Fishlake National Forest
Feature by Jim Drysdale


I had a feeling that with summer being in full stride car camping was going to be a whip. Such thoughts as obtaining grandiose monk-like inner peace in the serenity of the wild were likely to go belly-up on me. Still, I wanted to not drive too far, and knowing that the RV clans would be out in mass, I rationalized thinking, well, how bad could it really be? Though I also knew that screaming kids would roust me out of my sleepless tent. I could picture each and every one of them swooping around the campground like circling banshees at some ungodly hour in the morning. I have been through this too many times… Yes they're just harmless kids having fun but they truly know that they have a special mission in life - and that is to make me crazy.

So there I was, tent pitched at one of the Fish Lake areas national forest campgrounds, following a fruitless search for a more isolated spot. And sure enough, a group of reveling, chirpy gen-x punks and assorted older spares were the icing on the cake that eventually drove me out of there as if I were a mouse in a barn full of rat snakes. Seems as though I was out in the open and so were they, right next door - and every time I went to ride my bike off into the woods, or go to the store, grab a meal at the diner, take a nap, go for a hike, scout around for some fly fishing streams… they were all there when I came back. They never left to go anywhere. Their entire activities from what I could tell were horseshoes, giggling, breaking off into smaller subsets with endless prattling, and then they'd reconvene at the picnic table every so often when the green Jell-O was served up. I figured, Hell man why not just roll out a keg if your gonna hang around the whole damn time… Its amazing to me how people can cart these mobile homes filled with their entire earthly belongings 100s of miles to incredible places such as Fish Lake - and then just spread out the lawn chairs, run their generators 16 hours a day, and procreate.

So I packed up and struck off on another search. I went way up the road away from the gapers - to the 4-wheeler crowd up on the plateau, likely better off I figured…and there, in the greatness of Fishlake National Forest I saw what I was looking for. It was remote, wooded, austere country. Even had my own private meadow up there, though it was a bit noisy at times.

wildfire haze from afar over Zed's Mountain, Fishlake NF

hangin' out in my own private meadow at last

There I got down to the business of having fun and taking it all in. This area has long since been trying to lure me back, having first visited over 10 years ago. Quite interesting geology up in these mountains - as their make-up is of a fault block 'horst-graben' structure. This kind of geology is pretty common in that it more or less makes up the general structural layout of the Great Basin. Only Fish Lake is on a somewhat smaller and more palatable scale. The actual down faulted portion of the area (i.e., Fish Lake itself), comprises what we rockheads like to call a 'graben'. Conversely, Fishlake Hightop on the west and Mytoge Mountain on the east form the 'horst' sections of this structure. The lake is ten miles long, a couple of miles wide, deep and rich enough to harbor a famous stock of trophy Mackinaw. These (more widely known as Lake Trout) are some serious weight-loss-challenged critters. Largest one caught this year weighed in at 32 lbs. Not bad, seeing as how there was a mere 21-pounder mounted on the wall at one of the restaurants, that looked like the fish equivalent of a moose head. Kind of an oversized thing that's in your face and hard to miss.

My first full day was spent hiking up Fishlake Hightop. On the hike up the 'Top I witnessed the more subtle (yet no less wild) portion of the Wasatch country that I had come to see. This was some nice land up high. It busted my lungs a bit in getting up there. The trail was much steeper than I would've guessed. The people down low with their 4-wheelers had vanished further and further away with every step.

(Fishlake Hightop trailhead

The pics above show basaltic rock that make up the resistant high and somewhat rugged plateau. Aspens were astounding, despite this being a season of shriveled leaves (late spring storm this year had frozen the leaves after they sprouted). But it was still great. The riding possibilities look pretty good in areas where the plateau is a little more accessible. I did not ride much though as I was primarily into hiking/photography mode.

One note… I had to break out the empty canteen and fill it up with some of this hopefully good trough water at the point at which it came out of the pipe (before spilling into the trough). I was short on water. It tasted good, and hopefully my cast iron gullet will get me through. But if I drop off the face of the earth for a while you'll know why.

Happy Exploring,
Jim

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