Utah's unusual weather keeping some campgrounds closed

SALT LAKE CITY — An unusually wet and cold spring has definitely put a damper on camping plans in Utah's mountains.

The more popular camping areas along the Wasatch Front are now open. But many camping spots farther east, such as the Uinta Mountains, are still closed despite the warming temperatures.

“Mirror Lake sometimes is open for Memorial Day, but normally it's the middle of June,” Kathy Jo Pollock with the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest said. “They are going to try to have Mirror Lake open by next weekend."

The U.S. Forest Service reservation website says the earliest you can book a spot at the Mirror Lake Campground is July 14. Why so late?

“The snowpack has been coming off kind of slow, which is good for the flooding, but it’s eliminating some of our campgrounds up in the higher country, we’re not able to get into them,” Pollock explained.

UDOT has a full crew, with giant snowblowers, graders and snowcats trying to get state Route 150 open. In some spots, the drifts are 20-feet deep.

“So when we started we had about 16 miles of snow that we had to clear off the road, and we have about 6 miles of that clear, but we still have quite a bit of work,” UDOT Region 2 Director Jason Davis said. “And as you go higher, the snow gets deeper."

Davis said they’ve got about 250,000-300,000 tons of snow to move. They hope to have the highway open by July 1.

UDOT will reopen state Route 92, or the Alpine Loop between Provo and American Fork canyons, Friday. Unusually heavy snowfall and some repairs to the road due to spring flooding caused its delayed opening.

Utah's not the only place with unseasonal weather. Brad and Amy Herzog, from California, are on a two-month, 12-state RV journey with their two boys, Luke and Jesse.

"We've encountered not summerly weather so far for about three weeks and a decent amount of rain," Brad Herzog said.

The Herzogs have been taking long RV trips for 12 straight years. Brad blogs about the journeys for GO RVing.com. Chilly weather or not, they've always enjoyed what Utah has to offer.

"But the great thing about an RV, it’s gotten down to about 40 degrees at night, and in  a couple of days in Moab it's going to be 103,” he said. “But inside the RV, it's always about 70."