When you spend most of your year leading others into the backcountry, your own adventures can start to feel like work. For Gabe Chez, a professional outdoor guide based in Golden, Colorado, the Uinta Highline Trail was a chance to change that — to push himself without worrying about clients, schedules or safety briefings. Just him, a friend and nearly 90 miles of Utah wilderness.
A trip to reset
“I need that sense of adventure and to be out in the suck for a while,” Gabe says. “It really makes me so much more grateful for all the things that I have. When I have that reset and reconnect with nature, it reminds me of how good life is.”
Gabe and a fellow guide decided to take on the Uinta Highline Trail, a rugged route stretching across Utah’s remote Uinta Mountains. With nine mountain passes and no resupply points, it’s a test of endurance and preparation — the kind of trip that demands everything you need be on your back, and everything you don’t be left behind.
They planned for seven days and packed accordingly. With no resupply points or easy bailout options, Gabe’s 35-pound pack was heavier than he liked — but, as he put it, “When you’re committed, you’re in and you’ve got to make sure you bring all the stuff you need.”
The hard start
The first few days of the trip were brutal. The weather turned quickly — gray skies thickened into rain, then snow. Trails turned to rivers of mud.
“The first three days were really challenging,” he recalls. “It was just freezing cold and wet, every step splashing mud everywhere. We even got blizzarded in and whiteout conditions trying to go over Anderson Pass — right next to Kings Peak, the highest mountain in Utah.”
It wasn’t exactly the escape Gabe had imagined. But as any seasoned guide knows, discomfort is part of the deal — and sometimes, it’s what makes the payoff that much better.
Finding beauty again
By day four, the storm broke. “We had three full days of just full sun — beautiful weather, full fall colors of reds, greens, yellows orange,” Gabe says. “To finally be able to see where we were, deep in the wilderness, was such a relief.”
They spent the next few days fishing alpine lakes, drying gear in the sun and cooking over the stove. “It was nice to just get back to the simplicity of things — cooking weird concoctions of tuna and seaweed, fishing every day and removing yourself from all the chaos of the world.”
That simplicity, he says, is what makes these kinds of trips so restorative. “Sometimes you have to be uncomfortable to feel alive.”
A catch to remember
One evening at Dead Horse Lake, exhaustion met reward. After a long 14-mile day, Gabe’s friend joked, “Don’t come back unless you catch us dinner.”
Within ten casts, Gabe landed a massive tiger trout. Then another. “We cleaned them up and within 30 minutes had a pan full of butter — the freshest fish I’ve ever eaten.”
It became a defining moment of the trip — one that captured what Gabe loves most about the outdoors: the self-sufficiency, the quiet, the joy of simple things done well.
The gear that carried him
As a longtime ExpertVoice Brand Ambassador, Gabe is the kind of guide who knows what works and what doesn’t.
A few pieces stood out on this trip:
- Himali Down Jacket
- Katdyn BeFree Water Filter
- Big Agnes Zoom UL Sleeping Pad
- Squak Grid Fleece Hoodie
But gear wasn’t the story. The story was a reminder — that even for someone who spends their life outdoors, it’s easy to forget the beauty of being uncomfortable, disconnected and completely present.
The takeaway
As Gabe puts it: “It brings me back to that animalistic energy — intentionally uncomfortable, in the best way possible.”A week on the Highline didn’t just test his limits. It reconnected him with the reason he started guiding in the first place.
