Bells Canyon

 

For six years we've spent our Memorial Day mornings at Annie's sister's house for a giant breakfast.  Not only is there a lot of food, there are a lot of people.  We decided that this year instead of eating breakfast, then laying around in a food coma all afternoon we'd get out and enjoy the beautiful weather.  The only question was where to go.

Since we were already in Sandy, we decided it would be nice to hike a trail in Sandy.  And just up the street from Annie's sister we found the perfect trail: Bell's Canyon.  The only problem was that everyone else in the valley found the trail, too.  It was wall to wall people.  Well, had there been walls up there, it would have been wall-to-wall.  We'll just say it was tree to tree people.

I've already done quite a bit of hiking this year and have enjoyed every mile, but for this hike I was especially excited because I could bring along the rest of the family.  It was great to have Annie and Titan right there with me.

I think Titan was really excited to come along.  Thanks to our friends, the Slacks, he was able to ride on my back the whole 4.5 miles we hiked.  Well, except for the half mile that I had to carry him...

The area was beautiful.  I've been on very few hikes in Utah with so many trees.  There were trees everywhere.  Unfortunately, there were trees everywhere.  The picture below shows the trail at its widest.  Farther up the canyon, the trees got closer together and lower to the ground.  Being a large, tall guy with a baby on my back, that made it a little difficult to hike.  Add in the thousands of people trying to pass us both directions on the trail with very few spots on the trail wide enough for people to pass and it made for a frustrating afternoon.

However, regardless of the frustration with the trail, we had a great time.  We parked at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon and took the trail up the side of the hill, then down the other side, then back up to the reservoir.  It was about 3/4 of a mile to the reservoir (a little farther for us since we had to park up the street.  Did I mention there were a lot of people?)  From there, it was a short amble up the dirt road to the turn off to Bell's Canyon (as shown in the first picture).

After some distance (I could check the GPS, but I'm not going to), maybe 1/2 mile from the turn-off, there's a nice bridge where we crossed the stream to the south side of the canyon.  From that point the trees got closer together, the trail got steeper, and Titan started freaking out every time a branch rubbed against the sun shade on the carrier.  We took him out and carried him for a half mile or so.

Then, upon talking to some people coming down the trail (yes, we talked to people) we determined we were still 1/2 mile from the waterfall and that the condition of the trail wasn't going to improve any.  We made the difficult decision to turn around.  We put Titan back in the carrier and made our way back down.

The above picture is the view of the valley we had from the highest point we reached.  Did I mention there were a lot of trees?  Hiking alone it would have been easy to make it to the waterfall, but I wouldn't have traded the opportunity to hike with Annie and Titan for a view of a boring waterfall.  It was a great day.

And somehow, on the way back down, Titan was able to get in a long nap.