Ep 188: The Opportunities in the Uinta Mountains, with Zig Peacock
Zig Peacock has been on before (episodes 137 and 170) to talk about Utah and backcountry fishing as a whole, but in this episode, we dive deeper into the Uinta Mountains specifically. We cover the species available, the sheer quantity of fishable water in the range, access opportunities, availability of off-trail experiences, weather, and much more.
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 188 with Zig Peacock on the opportunities in the Uinta Mountains. all right well this is your third time on the show so we can we can save all the banter at the beginning about how you got into fly fishing and everything and kind of dive into the the meat of what we're talking about today which is the winters and I think you reached out to me because we'd had a previous podcast with Sean Larson about the Uintas, and he was kind of talking about a specific trip he took. And I think that kind of like lit a fire under you because I know you spend a lot of time there. And it sounds like we're going to talk a little bit more generally about the Uintas overall as a mountain range. So I'll kind of let you give a little spiel to start off and we can kind of see how it evolves from there.
Zig
Okay. I always claim that Uintas are my Disneyland. They're less than two hours from the nearest portion of it is less than two hours to me. And there's a real big access point called the Mirror Lake Highway that kind of bisects the western area. And that is access to like a lot of the trails and stuff like that. So there's actually a point on there. There's a trail that's called Ruth Lake that goes to three or four lakes that are on trail, depending on which way you go on the trail. And then you can go off trail and hit like three or four more lakes. And so that point, the reason I bring that up is from my house. It's equal distance on Mirror Lake Highway if I go up through Evanston or I go up through Camas. It's kind of the midpoint. But the Uintas are unique in that they are the largest contiguous mountain range that goes east-west in the contiguous states. So they span over 100 miles. There is the highest peak in Utah is in the Uintas, and that's Kings Peak. That's 13,528 feet, if Google is correct. So a lot of people will hit the trail that goes up to Kings Peak. Originally, it was a, as you'd expect, it was a hunting and gathering and healing place for indigenous tribes. So the Utes, the Ghost Ute, and the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone all resided here, used it. In 1897, President Grover Cleveland created the Uinta Forest Reserve. And then a few years later in 1908, it was split into Uinta and Ashley National Forest. And then in 2007, that was merged with Wasatch. So now if you look up the National Forest, it's the, I'm not sure I'm going to get the order right, but I know it starts with Uinta. So it's the Uinta, Wasatch, Cache, Ashley National Forest or Ashley Cache National Forest. So it's all four of those areas. It was used early by fur trappers, by pioneers, and by tie hackers. So if you're up in the mountains and you see like an old tree stump that's like cut off and squared off at about three to five feet tall, that's because of the tie hackers that were building out ties for railroads for the transcontinental railroad that went through. So they used to cut it three to four feet high because they didn't want to dig down in the snow. And they just cut it off there and then wait for the spring runoff to run them down the rivers. One of the parts I really like about the Uintas is the wilderness. So the wilderness is over 460,000 acres. And the High Uintas Wilderness was established in 1984. And honestly, you can access the wilderness pretty close to the road in several spots. So it will go through, you know, depending on where you want to go, you can within a mile, you can hit the wilderness area, which I mean, it has this good and bad, right? You know, with the wilderness rules, they can't use mechanical ways to clear up the trails and stuff like that. And this year, one of the trails I went into last year, I did a 23-mile overnighter last year. And one of the trails is part of the, you went to Highline Trail. And there was a post early on the season this year that there was probably 20 or more significant blowdowns across the trail in that area this year. So it's probably going to take a while for that to be cleaned up.
Katie
Yeah, it's kind of a double-edged sword. I love that rule about wilderness, but I'm like, you know, they could make an exception for certain government employees on certain trails at times just to make life good for the rest of us. But I appreciate the spirit of keeping things primitive. But I'm like, I wouldn't be upset if they used the chainsaw on occasion.
Zig
Yeah, exactly. I mean, especially the size of some of those blowdowns, you know, you're like, yeah, this is a quarter mile walk around to get back to the trail. it also so one of the pieces I haven't done that I want to do at some point but you know old man here we'll see if I ever get a chance to get up and do it is the you went to highline trail so it's not as massive as some of the other big trails but it is a 105 mile trail if you start at Mckee draw some people don't like to start at Mckee draw because it has a large water carry It's about a 20-mile water carry unless you're careful. After a winter like we had here in the west, it probably is a 20-mile water carry, but there's a few little springs and stuff you can find, but most of the trail is over 10,000-foot level. So if people are coming from the coastline or down lower altitude, Mckee draw is probably a good place to start because then they can have a day or so to get acclimated before they get up into that 10,000 foot level. I mentioned the Mirror Lake Highway. Technically, if you were to look at the highway just from Camas, Utah to the Utah-Wyoming border, it's about 50-ish miles. And then there's another 25 miles from that border over to Evanston. So definitely one of the areas that gets a lot of people because it's a nice two-lane highways and there's lots of campgrounds and it's outside of the wilderness area. So there's areas with ATV trails and stuff like that. So that's, but I mean, as far as that goes, that is probably the close to the best access to trails, trailheads. On the south slope, so you have the north slope and the south slope. On the north slope, you've got that section, and then you're coming in and you're hitting dirt roads to get to any of the other trails until you get all the way to Flaming Gorge, kind of on the east end. And then there's a two-lane highway that goes through on that side, but that's kind of the low, tapered-off area. So there's not as much activity in that area.
Katie
How busy are the Uintas in general? Like, you know, I think of around here, around near Denver, I'm not going to hotspot anything crazy by saying things like the Indian peaks are just like, you know, overrun by people. But then we've got plenty of ranges in Colorado that are barely touched, much more unknown. And it feels like there's maybe more limited mountain opportunities in Utah, like compared to somewhere like Colorado, where much of the state is just one giant patch of mountains. Like, you know, the Uintas is kind of its own little isolated ribbon of mountains in a way. So I'm just curious, like how does everyone flock to it? Because it's like one of the places to go or do people spread out enough that it feels kind of remote and untouched while you're there?
Zig
It really depends. I mean, as far as tourists, I don't think tourists get much off the Merrill Lake Highway. OK. You know, people coming in to just visit.
I don't think they get much off the Merrill Lake Highway unless there's someone doing the Highline Trail or something like that. Right. If if you're talking about locals, A lot of the local pressure hits the Wasatch Front, all the mountains along that basically from Provo to Ogden. You've got that whole range of mountains right there. There's lots of hiking and trails through there. So a lot of it goes through there. And because it's 15 minutes from home, it's a lot easier than an hour and a half or so from home. You know, if you're up in Park City staying somewhere like that, you can be on the Merrill Lake Highway into a trail in half hour, 40 minutes. so from there I think you're going to get more people there are certain trails like if you're coming in on this on the south slope so mirror lake highway where canvas comes in is part of the south slope and that drainage right there goes into the provo river which if anyone knows about the blue ribbon rivers in Utah, Provo is one of those so it goes in the headwaters of provo that section right there it gets a fair amount of pressure and if you go up there's a trailhead called crystal lake trailhead and I'm not spot burning anything here because crystal lake trailhead if you go on a weekend in the summer you got to be there before 7 a.m or you got to hit there around 11 a.m when all the fast packers are starting to leave and there's one or two spots to park otherwise you're parking out past the stock parking lot down the road that goes down to some other trailheads on the dirt road. So that area gets pretty busy, but I would say the majority of the busyness is in the summer. Once you get past, really past when school starts, high school and college, I've gone up and hit on a weekend Crystal Lake Trailhead and had 30 open parking spots at that time. so it's really just kind of that that peak period where it gets loved to death and absolutely July 4th, July 24th which is Utah's founding and another big holiday you know you're gonna as you're driving up mirror lake highway any slightly dispersed road off of mirror lake highway you're gonna see someone camping right so you're gonna it gets love to death during those periods but But, you know, before COVID, I would say you could go three, four miles in and hardly see anyone. Now, after COVID, you've got to get five, six, seven. And it depends on where you go, too. That trailhead, Crystal Lake Trailhead, it has a main loop that will go up into Clyde Lake area and come back down. And that one seems to be the most popular loop. And then you can go off another way into another section of the drainage over a pass. And up in there, there's a lake called Island Lake that's really busy because it has an island. It's really pretty and scenic, and it has a slab of stone on the edge of the lake that, you know, has a good 12-foot drop. So everybody loves to go cliff dive off of there. So I've gone in there and hit Island Lake and probably seen close to 30 people around the lake between fishing, jumping in, and camping. And then I've gone a little ways off trail and found one person or no person.
Katie
Okay. So there's zones and there's locations that people are going to be flocking to. But it's possible to find some solitude. It's not just like everywhere is completely.
Zig
Yeah, it's definitely possible to find some solitude, especially if you know how to navigate off-trail. You know how to navigate off-trail. You can get somewhere and have some solitude. There's one hike that I'll do that, I mean, it goes to a lake. It's maybe only two miles off of Mirror Lake Highway, which is the trailhead's right on the highway. It's maybe two miles off of there. It's a very popular lake. A lot of people go to it. It has a little small lake next to it that hardly anyone fishes. It has some brookies in it and not too far from it off trail. I've gone to some of the lakes off trail and never seen a person all day, you know? So it's just, it's really a matter of just researching up there and going out and checking it out. You know, as far, as far as the mountain itself goes, I mean, we're getting kind of more into the fishing now. So as far as the mountain itself goes, there's over a thousand natural lakes and then there's some impoundments and impoundments that are no longer impoundments and they're back to being natural lakes. And of those, they say more than 600 are fishable.
Katie
And do you know if those were stocked, were they all stocked, like all of our high alpine lakes were here, or did any of them contain natural fish?
Zig
Not all were stocked. Originally, so if you were to look at the numbers of fish and probably the popularity of fish, You've got rainbows and brook, or there's quite a bit of those, but the rainbows are right by the road, right by Mirror Lake, right by the easy axis, the put and take axis, right? Rainbows and tigers are going to be in there. Some tigers are further deeper because the brookies have overpopulated the lake and they're stunted, and so they put some tigers in. But in the Uintas, you've got, depends on if you're a lumper or a splitter, right? I'm a splitter.
Katie
I'm a splitter.
Zig
Yeah. So you've got Bonneville, which are in the Provo River drainage. In the Weber River drainage, and you probably remember from talking with some of the people you've talked to about the Utah Slam, the Weber River can count either for the Bonneville or the Bear River. So in the Weber River drainage, you've got basically Bonneville or Bear River, depending on where you go. but you also have the bear river headwaters and so the bear river headwaters is the more pure bear river cutthroat and then just if you're on the north slope just east of where the bear river cutthroat stop you'll get into Colorado cutthroat and then pretty much the entire south slope is Colorado cutthroat so there's a lot of populations of Colorado cutthroats in there and our DWR has gone through quite a few areas and restored them back to cutthroat populations. I think Sheep Creek, if I remember right, was one of the most recent that they did where they went through and did a rotenone treatment to kill everything off. And then they've started restoring it back with the native Colorado cutthroat. So there are some cutthroat in there. Most of the time, this is kind of the cool thing. Most of the time, those cutthroat are the farther lakes. you know so it's you're rewarded for going off trail you're rewarded for putting in some miles and some effort so
Katie
it's the same way here like it's it's not super common to find cutthroat within you know half mile even a mile of a road like you've usually got to walk somewhere
Zig
yeah you know that one I was telling you the the popular one with the island up by there there's some cutthroat legs but they're all off trail so if you don't know how to go off trail and navigate willing to put in to hike up a mountainside to get up to those upper lakes you're never going to get to them right so so yeah there are as far as rivers and streams best estimate I've seen is there's over 400 miles of rivers and streams that are fishable so some good area in there and about 545 miles of official hiking trails. Now there's trails out there that are social trails or game trails or, you know, you know, you know, you know, the drill you're, you're heading into an off trail lake and you're going, Oh, Hey, this isn't bad. Someone's been here before. This is a highway compared to what I was expecting.
Katie
Uh, you mentioned some of the species, But I know you listed before we got on here a ton of different species. Why don't you go through what there is? Maybe we can dive into a couple of the more interesting ones.
Zig
Obviously rainbow. I think all the rainbow that are up here are triploid. Brook trout. There's definitely an abundance of brook trout. There are obviously the native cutthroat, the Bonneville, the Bear River, and the Colorado. There are a handful of lakes, maybe four lakes, and they only stocked them in like 2012 and 2014. So I have heard rumors, but I don't know if it's true that there are some goldens up here.
Katie
I'm surprised you haven't sniffed that out yet.
Zig
I just haven't found someone willing to go with me yet, so I might have to do it myself. Tiger trout, there's plenty of tiger trout. there's some some fun lakes that have tigers I mean little back I caught one that literally looked like a football I mean he was short and fat really tall that was a fun one and then arctic grayling there's some good grayling lakes up here there's a few lakes that have splake and those are usually the bigger ones closer to a few of the roadways and then I actually found out that just recently as as recent as like 22 and 24 they've some of the lakes they've stuck in some tiger musky why population work on keeping population down of overpopulated brookies and such so they it's kind of like a I think it's experimental trial that they're doing right now just to see how it affects the fishery and if they can get to more you know more trophy size brookie as opposed to a million stunted brookies.
Katie
What like elevation are these musky lakes at? Cause that's just not a fish I think of as being high elevation or like cold water really.
Zig
So those are going to be the ones really close, a lot closer to the roadways, both on the east end and then Merely Highway on the west end. I think, like I said, I think there's only like five lakes that have them. And so I would guess those are probably between nine and 10,000 and they're going to be your bigger lakes.
Katie
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's not that a specific elevation surprises me, but it's just not a fish I think of as being, you know, a 10,000-foot kind of fish. Yeah. Not that reservoirs can't exist that high, but I just think of it as a lower water, bigger reservoir kind of fish.
Zig
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree. I mean, can you imagine being up there and also hooking into one of those and being like, what the heck?
Katie
You know, we've actually got a lake here that I fished for grayling and cutthroats. And I remember hearing that there were a handful of, I assume tiger muskies, not standard muskies in there. And I, of course, have never seen one or encountered one or met anyone who has, but I remember seeing them on the list. And it's also, you know, it's not a true alpine lake. It is a reservoir in the mountains, but it's higher up than I would have guessed that the majority of muskies or tiger muskies live.
Zig
Yeah. And I believe the five that these are in our reservoirs too. So high elevation reservoirs, probably at one point they were natural lakes and then we added the dams on to hold water back because, you know, we are a desert.
Katie
Got to start throwing like brook trout flies, like eight inch brook trout flies.
Zig
Yup. Right.
Katie
And how many of these species have you caught then in the Uintas?
Zig
I've caught rainbow brook, all the cutthroat. I haven't caught the golden yet. I have caught tiger. I've caught a bunch of grayling I haven't caught splake and and the tiger muskie do you have a goal to like catch all these you know I think my first goal I kind of kind of based off of what I've heard Ross is there doing where he takes a kind of a drainage each summer I'm kind of looking more that that way right now and kind of taking a drainage and getting to all the lakes including the off-trail lakes, you know, because some of those off-trail lakes, you're just, if you're setting up a base camp because they don't have a lot of good camping area, you're going to be a good five-mile hike to get in, fish it, and get back out, you know. So I think I might take it by, as far as a kind of a drainage standpoint.
Katie
I do like that approach. I think it's fun, the idea of picking something apart to the point that you come out, not, you know, you can never truly know everything about a base. I mean, there's not enough time in a lifetime, but to come out of it at the end of the season feeling like, okay, I know that place. Like I can kind of check that off in a way and feel like, you know, if anyone had a question, if I felt like I wanted to go back, I know what I need to do, where I need to go. You feel like you know a place in a more intimate way.
Zig
Yeah, I'm pretty much there as far as the Crystal Lake Trailhead area. There's just some lower lakes that come off of some other trailheads and that drainage, that Provo River drainage that I need to go explore. So I'm pretty close to there in that area because I hit it a lot last year when I was doing that 100 miles backpacking. So that was one that I explored pretty extensively.
Katie
Well, we can get back to kind of, you know, the agenda you were taking us on before I derailed us there talking about species. But, you know, back to kind of the winter fishing as a whole. And I think we're at the same page here, but I want to avoid hot spotting places that aren't, you know, heavily trafficked. You know, the big parking lots that could hold, you know, 40 cars. I don't think anyone's super worried about those. But wherever possible, be as vague as you as you're comfortable being and conveying information.
Zig
I mean, like I said, I don't feel like I'm hot spotting Crystal Lake because that one's a massive, massive trailhead that a lot of people go to the hike to. And it has right there next to it Washington Lake, which is one of the big dams and massive campground. And everybody on their dog is usually there. So as far as the drainages go on the north slope, you've got the Bear River, the Weber, Black's Fork, Smith's Fork, Henry's Fork, Beaver Creek and Burnt Fork. And then you kind of have like off to the east side. It's that can be north or south slope. south slope you've got the provo the Duchene and those are probably the two biggest drainages then rock creek lake fork you went to Yellowstone white rocks dry gulch and then kind of in that east area you got Ashley sheep and carter creeks so there's a lot of drainages to go check out and I believe the last the last podcast we did I was talking about those lakes of the uintas books which we were talking about you know being able to access through the state library right that's no longer I found out like a year and a half ago the state legislature cut all funding for that and so everybody was in a panic to go download stuff and make sure they had those books before that you can access them in the library anymore so there are a few sites that people have downloaded them and have them out out there and available and like I said those the our local dwr went through and picked up picked the drainages all those drainages and did books on each of those drainages and they'll start as far back as like the 1960s and then there were some updates in the 80s and 90s and then three of the drainages just got updated two years ago in 24 and I was talking with the northern region biologist and he said that there is plans to go through and update all those books. So modern ones will be out there, which I really like the modern ones because they have like a little table in the back that kind of says, you know, here's the lake, here's the depth, here's the acreage, here's what's expected to be in there.
Katie
Yeah, I know, I'm sure you and I have talked about this. I know I've talked about it with plenty of other people, but I love, I love like an older report or book about a place because it's kind of a snapshot in time. And you could just, I mean, things change so much that it's fun to see what it used to be like. And I like the mystery of what's there now. 20 years have passed, so let's go check this place out and see how it compares to an old guidebook or something like that. At the same time, it has changed so much that in some ways they're not super relevant anymore, depending on how old they are. So yeah, an updated book is definitely a valuable resource compared to some of those older ones.
Zig
I think one of the nice things I like about the books, even those 1964 ones, they will tell you if there's spring water campsites and obviously if you have horse or goats or anything like that feed nearby so I mean that's that's not really going to change right so at least it gives you an idea of if you can camp around one of these lakes or something like that and if you can get some some nice fresh spring water or whether you're dipping in the lake and hoping it's not too full of tannins and stuff like that, right? So what else did you want to talk about?
Katie
Well, I know, so you mentioned like 600 fishable lakes and you mentioned the, you know, hundreds of miles of creeks. I would love to hear kind of a description, I guess, of what, particularly the streams, because I mean, an alpine lake, I feel like it's pretty similar in Utah compared to Colorado or anywhere else that you might encounter an alpine lake. But I'm picturing streams, you know, that could be anywhere from like rocky pool-based streams to like meadow, meandering, undercut banks, things like that. Do you have all of that? Or is the landscape kind of singular in terms of the structure?
Zig
It's all of that. So at the beginning of last summer, I actually camped on the south slope at an established campground. I always joke around that it was glamping because they had flush toilets and running water. was like what is this but I hiked in there and it was during runoff but it was one of the major drainages and that river was running so high so fast there is no way I would have even gotten close to dipping my toes in there besides a few little quiet pools you know and that's and that's what I ended up doing is I was I was hitting the little small pockets on the edge of the water fishing that and it's probably one of the areas I caught one of my my biggest Colorado cutthroat and that was purely a fluke I started down at the reservoir I was catching brookie after brookie after brookie after brookie just working my way up the inlet up through the the river probably a mile and a half in and got to the point I'm like I'm gonna go get some food at the truck I'm gonna just hike back out one last one last cast right and then I saw a big shadow move up and I'm like oh I hope I didn't just scare that you know and I cast in there and second cast it hit it and hit it hard and yeah it was a it was a good size Colorado so pretty and colored up too so that from that all the way down to last year on one of our trips we went into a more established lake that seems to get less pressure I mean even on like Labor Day and stuff I've gone in there only seen like two camps set up or stuff like that so it's it I like using that as kind of a base camp because on one end of it there's a natural spring that comes in and so they've actually put a pipe through the through the ground into the spring so you can go over there and fill up your bag with like this nice cold spring water right so it's nice to have that as kind of the base camp but off of there we went into a off mile off track not off track off off trail lake that was about a mile in and going in small teeny meandering meadow I mean looking at the water it didn't even look like it had flow it was so you know so teeny but it was just deep deep enough and we started just dapping our rod just on the hope that maybe something was in there and ended up finding a bunch of brookies. And I had one little six inch brookie probably jump close to double its body length out of the water coming after my hopper as I was holding it above. So there's a good, good variety up there.
Katie
How good is the access in terms of like trails to the lakes or along the I guess good here could mean how many have trails or on the other end, how many don't have trails and, you know, therefore are more remote and you'll have more solitude if you go to them. Like if you just had to throw a ballpark estimate out of like what percentage of the fishable lakes have a trail to them, what would your guess be?
Zig
I would say the more popular lakes all have trails to them. And when I say more popular, it's going to be based on destinations. So like the Crystal Lake Trailhead area, that's just it's a popular hiking spot. there's and you do that loop there's 17 links on that loop they're all right there but if you go a quarter mile off trail in a couple different directions you're going to get three or four more lakes so there's off trail links just right off of it another prop probably the big busiest trailheads would be crystal lake grand view trailhead which is on the south slope and And that accesses Granddaddy Lake, which is the largest lake in the Uintas. And that is another big popular area to go through. I mean, you've got maybe a three-mile hike and 800 to 1,000 vertical over a pass, which, I mean, this is typical alpine area. You want to get over the pass early, not in the late afternoon, because I've come back in the late afternoon. had some some sketchy thunderstorms clapping around me and I'm hurrying over the the open area as fast as I can and and like granddaddy you know that's in the wilderness area but obviously people don't always respect the 200 foot or 200 what is it 200 foot rule and so there's some campsites closer than that so you know do some training some training education when you see people but from there three four miles in you've got one two three you know on that Grandview trail head you've probably got seven lakes you can hit on the way in in that four to five miles go a few more miles you've got several more lakes you know all within a mile or two of each other and then if you want to you can go off trail and when you go off trail you know some of these you've got nice meadows up to get to them some of them you're dropping down a cliffside and you're going yeah no one else is coming in here
Katie
that was my next question is like how how hard is off trail because you know some off trail is not terribly harder than being on a trail some off trail is like you've got to stay overnight to go a mile kind of thing
Zig
yeah I would say did you ever have those books growing up that were kind of like you made a choice and you turned to this page and it is this and then you made a choice and you turned to the next page?
Katie
I don't know if I had any. I'm familiar with what you're talking about though.
Zig
I would say the whole of the Uintas are like that. Okay. You choose how hard and how remote you want to be. I've had off trail where, you know, you and I have talked about using satellite and that to kind of scout. I've had off trail where I found satellite that, you know, I did a mile up through meadows and saw a few deer, flushed a few elk, not bad at all until I got to the other edge. And then it was like dropping off a cliff. But once I got in there, saw nobody, absolutely nobody the entire time had elk bugling right before a big storm, probably captured my absolute favorite photograph I've ever caught up there because of the storm, you know, so you can get, that one wasn't bad. The other one I told you about earlier where, you know, it's a popular trailhead. A lot of people go to the main lake, but if you go off trail, you can get to a decent lake. That off trail on that one, you're climbing over blow downs the entire time. So it's, it's, it's a good aerobic or gymnastic exercise getting to the lake but once you get there because of that there's hardly anyone there gotcha so I mean you it's really kind of a pick your adventure type of thing and a lot of it is just understanding you know looking at the way blowdowns are going to come down I mean if you're up along the ridge line a lot of times the blowdowns are going down one side or down the other side so you can kind of walk that ridge line if you look to walk down in the valley you can do that but a lot of times there's going to be water going down through there so you never know you're not that you're not going to hit a marshy section or something like that so it's it's really getting to know the the landscape and what you're looking at on the top of the map and kind of picking your poison but there's there's like I said there's definitely definitely lakes you can hit that are right near trail and definitely lakes that are off trail some of them are close and you'd be surprised how few people you're going to see even at those close ones and some of them you can get really remote and not see another person the entire time you're there.
Katie
Are there any special restrictions or regulations to camp or anything like that, you know, beyond your standard, you know, wilderness area, no motorized stuff and, you know, stay away this far away from water and stuff like that. But are there any permits required or anything like that?
Zig
There's not any permits required. The one thing that you have to be aware of is checking the notices on the forest. service site there are and and a lot of these are posted at the trailheads where you'll have kind of a little map and stuff I mean but there are quite a few of the areas where there's been enough people that go in during the regular that there's so much usage of downed wood that there's not enough wood to kind of replenish the forest you know to degrade and replenish the forest so there are areas that are totally off limits within a quarter mile of the lakes. So within a quarter mile of the lakes, you can't have a campfire because of that. And there are maps that are out there on the UN to Wasatch Cache National Forest website, you know, from the notices, as well as, like I said, many of the trailheads.
Katie
How often are you guys under fire restriction? I know this isn't you into specific necessarily, but I feel like we're at the point now in Colorado where I don't expect to have a fire between late May and Labor Day for the most part. We're just going to be too dry. Are you kind of in that same boat or is it pretty common to be able to have fires throughout the summer?
Zig
Because it's national forest, it really depends. I mean, most of Utah is under stage one or stage two fire restrictions right now. But you can have campfires up in a lot of the Uintas right now. Because even though the rest of the state is under the restrictions, because it's the national forest and the national forest hasn't put restrictions in place, they always seem to lag behind the rest of the state. So the rest of the state, you'll look up. There's a good website. I think it's Utah Fire Info. They'll actually show you a map of where all the restrictions are and what level they are.
Katie
Does Utah not go county by county? Like for us, we have to check county and Forest Service because if it's like in the county and the county has banned it, like countywide, then I don't think it – I mean, I could be wrong. I don't think it matters what the Forest Service says if the county that it's in says you can't. So it's kind of like either one of them could restrict it on Forest Service land.
Zig
The counties here restrict it on BLM land, but they don't restrict it on Forest Service land.
Katie
Huh. I wonder if I'm wrong about that. I've just always trusted, you know, the county says you can't, so you can't. I don't want to give wrong information, but I've always assumed that either one could cancel out a campfire on Forest Service land if that Forest Service land is within whatever county.
Zig
Oh, yeah. I mean, so there's Facebook groups for the Uintas. Mirror Lake Highway Lovers is one. High Uintas Wilderness is another one, or High Uintas Lovers is another one. And I watched a post blow up asking about fires up there last year because, you know, people are like, oh, we're under stage one restrictions, et cetera, et cetera. And then someone else comes and says, well, it's BLM. It's not, you know, can't infringe on my right to have a campfire. know and I'm just sitting here going yeah but it's super dry out there how about we just not right so yeah it seems like in in in the Uintas it's reliant on the Forest Service to put those restrictions and they always seem to lag everybody else
Katie
that's interesting when we can't have a fire here it's typically because we've gotten some moisture recently like I feel like Colorado is pretty good and I would consider it good because like I don't want the state to burn about shutting that down like pretty early on. If it's dry, they're not going to let you do it. But I do, I do miss the days of being able to have a campfire all the time because it used to just not be quite as hot and dry as it is now.
Zig
Yeah. Well, and I expected it, honestly, I expected restrictions to be in by now. And I don't think that, I don't think there are restrictions up there yet. In fact, two days ago, we had monsoon moisture hit on the Mirror Lake Highway area and Bald Mountain, which is near the top of the Mirror Lake Highway, got five inches of rain. That's a lot. Yeah, there was flash flooding. There was like debris flows across the Mirror Lake Highway and stuff like that. If you go do a search for flooding Mirror Lake Highway on the internet right now, you'll see a few videos from that. I didn't hear about that.
Katie
I heard about flooding in Texas, but I didn't hear anything about Utah. I think we're finally getting some moisture next week. I don't know what the mountains have been getting because with a baby, I've just been very limited on how much I can get out. But I know down here, we're getting some moisture and we desperately need it. But I do know a lot of the state's burning right now.
Zig
I think our forecast is over the next 10 days, we should be getting some monsoon moisture up this way. I don't know how much. And I mean, and then you went to, you know how it is up in the Alpine areas. It's its own thing. If it's after one o'clock, you're going to get a storm somewhere, right?
Katie
No, I wanted to ask you about that. Because when I talked to Sean, he was like, it was so weird. we got storms in the morning and I think we were speculating is that a is that a Uintas thing where it it rains more in the morning because it's you know not that it's never happened I've had a couple like rainstorms in the morning here but I would say I could count on one hand how many times I've woken up to to rain in the mountains it's always an afternoon thing here
Zig
I'm trying to remember when he went up do you do you remember what month it was?
Katie
I don't I mean I think it was like June, July, August.
Zig
Yeah. Um, I would say more July timeframe, you're going to, you're going to get more storms. I don't know necessarily in the morning, but you're going to get more storms because we start to get a lot of that monsoonal moisture coming up from Arizona and that area. Right. Um, but the Uintas, I mean, what everybody always says on the Uintas, especially like people that are doing the Highline pass or the Highline trail and hitting all those high passes and stuff like that is you want to get over in the morning because the afternoon is when you're going to get the thunderstorms and get the moisture.
Katie
So maybe he just had a fluke. Maybe it was just one of those times that things switch up for whatever reason.
Zig
Yeah, maybe so. And a lot of it, I think part of the reason I was so excited about that trip that he did is because I had actually planned to do that trip last year and do something similar. And the weekend I was going to do it, it was forecasting three to four inches of snow. It was like the second week in September and like all of a sudden we were going to have a snowstorm and I'm like, yeah, I don't feel like dealing with that. So I went, I went to a lower, in the, in that whole national forest conglomerate. I went to a lower up in Cache County area.
Katie
That's another thing I wanted to ask about is, kind of seasonality of, you know, when does, I know it's the mountains and anything can happen with that with that big caveat you know when when does winter weather typically start to kind of show itself in the in the Uintas
Zig
so a lot of people will kind of base their Uinta adventures based on mirror like highway being open or closed typically the highway is going to close sometime in November although this last year with the way it was I think it didn't close until December and there's actually a camera a Utah department of transportation camera at bald mountain pass which is the top of the Mary lake highway and then there's another one at wolf creek pass which is the top of highway 35 which kind of goes to the south slope area and you can look those up and see if there's any snow up there or anything like that they're they're live cameras typically they won't close the road until it's deep enough they can't push it anymore basically so once the plows can't go over they close the gate and then it's just fodder for the snowmobiles on the road or people cross country ski it in fact off the north slope coming out of Evanston And there's an area where there's several winter yurts that people can cross-country ski into and stuff like that. I've always thought about going in with that, maybe with an ice auger and seeing if I can ice fish one of these lakes or something.
Katie
So when does that typically happen?
Zig
Closure is sometime in the November, December timeframe. And then it will open up. Typically, the target that people will usually say is the gates are usually open and you can actually drive. It's passable to drive and they've pushed enough snow that you can get through around Memorial Day.
Katie
And then as an angler, just what time of year are you starting to risk kind of getting hit by one of those storms? You know, the road might still be open. And again, I know this. I know you can get snow in July in most of the mountains. But like I think of September in Colorado as being like pretty safe, but you might start to get snow near the end of it.
Zig
Yeah, I would say September, late September, early October. You're going to get some weather. I mean, this year I went into Henry's Fork Trailhead in the second week of October, I think it was. And we had light snow flurries on the way in. We had snow flurries hiking in, and then we had maybe upper 40s, lower 50s for the day for fishing. And the river was perfect until about the point the sun was getting pretty low angle. And then everything started to ice up, and we said, okay, it's time to start hiking back out. But I've also gone in. I've gone in close to my birthday, which is around Thanksgiving. And, you know, throwing on some gators on some boots and hiked through three to six inches of snow and gone and hit a few lakes that still are ice off.
Katie
So, yeah, you never you never really know. We were at a wedding in Utah the last I think the last weekend in June and we got snow at that wedding. So, I mean, granted, we were we were on top of the wedding was on top of a mountain, but we did get snow.
Zig
Yeah, I believe it. Was that this year?
Katie
Yeah. Yeah. A couple weeks ago.
Zig
Yeah, yeah, there was some good snowstorms in June up in the Uintas. You know, everything opened up. Everybody was excited and went up there. And then all of a sudden, like two weeks later, you had all these images of people up there and waking up to four to six inches of snow on their tents and stuff. In fact, I took a youth group third week of June up, took them about two miles in, got him summited up onto one of the peaks, got a few kids and their first fish ever. And, you know, taught him how to cook a rainbow on the stone in the campfire and stuff like that. So kind of getting him into the outdoors. And I think it was two weeks later, right around just before the 4th of July, there was another big storm up there. And people were complaining about four inches of snow right where we were camped. And the whole time we were there, it was maybe 65.
Katie
Perfect weather.
Zig
Yeah, 65. It got down, one night it got down to about 37. So it was a little chilly that night, but yeah.
Katie
Well, is there anything we didn't cover that you think is worth mentioning? I know we didn't get super deep into the fishing, but I feel like the Uintas are, it sounds like a fairly standard mountain fishing. Like if, you know, the trout are, excluding the tiger muskies, the trout are predictable sizes. You know, most people would have the gear they need for that. But is there anything specific to the Uintas that you think is worth hitting before we wrap up?
Zig
Not well. I mean, it's just for being right in the middle of the desert. I guess that's one of the things that it is high alpine desert. So you need to make sure you're hydrating well, especially if you're not used to altitude. You know, and that's that's pretty common alpine, right? There are there are some hidden gems up there. There are some places where people are going to tell you they've got lakes where they're pulling out some monster cutthroat or some monster brookies, but you're never going to drag out of them where that lake actually is. You might get a hint of a drainage or something like that, you know. So there are some hidden gems up there. It's just a matter of doing some research and being willing to go up and check it out. There's also a lot of history. There's, you know, there's rumors of a lost Spanish gold mine. There's people that talk about experiences with Bigfoot up there. And, you know, so there's always interesting things up there. But, yeah, I think one of the biggest thing is just it's two hours, really. From Salt Lake, it's an hour and a half to two hours to hit these trails. You can be up in some beautiful areas. You know, right now, because of the way, because of the temperatures and stuff like that, the beetle kill is really heavy. So you just got to be careful with where you're camping and be aware of that and figure out what your risk is going to be. But there are definitely some surprises up there. I'll put it that way. I went up with a couple of buddies. We did a day trip. We went into a musky lake and two tiger trout lakes or what was supposed to be only tiger trout lakes. And we hit one of the lakes on the way back because my buddy hadn't had a great day fishing on the other lakes. And he just really wanted to get into something. And on the shallow end, he actually caught a cutthroat in a lake that is not supposed to have cutthroat. And I even talked with the DWR biologist about that lake. And he's like, no, I can't find any stalking records whatsoever. But this was a good, I would say, 16-inch cutthroat that he was caught out of there.
Katie
That's a positive reverse from what it normally is. Like, oh, there's not supposed to be brook trout in here, but here they come. Yeah, yeah.
Zig
So it was really fun to find that. So there's still surprises up there.
Katie
I feel like if you go far enough into the mountains pretty much anywhere, you'll get surprises. And that's kind of the beauty of it.
Zig
Yeah, exactly.
Katie
All right, Zig. Well, it was another fun one. I'm sure it won't be the last one we do. But I appreciate you taking the time for this and talking about the windows. I still haven't made it over there, but I will at some point.
Zig
You got to get over here. And when you do, let me know. You know, one of my big surprises was last year I hiked in about eight miles into an area. Normally when I go in, I'm going into areas that I've got at least five, six lakes that I can hit. This was a single lake up at the top. It was a headwaters lake. And I caught some cutthroat up there and I got talking with a DWR biologist and that lake hadn't been stocked since the 1980s. So natural reproduction, I was like, cool, bonus, right?
Katie
Doesn't get better than that.
Zig
Just icing on the top.
Katie
Absolutely. Well, Zig, thank you again. I'm sure we'll talk soon and take care.
Zig
Okay. Thank you.
Katie
All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
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