Adam's Canyon

On Thursday we had our annual work retreat at my boss's house in Farmington.  It was nice.  Lots of food to eat, a little work to do, and then we were able to leave about 2:30pm.  Since I had a ham meeting that night at 7:30 I didn't want to go home, which left about 5 hours to do something, and what better way to fill five hours than by heading up into the mountains?

When I was preparing my list of hikes to do this summer, I came across a hike up Adams Canyon in Layton.  It seemed pretty good, but I found a lot of conflicting information about it so I was hesitant to add it to my list.  I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to hike Adams Canyon.

It starts just off US-89 near Oak Hills Drive.  From the dirt parking lot the trail goes up the side of a hill, switching back over and over.  It sort of feels like you're climbing the fire escape of a tall apartment building.  You start at about 4800' and get to the top of the hill at about 5200', a 400' climb in a half mile of hiking.

After you get through that grueling climb, though, things get better.  You can hear the creek down in the canyon below; there are trees everywhere; the ground is soft and the trail is well-maintained.  There are only a couple places that peek out of the trees to give you views of where you came from, but that's more than made up for by the beauty of the forest you're hiking through.

The trail follows close to the creek for much of the first half-mile after you get into the canyon.  I imagine you'd get your feet pretty wet if you went too early in the year.  At a certain point (maybe 1.25 miles from the start?) there's a bridge over the creek and you start walking on the south side of the canyon.  You can sort of see the bridge in the distance in the picture below.

There are a couple places where trees have fallen to block your path.  Some of those have been chopped up and moved to the side.  Others are still there to add variety and beauty to the trail.  None of them are too hard to get around.

There are a few smaller "waterfalls" along the trail as you get farther and farther in.  And, since the trail follows the creek you know that whenever the water falls fast you'll be climbing up steeper slopes.  There are some really steep parts on the trail.  There are a couple places where you're just scrambling up the steep side of the canyon to continue up.  There are even a couple scary spots where I wouldn't necessarily want to bring kids.  Most kids would probably be fine on the trail, but you'd want to keep a close eye on them.

Between the green, green trees and the giant rock formations and the water shooting down the canyon it is one of the prettiest areas I've ever been.

About 1.88 miles in you come to a point where the trail crosses the creek, but there's no bridge this time.  Later in the year you'd probably be able to hop from rock to rock and keep your feet completely dry.  I saw some other people hop across and only get their feet a little wet (of course, they were much younger than me and could jump a lot farther).  I decided to take my shoes off and cross that way for two reasons: 1) I didn't want wet shoes the rest of the night, and 2) I really sounded good to soak my feet in some nice cold water.

As soon as you start to cross the creek, if you look upstream, you'll realize you've made it to the end of the trail and see the 40' waterfall just a few feet away.  It was amazing to be there just feet from the waterfall and have the whole area all to myself (for almost fifteen minutes!)  I walked around all over in the small pools at the base of the waterfall, and sat on a rock a soaked my feet for a bit.



On the way up I saw very few people.  I started hiking at the same time as a youngish woman all dressed up to run.  I let her go ahead of me thinking I'd see her halfway up when she was on her way back down.  We leap-frogged a bit all the way up until one point when I passed her and she never caught back up.  It really felt good that an old guy like me could keep up with someone who was obviously in much better shape (and a fraction of the weight).

The way back down was a completely different story, however.  There were people everywhere.  There were probably close to two dozen people hiking up as I was heading back down. 

There were a couple places on the trail where it wasn't completely obvious which way to go.  The trail branches off here and there and the branches look as well-traveled as the main trail.  I ended up missing the bridge back over the river on my way down and went an extra eighth mile or so before I had the sense to look at my GPS.

In my research about the trail I had heard that there was another waterfall at the mouth of the canyon.  There are so many trees that it's hard to even see the creek at the bottom, but I was determined to find the other waterfall.  So I followed the sound of rushing water and eventually found it.  It's not as big as the one higher up the canyon, but it's pretty.  It was worth the extra half-mile of hiking and the additional 200' of climbing to get back up to the trail.

All in all it was a great hike.  The weather was perfect, the trail was beautiful, my body held up just fine.  It's a very popular trail, though.  If you'd like to hike it, I'd recommend hiking on a weekday if you can.  Mornings would probably be better than afternoons, just because you'd be able to avoid the sun beating down on you during the first half mile.  Be prepared to climb some steep slopes, get your feet wet, and enjoy a beautiful canyon.