Catherine Pass - Lake Mary - Twin Lakes Pass 8/25/07

A great late summer hike that begins up Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City, Utah, loops into the Brighton ski area and back near the town of Alta in the Wasatch Mountain Range.

This was an amazing late summer hike at a very high elevation. The trail passes many lakes and reaches a peak overlooking Brighton, Alta and Heber Valley--it's definitely on my favorites list. Early in the hike there were beautiful views when looking back at the mountains downhill.
Soon we reached a beautiful open meadow that was still very green this time of year.

One mile in we crested overlooking Lake Catherine and Brighton ski area. From here I took a right to Sunset Peak, then returned and went down into this basin, passing Lake Catherine, Dog Lake and Lake Mary.

This is from the top of Sunset Peak looking East. The beginning of the hike to here was quite crowded--a very popular hike, so I recommend leaving early in the a.m. to avoid the crowds. But once we descended into the Brighton ski area (Lake Catherine and beyond) we were pretty much alone.

From the peak overlooking Heber Valley.

Coming back down to Lake Catherine.

This is looking back after passing Lake Mary.

Next the train headed into forested area then out and traversed over to the Millicent Lift at Brighton.

Heading west after reaching the Millicent Lift, we approached the Twin Lakes. We headed up around the right side of Twin Lakes to the ridge shown on the right of this photo, then dipped down into Grizzly Gulch from the lowest point of the ridge shown in this photo.

Here's a shot from the ridge above Twin Lakes Reservoir.

This is looking down into Grizzly Gulch and toward the Salt Lake Valley.

Getting there: The trailhead to Catherine Pass is at as far as you can get by road up Little Cottonwood Canyon, just before Albion Basin Campground. A free shuttle was provided from Alta resort up to the trailhead, so we could have parked near the Alta ski resort. We drove 2 vehicles up, leaving one at the bottom of Grizzly Gulch where we ended the hike--8.3 miles up Little Cottonwood Canyon by the Forest Service garage. John Veranth's book "Hiking the Wasatch" is a great resource for these hikes (I pasted several hikes together into this one loop from his book). This map does not connect all the routes we took, but it's close (we went North around Twin Lakes Reservoir instead of South). The hike was about 7 1/2 miles roundtrip.