For my birthday I told Robert I wanted to go hiking. So we took the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's and headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Brighton. We did an 8 mile loop around six lakes: Lake Mary, Lake Martha, Lake Catherine, Dog Lake, Twin Lake, and Silver Lake.
The trail to Lake Mary is a very popular trail. Dog Lake is just off that trail. Dog Lake is more like a pond now and is slowly drying up into marshland.
Lake Mary was one of the biggest lakes and the most popular.
Most of the crowds stopped at Lake Mary, but Lake Martha was just down the trail.
There were wildflowers everywhere! Can you tell I was happy with all the flowers?
On the trail up to Lake Catherine.
A view of Lake Martha from above.
We stopped to eat a little at Lake Catherine.
Then we walked around the lake and headed back down to Lake Mary where we would pick up a trail to Twin Lakes.
Looking down at the Brighton parking lot where we parked.
After getting back to Lake Mary we took a short trail across the mountain to Twin Lake. We didn't see a lot of people on that trail because most people either hike up to Lake Mary, or up to Twin Lakes another way, not both.
Twin Lake. It looks like sometime the lake may be two lakes, hence the name Twin.
We decided to walk around the lake. We saw a moose with a calf at the end of the lake (which is the scariest kind of moose to find!)
As we were headed back down the mountain after Twin Lake we saw another moose, a bull. The trail down was pretty steep and we were happy we decided to go down this way and not up.
The last lake we saw was Silver Lake before heading back to our car. This lake has a boardwalk that goes around it and is easily accessible from the parking lot at Brighton. It was a lovely birthday hike!
