On the 2nd day of July, Bill and I drove many miles through the Southwestern mountains bordering the Uinta Wilderness Area. We were looking for a shorter route to the trail head into Grandaddy Basin, but didn't find one. On the map I was using it looked like a shorter way in from SR 150, but there was a 500 foot vertical drop due to Lightning Ridge cliffs. We finally went down to State Road 35 and over to the North Fork of the Duchesne River. We didn't start out this way, because up until recently this was not a paved road, and my map still showed it as a gravel road. The map also showed a side canyon from the Duchesne Northfork, Hades Canyon, that went up to the Grandview Trail Head. We drove up to the trail head and that was the trail we wanted. At that point we came home. We would do this hike another day.

Tuesday the 8th of July, Bill, Matt, Don, and I, drove up to Grandview Trail Head, a drive of 3 hours from Ogden. The last half hour was up a steep one lane dirt road rising almost two thousand feet up into Hades Canyon. We started hiking a little after 9:00 AM and hiked throughout the day, getting back to the car around 7:30 PM. According to my GPS unit, we walked 10 hours and 34 minutes, going 10.43 miles and climbing over a ridge that was 998 feet above where we parked. We parked at 9669 feet. Hades Pass was about 10650 feet. We hiked up a little higher on the slopes to get pictures of the lakes below. Our goal was to hike into Grandaddy Lake and as many other lakes as we had time for. Grandaddy Lake was at 10,289 feet, and is the largest lake inside of the wilderness area. There are about 15 lakes in the basin. We managed to hike over to Betsy Lake and Mohawk Lake. The trail looked quite long so we cut across through the woods to get there, cutting the distance some. We passed many other smaller lakes and ponds, most un-named. Bill and I hiked over to the east end of Grandaddy Lake, to see if we could get to Lodgepole Lake, but it was farther away than we figured. Also it was at least 400 feet below Grandaddy Lake. We did get to a place where we could see it down below through the trees, but decided not to continue on, since the other two had already started back for the car. We caught up with them at the top of Hades Pass. This was the second time that day we climbed over the pass.

This was one of the most beautiful places I have hiked in to, but we were all very sore and tired by the time we got back to the car. We scheduled this hike based on the weather prediction of a very good day. The Uinta Mountains are in an area very hard to predict and it rains at least a little most days up there. We ended up with a perfect day for doing the hike. It wasn't hot or cold, just perfect. Hope you enjoy the pictures.