Trip Report: Backpacking - Cuberant Lakes - Uintas
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Backpacking - Cuberant Lakes - Uintas By Reid Gardner |
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| HIKE | 09/05/2026 | MOD+ |
| I had originally organized a Labor Day weekend backpack into Garfield Basin to climb several peaks, but the forecast became questionable as the weekend approached. With a three-hour drive and an 11-mile backpack into a remote basin, I decided to change plans. Saturday still looked good and Sunday morning looked workable, so everyone agreed to a more relaxed one-night trip to the Cuberant Lakes. I wanted to revisit this area, as it was where my dad took me on my first backpacking trip about 16 years ago. We hiked roughly three miles in Saturday morning and set up camp near Cuberant Lake #4. Afterward, we walked back to #3 to fish and hopefully meet my friends Joe and Cindy, who were hiking in later. Erik and I fished while Chase, Bryan, and Tali hung out with us, which made it surprisingly social. Whenever one of us caught something, everyone came over to see it and take pictures. Cuberant #3 was slow, producing only one cutthroat for me, so we eventually returned to #4, where Erik and I both caught a bunch of fish. We spent the afternoon fishing, talking, and hanging around the lake. After a summer full of more demanding backpacking trips, it was nice to have no objective, and I even managed to pack in a couple cans of Guinness! Joe and Cindy never found us, and my inReach refused to send messages. As it turned out, they were happily camped at another lake only about half a mile away, completely unbeknownst to us. (Sorry, Joe and Cindy!) That evening we ate dinner, Bryan facilitated a fun game of Jeopardy, and everyone turned in fairly early. Thunderstorms were forecast around noon Sunday, so we packed up and hiked out that morning. Bryan and Tali headed home separately, but while driving down Mirror Lake Highway with Chase and Erik, I started complaining that we were going home before noon without a cloud in the sky. They agreed. Erik suggested fishing Star Lake. Despite growing up visiting many of the lakes along Mirror Lake Highway, I had somehow never been there. Trial Lake was packed, but after bushwhacking roughly half a mile to Star Lake, we found only a handful of people. Erik headed to a spot on the far side while Chase and I stayed near the dam, where I had plenty of room to fly cast. There was very little fish activity, and after a while I had mostly stopped trying. While talking with Chase, I left my fly sitting nearly motionless in the water and suddenly felt a tug. Somehow, my least attentive fishing of the weekend produced the best fish: a large tiger trout by Uinta lake standards. We spent a couple hours relaxing at the lake before bushwhacking back out and heading home. It was not the peakbagging trip I had originally planned, and in hindsight the weather ended up being good. Still, given the forecast we had when the decision needed to be made, changing plans was reasonable, and the alternative turned into a great weekend. I got to revisit the site of my first backpacking trip, fish, visit a new lake, spend time with good company, and apparently learn that I am capable of a little backpacking whimsy after all. Thanks to Bryan, Tali, Chase, and Erik for rolling with the change of plans and making it such a fun trip. |
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