About 1 mile below Snowbird ski resort is the trail head to now one of my favorite day hikes in the Cottonwood Canyons. This oasis of pine trees fresh streams of crystal clear water and views from 10,000 feet above sea level are of Gods canvas over looking the Salt Lake Valley. We got an early start today. Me and Layne meet up at the trail head of Bells Canyon and headed off to the White Pine parking lot. It is the same place for the Red Pine lake and we were one of 3 cars as we pulled in. 
The trail starts out on the maintenance road for the access to the Damn at White Pine Lake. Only hikers and Mt Bikers are allowed on the trail. When you get in about 1 mile you will take a left turn and continue on the road. If you cross a bridge you are on the wrong trail and on your way to Red Pine lake. As you head up the trail you will be overwhelmed with the amount of water in the form of springs and creeks bubbling up on to the trail. You will soon come to a marsh. It is a nice break stop about 1/2 way to the top.
Just after our break, we notice it was a lot colder than we had predicted and found ourselves appreciating icicles. We ran into two hikers that had spent the night at the lake and they informed us of the snow fields we had a head of us and that it was in the 20's last night freezing their water bottles solid.
After hearing the trail report, we decide to try and by pass the snow fields and bush whack our way to the top up a very steep boulder field inter mixed with shrubs and grass. We made good time up this steep slope. We felt this would be good practice for our up coming hike to Kings Peak. As we reached the top we noted we had travel to far to the east and the lake was at about the same elevation but 2,000 meters to the south west and between us ant the lake was a very large snow field on a 30 + degree slope. So what did we do? We had a snack. We were really feeling the altitude at this point. So being two doctors who like to research and learn new things, we checked our pulse ox (it is the % of oxygen your blood is currently transporting to your tissues at any given time, normal 98 to 100%) it was 91 to 92%. After checking the GPS for our altitude, it read 9,997 feet!
We made the choice to head back down knowing the lake was still under ice and snow. We will be back to camp at the lake real soon. We had a blast. Building new skills and spending more time at altitude to build our base. This was a great hike!
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