Brighton Lakes and Wildflowers

We've been hiking to Catherine Pass (up Little Cottonwood Canyon) every summer for years now, and from Sunset Peak you can look down and see Lakes Mary, Martha, and Catherine all lined up in a row. For years now I've been saying "Someday we'll do THAT hike from the other canyon, and see all three lakes"— but then I love the Catherine Pass hike so much that I can't bring myself to do anything different. 

But. This year was the year. We decided to start from Big Cottonwood and do the other end of the loop, hopefully ending at the same place: Lake Catherine. You're going to think this is weird, but I was actually quite nervous about it as I fell asleep the night before. Our time that week was really limited (we were getting ready to go out of town, along with a bunch of other things on the schedule) so we didn't have time to do both hikes, and I was feeling worried that we'd be disappointed and wish we'd done our same old favorite.

Well. I needn't have worried, of course. Our mountains never disappoint!

We left our house at 5:30 a.m. so we could get going early. It was worth it, because for most of the way up, we were the only ones on the trail! It gets really busy this time of year, so we were happy to have it to ourselves. The three girls came with me, as they always do, and Teddy wanted to come this year too! He was such a good hiker when we were at Snow Canyon, I knew he could do it, and he DID. He pretended that he had his imaginary bunny friend with him ("Buttercup"), and he was so cheery and brave, even when he fell and scraped his hand! Sweet good boy. 

I do sort of miss the times when ALL the kids used to hike this with me. But the older boys are too busy now (and honestly, they never cared about the wildflowers quite as much as I did…), and I have to confess it is really much easier NOT to have to bring a baby in the hiking backpack!

It was really pretty when the sun started to hit the tops of the peaks.

You start this hike at Brighton, and the trail winds up under the ski lifts for awhile. (Teddy was very interested in those.) Right away there are lots of wildflowers all over the meadows.

The bluebells were amazing this year! There were huge swaths of them growing all over the hillsides. It reminded me of England!

Pretty sure this is Single-head Sunflower here. There were huge fields of this.

This Blue Penstemmon was SO vibrant!

Lovely little delicate Columbine.

This is not one of the three lakes. :) It was a little pool that spilled over the edge of the hill–

making this pretty waterfall!

It had rained quite a bit the night before, so there were some areas that were still wet on the trail. At one point you scramble up a little slope beneath a sort of dam (Lake Mary is a man-made lake/reservoir) and it was basically like walking in a stream. There are enough rocks that we could mostly avoid getting too wet, but naturally a couple of the children slipped in and got shoes full of water. It was fine, though. We didn't mind.

And then we were at Lake Mary! It was beautiful.

It was surrounded by wildflowers!

After that we lost the trail for a bit, but found it again and came out at Lake Martha. It's a smaller lake, but also very pretty. We could see some snow on the rocky slopes above it!

After hiking through some shady forest, you head up higher where there are HUGE sunny meadows of flowers. I think these are Showy Goldeneye. They are such a beautiful yellow! I could not get enough of them.

Here's the other side of that view—thousands of flowers both ways! :)

After awhile we got close to some snow! The children were so excited!

Everyone had been a little droopy and tired before this point, but as soon as I said they could go touch the snow, they were filled with new energy and went racing off to get close to it! It was a pretty hot day, even in the shade, so it was fun to be right next to the nice cool snow!

As we hiked on, we looked across a big grassy meadow, and saw a deer! Later on the trail we saw another one—or maybe the same one again!

Near the snow there had been a little turnoff, but we kept hiking up and were soon scrambling up a very steep, rocky slope—maybe the hardest part of the hike yet. About three-fourths of the way up, I suddenly recognized where we were—right below the Catherine's Pass overlook where we have always hiked in other years! It seemed different coming at it from the other angle. We hadn't necessarily meant to go all the way up there (we had intended to turn around at Lake Catherine itself) but since we were almost there, we continued on up! "It's pretty hard, but I can do hard things!" panted Teddy as we scrambled. Oh, I love him.

We made it to our usual picture-taking rock! See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

We ate our little granola bar snack, had lots of drinks of water, and said hi to the friendly little chipmunks. Or whatever this is. Ground chuck?

 And then we headed back down toward Lake Catherine!

 We had never been this close to it before, having always stayed up at the top of the pass. You can overlook it at a few different points.

Then we went back and took the turnoff to get all the way down to the shore of the lake. It was so beautiful there!

We stopped to play on the snow again for a little while before heading back down. Snow in summer is always exciting! Especially when flanked by wildflowers in every direction.

So many bluebells!

And lupine.

This patch of flowers is elephant head--that faint purple line you can see (in front of the bluebells). You can see it up close here.

I loved this part. It was like a rock garden.

It was a beautiful day and a wonderful hike–we weren't disappointed in the least! (Although it has me wondering if every year now we will want to do BOTH hikes! It would be fun to go up one canyon and down the other, if we could work out the car parking situation.)