AUGUST 2010 & AUGUST 2016
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| LOWER RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| POND BELOW RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| OUTLET TO LOWER RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| POND NEAR SMITH FORK PASS LAKE |
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| EAST RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| MOOSE NEAR THE BEGINNING OF THE HIKE |
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| SMITHS FORK PASS LAKE |
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| POND BELOW RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| EAST RED CASTLE LAKE |
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| ABOVE LOWER RED CASTLE LAKE |
Red Castle Lakes is a very scenic area accessed from the China Meadows trailhead, located about twenty miles outside the town of Mountain View, Wyoming. It is unique in that the mountains have the reddish color of southern Utah, but are located in the Uinta Mountains near the Utah/Wyoming border. It is about eight miles to Lower Red Castle Lake on a mostly flat, wooded trail that follows fairly close to the East Fork Smith Fork River. This first time I hiked it in August of 2010, a storm started forming just as I reached Lower Red Castle Lake, so I quickly set up my tent a little ways off the trail in a spot with an amazing view of the lake. I had planned to hike up to Upper Red Castle Lake after setting up camp, however, just as I was leaving the drizzling rain slowly turned into a hail storm. I decided to wait it out under some trees, and after the storm blew over headed again up the trail. I was able to make it to Red Castle Lake before another storm blew in. By now the sun had already dipped behind the surrounding mountains, so playing it safe I decided to head back to my tent rather than fight my way up a boulder field in a storm to the upper lake.
It rained all through night, but thankfully it stopped in the morning. The skies looked fairly clear when I woke up, so I decided to hike up the east side of Red Castle to Smiths Fork Pass Lake and East Red Castle Lake. This area was beautiful. There were several waterfalls and ponds in addition to the two lakes. East Red Castle Lake was my favorite of all the lakes I saw. After coming back down from this basin, I grabbed my backpack and started back down the trail to China Meadows. After about three miles another storm blew in, soaking me for the last five miles back to the trailhead.
When I visited the area again in August of 2016 it was a bit more crowded. We had planned to camp at Lower Red Castle Lake, however when we arrived all of the good campsites appeared to be taken. So we continued on down the trail until we found a spot in some trees about a half-mile past the lake. There were signs on the trees warning us to keep our food away from our tents as there were bears in the area. However, it started snowing pretty hard while we were rushing to set up our tents, and continued to snow after we had climbed inside them with our packs and fell asleep. I awoke that night to the sounds of a bear grunting and lumbering around our site looking for food. At one point it came right up to the head of my tent to sniff a banana I had left out just above my head, its face just a couple feet from mine. Luckily it didn't like the smell and eventually moved on.
The next day we hiked up to Red Castle Lake, and then took a short cut through the forest south of Lower Red Castle Lake to the Smiths Fork Pass area (on high alert for bears after the previous night) to check out Smiths Fork Pass Lake and East Red Castle Lake. We then took the official trail back to our campsite where we moved our packs away from our tents and tried not to think about bears. When camping in an area with bears, I like to listen to my headphones when I wake up in the middle of the night so I won't hear any animals moving around. I know it is very rare for them to attack someone sleeping in a tent, so if they are in the area, I'd rather not know about it. The next morning we woke up and made our way back to the trailhead, witnessing a large sheep-herding operation along the way down.
