Red Pine Lake
Yep! It has been a minute since I posted. Life is busy for me but I did get the opportunity to go on a great (but difficult 😓) hike/backpacking trip. I took my oldest son on an overnight backpacking trip to Red Pine Lake.
Red Pine Lake is a 4 mile in and another 4 mile out trail that starts up Little Cottonwood Canyon. The trailhead actually is the starting point for quite a few different hikes. This is the same trailhead that I posted about when I wrote about Gloria Falls. But I digress. The hike starts off easy enough for even young children. Once you get beyond Gloria Falls, the trail grading begins to increase and starts to become steeper.
It follows this trend the rest of the hike. Progressively getting steeper until you get near the end. I would say the hardest part of this trail is the last 1/3. Doing this with our overnight packs was pretty difficult. Even still, it was a beautiful hike and worth the effort. The lake and surrounding area is gorgeous!
We made pretty decent time. I think we clocked it at about 4 hours or so up. Unfortunately this is a popular cite for other backpackers as well and there were quite a few other people up here. It made finding a spot in the trees somewhat challenging. Still, we were able to find a pretty decent place. Unfortunately there was a fire restriction so we didn't get to use the fire pit too much.
I was looking forward to using my hammock tent again, as I have only used it once since I've purchased it. My son packed up our 3 man tent that we usually use for backpacking trips. I need to give the hammock one more shot, but I'm not too sure it's my style 😆. I struggled to get comfortable (possibly because I'm a side sleeper 🤔) and I didn't get very good sleep.
The view from our camping spot was gorgeous! We had a decent view of the lake and on the other side we had an awesome view of a valley. We really enjoyed this spot. They say you can fish the lake, but many that I have talked to say they don't have great luck catching anything. Supposedly there are trout in here. There is another lake about another mile further up the trail called Upper Red Pine Lake. I've heard its a better spot to do some catching at. This hike has everything I look for in a backpack trail though! Trees, firepit, lake, and fishing!
We made our way down in the morning. On our way down I just happened to look to my right, and I saw it! THE LEGENDARY "KING BOLETE"! Aka Boletus edulis 🍄. I have recently gotten interested in wild mushroom foraging and this was the first mushroom I have been able to find. We were stoked! We picked about 5-10 lbs of mushroom. Most of them were too buggy and bad. I now know what to look for in this specific mushroom and which are good picks. This is the amount I ended up with once I was finished. It was about equivalent to 4 small packages you might buy at Smith's.
Those mushrooms were delcious! 😋 They are my favorite mushroom thus far that I have tried. Now I just need to find a morel. I intend on posting about my mushroom adventures more in the future. Anyway, thanks for stopping by.