Wednesday hiking...

More from the "I can't believe I never took this hike" series. Today after work we headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon, where we hiked up to the Brighton lakes... Lake Mary, Martha and Katherine. These were the lakes we could see from our Katherine's Pass/Sunset Peak hike a few weeks ago.

The trail starts at Brighton ski resort, and that section of the trail is bit of trudge. We headed up the trail or what my hiking partner had thought was the trail, because it is the way she has always gone before. They were re-vegetating the area, but since we didn't know where else to go we headed up. Suddenly some guy appears, and he is yelling at us "That is not the trail, that is not the trail" we turn and look at him and he starts ranting, and ranting, about how people keep using that trail and how it's "not the trail". Eventually he tells us where the real trail head is, and continues ranting and yelling at us things like "Don't enjoy, just destroy" and spewing about how he lives there has worked at Brighton for years and "That is not the trail!" and other weird stuff. We are standing, staring, dumbfounded, not really understanding why this guy is being downright RUDE. We eventually retreat back and head in the direction where he said the real trail started and are just reeling at how rude this guy was. All he really had to do was nicely ask us to walk back to where the not very well marked real trailhead was. You know the old lesson from my Grandma "You catch more flys with honey than vinegar"

The weird episode with bizarre, rude guy really got my friend Rebecca going. She bombed up that hill, proving to me that I really need to get in better shape, as I was having a hard time keeping up. Eventually the trail headed up over the ridge and off of the ski slope and up to the lakes. The lakes of course were beautiful, but the amazing thing about today's hike was the wildflowers. The flowers were absolutely stunning today, making us quickly forget the odd start to today's hike. I wish my pictures did them justice!!!