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Approx. 22 Km (13.5 Mi) round trip
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Just over 2,400 feet in elevation climb
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Uinta National Forest, Utah
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Erickson Basin is a small, but beautiful, piece of land within the vast wilderness of the Uinta National Forest. The trail, starting at the back of Ledge Fork Campground, starts out pleasantly graded, comfortably gaining elevation. After scrambling over the occaisional fallen tree, and crossing a few streams and a river, a sign presents the option of either heading toward Erickson Basin or Island Lake. Being a loop trail, this decision is more about which destination you want to visit first. You will find your way back to the trailhead either way.
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Island Lake Path - Left hand side of sign at trail fork.
Choosing Island Lake as your first destination will lead you up a periodically muddy trail and across a couple stream crossings before you come to the Island Lake sign. Just to the left of the sign is a difficult river crossing. The area just beyond the river has nearly no indication of a trail. At this point you will need to use a map and compass to keep track of your progress. Following the river upstream will only benefit you for half the journey; after that though, if you can spot Kimberly Peak you will be in good shape. Island Lake is just Southeast of Kimberly Peak.
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Erickson Basin Path - Right hand side of sign at trail fork.
Choosing Erickson Basin as your first destination will have you follow a river up a valley for a short ways with one additional major crossing. After one set of steep switchbacks you will happen upon a marsh basin. (We believe used to be a lake, or is at a certain time of year.) Finding the Cairns past the Marsh will prove difficult, we would best describe them as being located to the south-east side of the marsh. These will lead you quickly up another set of steep switchbacks. After that you will be in Erickson Basin, just find South Erickson Lake and you will see some fire pits already built around some flat open ground.
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Trip completed in 2 nights and 2 days.
*This time includes filming, trash collection, and meal times. Features
Recommendations:
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Trail completed in late spring, May of 2016
Trash Collected: 7 lbs of discarded wrappers, cans, glass, caps, and mysteriously, a single shoe. Possible Hazards to Encounter:
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Recap
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The Erickson Basing loop is a trip we wanted to do because it seemed like a good 3-day trip for us as novices. It was a nice surprise to us that the journey only took us 2 nights and 2 days. We arrived at the trailhead at 8:09 PM on a Thursday. The campsite was packed to the brim; but, the trail parking was empty. The campground official informed us that parking for backpackers was at no charge. So we checked our map and rushed up the trail so we could reach our first campsite before the sun fell too far. Our plan was to head up toward Island lake first, then go around to Erickson Basin, little did we know our adventure was on just getting interesting. About halfway between the trailhead and the trail fork we found an open meadow with some fire pits already built far enough from the trail. We set camp, threw up a bear bag, and called night 1 a success.
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Night 1 - Day 1
As morning came we refreshed with water from the river on the other side of the trail. We intended to use this campsite as our final camp on the last night because it was so comfortable. We packed up and left our camp at 9:49 AM. Moving up the trail from here was quite easy, not steep at all really. With a couple stream crossings and some muddy trail, we were hoping it was going to get more challenging. It did, when we reached the first river crossing and realized we had to cross the river without any decent stepping stones or bridge, natural or otherwise. This was a good indicator for the rest of the trip, there are no bridges here, or anywhere beyond. So we did our best to find a good spot to cross, this happened to be upstream a little ways where we found a large tree fallen over the river. Crossing here wasn't so hard; but, during the confusion of getting across the river we mistakenly took the wrong way up the trail fork, because we had gone so far upstream we didn't even see the trail split. We were covering ground far more quickly than we realized, as we were already at the marshes before we even noticed the map wasn't matching up with our surroundings. So we pressed on, we figured that if we got to higher ground we would find out our location. We came across North Erickson Lake before long, and after a bit of examination decided it was Island Lake, and we should make camp so we could climb a peak. This was at 1:44 PM. We went toward the western peak of the basin, thinking it was Kimberly, until we stumbled upon South Erickson Lake. There is a well hidden sign on a tree to the north of South Erickson Lake which identifies it. Here we knew we had gone the wrong way; but, we weren't lost. So we made camp and climbed that unnamed peak next to South Erickson Lake. After walking around for a bit, we started noticing the vast amount of bear droppings and even some tracks next to both lakes. We had no idea how old they were; but, we were already prepared for it. We threw up the bear bag again and went to bed.
Night 2 - Day 2
Met with quite the relief that our food wasn't snatched from the tree we hung it on, we purified a bunch of water for the rest of the trip and consulted our map. Knowing where we were, we made our way toward Kimberly Peak with haste. We realized that we covered so much ground the day before that we could probably finish the rest of the trail in the remaining daylight. We examined the ridge-line leading to Kimberly from atop the unnamed peak the day before. So we had our heading, and a decent idea of what we were up against. The trip to Kimberly Peak was easier than we expected though. Before Noon we were looking down the valley we thought we had ascended. It was beautiful, and we were going to go through it as soon as we could. The forest and vegetation here was much more dense, in some areas it even slowed us down. We hadn't spotted a single cairn since we crested the ridge to the south of Kimberly Peak. The only indication we had that we were closing in on the fork that led us astray was the river crossing that leads to Island Lake. Immediately after we crossed we found the sign, consulted the map and knew exactly where we were.
We only saw two people on our way up, they were day hikers from the ledge fork campground. On the way down we found two backpacking groups, and some more day hikers. This destination is clearly a lot more lively on the weekends; so, we were glad we arrived Thursday evening.
As morning came we refreshed with water from the river on the other side of the trail. We intended to use this campsite as our final camp on the last night because it was so comfortable. We packed up and left our camp at 9:49 AM. Moving up the trail from here was quite easy, not steep at all really. With a couple stream crossings and some muddy trail, we were hoping it was going to get more challenging. It did, when we reached the first river crossing and realized we had to cross the river without any decent stepping stones or bridge, natural or otherwise. This was a good indicator for the rest of the trip, there are no bridges here, or anywhere beyond. So we did our best to find a good spot to cross, this happened to be upstream a little ways where we found a large tree fallen over the river. Crossing here wasn't so hard; but, during the confusion of getting across the river we mistakenly took the wrong way up the trail fork, because we had gone so far upstream we didn't even see the trail split. We were covering ground far more quickly than we realized, as we were already at the marshes before we even noticed the map wasn't matching up with our surroundings. So we pressed on, we figured that if we got to higher ground we would find out our location. We came across North Erickson Lake before long, and after a bit of examination decided it was Island Lake, and we should make camp so we could climb a peak. This was at 1:44 PM. We went toward the western peak of the basin, thinking it was Kimberly, until we stumbled upon South Erickson Lake. There is a well hidden sign on a tree to the north of South Erickson Lake which identifies it. Here we knew we had gone the wrong way; but, we weren't lost. So we made camp and climbed that unnamed peak next to South Erickson Lake. After walking around for a bit, we started noticing the vast amount of bear droppings and even some tracks next to both lakes. We had no idea how old they were; but, we were already prepared for it. We threw up the bear bag again and went to bed.
Night 2 - Day 2
Met with quite the relief that our food wasn't snatched from the tree we hung it on, we purified a bunch of water for the rest of the trip and consulted our map. Knowing where we were, we made our way toward Kimberly Peak with haste. We realized that we covered so much ground the day before that we could probably finish the rest of the trail in the remaining daylight. We examined the ridge-line leading to Kimberly from atop the unnamed peak the day before. So we had our heading, and a decent idea of what we were up against. The trip to Kimberly Peak was easier than we expected though. Before Noon we were looking down the valley we thought we had ascended. It was beautiful, and we were going to go through it as soon as we could. The forest and vegetation here was much more dense, in some areas it even slowed us down. We hadn't spotted a single cairn since we crested the ridge to the south of Kimberly Peak. The only indication we had that we were closing in on the fork that led us astray was the river crossing that leads to Island Lake. Immediately after we crossed we found the sign, consulted the map and knew exactly where we were.
We only saw two people on our way up, they were day hikers from the ledge fork campground. On the way down we found two backpacking groups, and some more day hikers. This destination is clearly a lot more lively on the weekends; so, we were glad we arrived Thursday evening.
Backpacking Recommendations
Please feel free to download the following files for a comprehensive list of the equipment one of our backpackers took on this trip.
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