silver lake hike

i figured that as long as we were already up american fork canyon and accomplishing new years goals, i would tick another one off the list - hiking. i looked up a couple of hikes that were nearby our campsite and once we were all awake and packed up in the morning, we headed out to hike. we had decided on the easier of the two that i had narrowed the list down to, but when the trail head for that one was not readily apparent, we pressured beth and bruce into the harder one.

the hike we end up going on was silver lake. not to be confused with the silver lake up little (big?) cottonwood canyon, this one was past tibble creek reservoir, up a windy, rocky, three-mile dirt road to the silver flat reservoir, where the trail head was located.

silver flat reservoir



madeleine all ready to go

the men were kind enough to carry the children while beth and i carried the gear. the hike was beautiful, through aspen trees and with a constantly gorgeous view, but pretty steep at times and this out-of-shape girl definitely felt it in her muscles and joints. randy, who's been training for a marathon, patiently brought up the rear and probably didn't even breathe heavily.

beth, rachel, bruce



another blurry attempt at the view



rachel found the hike quite relaxing

a blurry picture of silver lake at the top. silver lake was really beautiful. unfortunately, there weren't any good wading areas and madeleine wanted to get in the water really badly. she kept trying to jump off cliffs, so after eating lunch, we didn't take much time to stick around. we figured the life of our daughter was worth the trade off in exploration.

even though randy wasn't that physically stressed by the hike, he did break a sweat. can you tell where the backpack was?

rachel hanging out in the backpack during lunch

loaded up for the hike back down