When Sir Edmund Hillary of Mount Everest fame hiked the High Uintas -- twice

               South Kings Peak, with Kings Peak rising in the center background.

 THERE'S a legend about Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two men to conquer Mt. Everest in 1953, that he also climbed Kings Peak.

This is actually a true story, but it happened in the summer of 1978 when Sears and Kellwood (an outdoor equipment manufacturer), was testing camping gear in the Yellowstone drainage of the High Uintas.

Hillary, age 59 then, was said to have had little trouble hiking Kings Peak and the Uintas.

No stranger to Utah, Hillary had also floated the Green River during 1969, as part of the centennial commemoration of John Wesley Powell's 1869 original exploration of the area. (Source: http://www.hupc.org)

                                   Kings Peak on its southern side.

And, Sir Hillary had first visited the High Uintas in July of 1962, when he and his family enjoyed a 4-day camping trip in the Granddaddy Basin area.

"New Zealand mountain climber and family thrilled with pack trip into High Uintas areas" was a July 19, 1962 headline in the Uinta Basin Standard newspaper.

Duchesne District Ranger Larry Colton served as a guide for the Hillarys, as the family hiked and fished.

According to the newspaper, Hillary's wife, Lady Louise, and their three children -- Peter, 7, Sarah, 5, and Belinda, 3. -- ventured into the primitive area of the High Uintas.

Sir Hillary was under contract with the U.S. Forest Service to make a report on campgrounds in the western U.S. that year.

            Mirror Lake, with Bald Mountain rising in the background.

The family began at Mirror Lake, backpacked into the Granddaddy Basin area and then returned to Mirror Lake. They did a lot of hiking, but not any serious peaks. Sir Hillary said this trip was for finding "smiling" and not "fierce" peaks, according to the newspaper account.

The only negative to the trip were all the mosquitoes that they encountered, but that they got used to them.

Another Utah newspaper, the Vernal Express, reported that on that 1962 trip, Sir Hillary declared it "absolutely wonderful."

                      The High Uintas, northwest of Mirror Lake.

-A version of this story was also published in the Deseret News on Sept. 22, 2018.

Camp Steiner in its early days: Nearest road nearly 2 miles distant

          Looking down on Camp Steiner and Scout Lake  (center) from Bald Mountain.

CAMP Steiner, in the High Uintas of Utah, is the highest elevation Boy Scout camp in the United States, sitting at 10.400 feet above sea level.
But when did this Scout camp begin?
According to the Great Salt Lake Boy Scouts Council (www.saltlakescouts.org/steiner), Camp Steiner dates back to 1930.
However, the first newspaper reference on the camp was published not until July 17, 1933 in the Salt Lake Telegram.
And, it was the Telegram newspaper on July 27, 1935 that featured Camp Steiner in a lengthy report under the headline of: "125 Salt Lake Boy Scouts go back to nature at Camp Steiner for period of training and play in Lofty Granddaddy Lake area."
Camp Steiner was named for George A. Steiner, general manager of American Linen Supply Company, a key supporter and donor of the facility.
Located around aptly named Scout Lake, this camp is also only a few miles away from Utah's famous Mirror Lake.

                          Mirror Lake, with Bald Mountain in the background.

In 1935, the road through the High Uintas was limited. The Telegram report from that year stated: "The automobile road ends at Mirror Lake, a mile and three-quarters away, and all supplies have to be packed into camp."
(That's not the case today, as the "Mirror Lake Highway" (U-150) slices right through the mountains and even connects with Evanston, Wyoming.)
Back in 1935, a single structure, a log cabin, served as headquarters for the camp. All users slept in tents. It was to be a few years before other cabins were built.

                    A view of the some of the lofty lakes near Camp Steiner.

At least 17 lakes misidentified in the High Uintas

  Mirror Lake, High Uintas, is named correctly, but many other lakes are not.

MAPS are one of the last places you'd expect to find misspellings and inaccuracies. However these source materials aren't always as precise as you hope them to be. Case in point - at least a dozen lakes on the west side of the High Uintas are identified incorrectly on most maps, according to two former summer residents of the area.

John "Jack" Clegg, of Provo and his sister, Patricia C. Christiansen-Burke of Heber City, would both like to set the record straight and get these lakes listed accurately on maps - especially before the origin of some of the names might fade away.

"I think they should be looked at," Clegg said of the map errors.

Clegg's father, "Cardie" spent 56 years working for a union of all irrigation companies having reservoirs on the upper Provo River watershed.

Cardie named at least 17 of the area's lakes himself. Growing up, John Clegg and his sister, Pat, spent many summers working with his father, near Trial Lake.

"Places needed names and there weren't any," Clegg said of the Trial Lake area when his father began working there. "He had no plans to enshrine his friends or relatives (in the naming process)."

Clegg said names were critically needed to help people get around the area and that his father did his best at creating some of those titles.

He said most errors in lake names crept in during the map transcribing process.

                     There are hundreds of lakes in the High Uintas.

One of the most unusual of misspellings is the prominent Blizzard Lake, just south of Bald Mountain Pass. Although it does seem appropriate for a snowstorm name in a high-altitude land where white moisture can fall from the sky in almost any month of the year, blizzard is not accurate for the lake's name.

Clegg said it was originally named Blazzard Lake, after a pioneer family in Kamas that still owns a lumber yard there. Map errors have repeated themselves over the years.

Traipsing around with Clegg and his sister in the Trial Lake area of the Uintas provided a firsthand account at the inaccuracy of some lake names.

Visiting officially named Azure and Rock lakes shows why the names should be reversed.

Located less that 100 yards from each other, the eastern lake - Azure - is actually the one with rocks all around it and even a few large boulders cropping up in the water. Rock Lake to the west, meanwhile, has grasses growing all around it and is partially surrounded by pine trees.

Clegg said this misnamed Rock Lake is the true Azure Lake because of the poignant sky-blue color it assumes under a clear sky.

A visit to so-called Hourglass Lake also proves it is inaccurately named. Circling the lake, there's no hourglass shape visible. However, a spectacle (eyeglasses) shape does exist and that was its original name - Spectacle Lake.

             Mirror Lake, as seen from near the top of Bald Mountain's summit.

Still another wrong name involves Adax Lake, located three miles north of Long Mountain. Sometime at least after 1964, maps started spelling the name from its original Adix form. It was named for Vern Adix, son-in-law of Cardie Clegg, who planted the first fish in the lake.

Yet another misspelling comes with Rhoads Lake. It was originally called Rhodes Lakes, after Ollie L. Rhodes, a friend of Cardie Clegg and poet who featured the Uintas in his writings.

One lake name change that's actually been good is Fire Lake, located west of Trial Lake. Clegg said it was originally "North Fork No. 5." Somehow Five was twisted to Fire.

"That's OK," Clegg said. "That adds a little charm. But it leaves `No. 1 Junior' to the north of `No. 5' with no meaning."

Besides some lakes having wrong names, different maps - Forest Service, U.S. Geological, etc. - don't always use the same title for lakes in the high Uintas. But that's another story.

--Additional Information

The misidentified:

Wrong Name/Original Name

Adax Lake Adix Lake

Azure Lake Rock Lake

Beaver Lake Duck Lake

Blizzard Lake Blazzard Lake

Duck Lake N. Fork No. 6 Lake

Fire Lake North Fork No. 5

Petit Lake Petite Lake

Rhoads Lake Rhodes Lake

Rock Lake Azure Lake

Twin Lakes Lower Twin Lake

Twin Lakes Upper Twin Lake

(-All photographs by Roger Arave.)

(-Distilled from an article by Lynn Arave in the Deseret News, Oct. 27, 1997.)

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net