Only a half mile from the trailhead near Hacking Lake you can ogle a herd of mountain goats. Minutes later, a weasel darts upon your track with a mouse hanging in its mouth. Another half mile, and you stumble upon two spotted elk calves lounging near timberline. Then, two more goat herds on the five-mile climb to 11,700-foot Gabbro Pass, from which you flush 100 elk on the far side. After just 10 miles of hiking, you’ve had about one animal encounter per mile. And that’s just counting the obvious ones. Surely you will miss others, with 100-mile vistas hogging your attention nearly every step of the way.
Views of every kind—distant horizons, nearby wildlife, isolated lake basins—are better on ridgeline hikes. And the king of the hill is the Highline Trail, which runs 78 east-west miles through the 456,705-acre High Uintas Wilderness of northeast Utah. The often-bouldery track crosses nine major passes and seldom dips below 10,500 feet. It’s the perfect aerie to spy the wilderness’s 26 summits above 13,000 feet, an estimated 1,000 lakes and ponds, 36 major streams, and megafauna galore.
You’d think all of this unobstructed beauty would attract a crowd, but fewer than 50 people a year thru-hike the ridge-hugging track—it’s overshadowed on a regional menu that includes the Tetons, Sawtooths, Wind Rivers, and Colorado’s Fourteeners. The Uintas’ long, brick-red ridgelines of billion-year-old quartzite, gradually being swallowed by their own talus, have a powerful majesty that 19th-century explorer Ferdinand Hayden singled out among all the mountain ranges he’d seen. Compared to others, he wrote, the Uintas stands alone for its “contrast so pleasing to the eye.”
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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