Gilbride Family Travels: Silver Lake

Weather in Salt Lake City has been odd this year. It remained Winter up until April, became Seattle until the end of May, and now has turned incredibly hot for the past week in particular.

My family is not blessed with an air conditioner - I'm far too cheap to replace which, up until this time, has been a perfectly functioning furnace to add AC. Since the blower has now gone out on that furnace, I may decide to drop the C-Notes for proper ventilation in the house (I doubt it, but the possibility exists).

Since it was 85 degrees today - and humid - we decided to take a drive up into the cool mountains for a little hike around Silver Lake. The elevation at our house is a little over 4,400 feet. The elevation of Silver Lake is 8,800 feet. We looked forward to the drop in temperature as well as the clean, fresh mountain air.

The drive from our house is about 50 minutes over freeway, with 25 minutes of that being through canyon territory. Once we arrived where the lake was, at the summit, we were surprised still see snow on the ground. In speaking with the park ranger, he informed us that it had snowed nearly two feet the previous week, so he was extremely interested to see how much it had melted in just one week. All of this water had made the stream down the canyon into a careening luge of white rapids.

Arriving in the parking lot of the lake, first signs of dirty snow.

View of the Village of Brighton from the parking lot.

The area around the lake is one of the easiest walks, with a boardwalk most of the way making nearly the entire lake wheelchair accessible. We had wanted to take the two mile side trail to the "Twin Lake" reservoir, however, much to our chagrin, the entire trail was still covered in snow the depth of at least four feet - though much, much deeper when you climbed the additional 2,000 feet to the summit of the mountain.

The kids were in heaven. They loved being in snow and feeling warm at the same time. In fact, the weather was so nice that even I was happy with seeing snow.

Side story, yes, that is a cast on Katelyn's arm. She fell and broke her Radius. You would never know it, though. She even fooled the doctor who thought that she was the victim of over protective parents, but came back surprised when we "forced" him to perform an x-ray.

It wasn't all snow, however, there as mentioned before, there is a very nice boardwalk around the lake, we had a snow free walk for most of the trek.

When I was a kid of about 10 years old, my mother used to take me to this lake to fish on weekends. Now, I don't recall ever catching a fish here, but it wasn't for lack of trying or patience. I used to spend my allowance money purchasing fancy flies, and even "Power Bait" in order to ward off the "Gilbride Curse" that I have spoken of in prior posts.

At that age the lake was much larger (or at least seemed much larger). One thing is for certain, there were no grass lands, except in areas where the inlet and outlet traveled. The rest was a sandy or rocky beach area. There also was no boardwalk at that time, you just...walked.

Being a kid, fishing, I was able be near many fortunate men over the weekends who all caught fish. They would see that I was not so lucky and impart some of their wisdom - but alas, it availed nothing.

One such man has held a place in my memory all these years. I do not recall what he looked like - I don't remember the sound of his voice - but what I do remember was how nice he was.

He noticed that I was using a hook with bait. He told me to reel in, and while he was working on my line he gave me a fisherman's lecture about when to use bait, and when to use flies. He released my line and then I found that he had given a fly with a shiny lure. He taught me how to cast properly and how to slowly reel the line in so I could entice a fish to bite.

We fished side by side for most of that morning. We talked. He caught many fish, even let me reel in a couple of them. But in the end, I still didn't catch a dang thing with mine. Seeing as I had all the gadget and gear, he felt bad when it was time to leave. I was sad as he was cleaning up his area and was just looking on, but once he said goodbye and was a little ways away, I looked down at my tether line which remained in pristine condition due to the fact I never had a fish to tether - at least up until this point. He had tethered two big rainbow trout for me and my mother, all without telling me.

I felt very special and I recall continuing to fish as though that hadn't happened. I had a plan that I would "fake" catching a fish, reel it in, and then show my mother one of the gifted fish as my catch. This was all in the hopes of looking like a man.

I did as I had planned, and my mother reacted as I had hoped. It wasn't until a week or so later that she confessed to me that the man had spoken to her on the way out informing her that he had given me a couple of fish. Specifically, he mentioned that he had never seen anyone go that long without a bite. She explained the "curse" to him.

About this time, my mother and I were watching America's Most Wanted, a frequent weekend activity of ours. They were dramatizing a robbery turned murder case and when it came to display the actual mugshot of the killer on TV, both my mother and I gasped in shock at the same time. It was the man who was fishing with me at the lake!!!! We were certain of it. So certain, that she called the hotline and reported his last sighting.

I don't know if it really was him, but the resemblance was uncanny! The crime took place in the Wyoming/Utah border area and these mountains are pretty much that border. Strangely, I felt very famous after this and went around my 4th grade class telling the story to anyone that would listed. After a few disappointments, I was sad to learn that not many kids my age actually watched the show, so they had no idea what I was talking about.

I recollecting that story during this visit, I was sad to see that the sandy/rocky beach which I used to walk on was now a grassy marsh that no doubt provided life and refuge to many creatures, but it made for near impossible fishing.

The water is alive with bacteria, that's for sure.

The area where I used to fish is now just a swamp!

Since we were unable to embark on the hike we wanted, we decided to walk around the rest of the lake. I turned on my phone's GPS tracker to map our walk. Below are some of the best shots of our time.

You see the red line jetting into the water on the South side? That's real - there was so much snow that we walked out on the lake pretty dang far!

The lake was so smooth during the early morning hours. This looks like a Bob Ross painting.

I liked this shot since the outlet of the lake had remained frozen when all the snow started to melt - this caused a flood, looking a bit like a bayou.