The Great Salt Lake: A Stink Pot (but pretty) Lake

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by Writer in On The Road

One of the first places I wanted to visit after ending up in Salt Lake City (for reasons still unbeknownst to me) was the Great Salt Lake. Obviously I knew that the lake was salty but I had imagined it as this big recreation area with beaches and lots of people floating about – a place I planned on spending much of the summer. In truth, it was absolutely disgusting, sort of cesspool like. The lake was covered with a thick layer of flies, smelled worse then rotten eggs, and there was garbage everywhere. No way was I going to lay in a foot in that cesspit.

I blamed my misguided fantasies on Utah Tourism brochures – The lakes turquoise waters and white sand beaches are popular with swimmers and sunbathers – MY ASS!

Let’s just says it as it is – the lake is polluted as hell due to industrial runoff and when the waters are low the smell of insect decay makes you want to hurl. All those strange looking evaporation ponds at the edge of the lake and loads of mineral extracting machinery – make the Great Salt Lake look like some creeped out version of Mars when viewed from above during landing at the SLC airport.

The Great Salt Lake has been raped, pillaged, polluted and essentially forgotten in the eyes of the average Utah and in that I have learned to love it.

The Salt Lake’s high salinity makes it uninhabitable except for a few species of brine shrimp (aka sea monkeys) and algae but the shores of the lake are a critical habitat for migratory birds. The shores of the Salt Lake were once home to Pink Floyd, a Chilean flamingo that escaped from the Salt Lake City’s Tracy Aviary in 1990. Pink Floyd was often seen socializing with all the other gulls and dining off brine shrimp. Floyd appeared so content and happy at the lake they decided not to capture him. He was last sighted somewhere in Idaho in 2005.

Anyway… I wanted to share some photos of the lake I have grown to love. This winter while the trails of Salt Lake’s Wasatch Mountains were packed with snow and mud I took to the trails of the Great Salt Lake’s Islands where there is always plenty of sun, beauty and dry trail.