

It was a hot hike up, but with all of the snow melt, the streams were running everywhere. Since we were going in at the end of the weekend we were running into multiple groups on their way out. One group said that they had tried to get to Ryder Lake, but it was snowed in. We didn't let this stop us and in the final push up to the basin, we lost the trail in the snow. We had our GPS with us and were able to get up into the basin without having to traverse much snow. There were still parts of the basin that were covered in snow, but I would not describe it as snowed in.

We had a great time and the views.... the views were amazing!