Lake Blanche Trail, September 2018

Total Distance: 6.9 mi
Total Elevation Gain: 2,706 ft

I owe my work a big shout out for making this hike happen for me. Each year, the company that I work for, Bose, asks for volunteers to go to college career fairs. While most of my coworkers sign up for their alma maters, I look for the colleges that allow me to go explore new areas – this is how I found myself at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Perhaps what made this trip extra special was that my sister Kristen, who was travel nursing in Virginia at the time, decided to meet me there. Fall in Salt Lake City partly paid for by my company? Who could say no to that.

We spent the first day exploring downtown and the Botanical Gardens. Every time I visit a city out West, I’m always struck at how close the mountains are. Living in Boston, I need to drive at least two hours to be in any real nature and I forget how spectacular it is to just look out at the horizon and see the endless mountain landscape. That day, I was already starting to fall in love with Salt Lake City.

But, needless to say, we were both itching to see what the mountains surrounding us had to offer. Going of a recommendation, we settled on hiking to Lake Blanche.

In the interest of saving money, we decided to not get a rental car for this trip. So you can imagine our Uber driver’s surprise when we got in his car and asked to be taken to a trailhead 20 miles south in a pretty secluded area.

While on the way, our driver mentions that he doesn’t think we’ll have service at the trail. I quickly try to set a scheduled pick-up time for an Uber only to find out that that feature hasn’t made its way to the Salt Lake City area yet. So, with a lot of optimism, and clearly not much forward-thinking, we hop out of the Uber at the trailhead and start our trail hoping for the best.

My opinion may be biased because of our perfect weather and stunning fall foliage, but this was easily one of the most beautiful trails I’ve ever been on. We both quickly forgot about our potential return trip disaster and just took in the amazing colors that comprise Utah in the Fall.

Funny part is, this was also one hardest trails I’ve ever done. Not because of the terrain, rather because my sea-level-dwelling self was not prepared to be hiking at 6000′ and ascending to 9000′.

Ultimately, this was such a special trail for me. The fall colors were breathtaking. My sister was there leading the way. And we had the trail and the destination, Lake Blanche, all to ourselves.

As we started to descend, there was an unspoken feeling of worry between us. Neither of us wanted to think about what would happen if we didn’t have service at the bottom of the trail. Rather, we just focused on enjoying the nature and enjoying what we had left of the trail.

It wasn’t until we emerged from the trail that my sister was brave enough to turn her phone back on and, to our resounding sighs of relief, we had service! We called an Uber and not 10 minutes later, we were in the back of a car emphatically apologizing to the driver for how bad we smelled. The best part of this ending, however, was that the driver had a Bose Mini sitting on his dashboard and we spent the entire car ride back to town talking all about Bose. When he finally dropped us off at our hotel, my sister and I thanked him again for rescuing us and he wisely commented that this is how vacations should be – stress free.

It’s hikes like these that make me so grateful for nature, for the changing seasons, for a sister who’s always up for an adventure, and for technology to rescue us when our plans are made on a whim.