Corner Canyon

I'm insane. Seriously. Two hikes in two days.

Sure, neither one was very long, but both of them had me carrying an extra 30 pounds. Tonight I hiked up Corner Canyon in Draper. If I was truly insane I'd hike in City Creek Canyon tomorrow night to hit the three mountainous corners of the Salt Lake Valley. Let's hope I'm not truly insane.

There are a few places you can start your hike in Corner Canyon. I decided to start at the Coyote Hollow trailhead, which is just behind the Draper Temple. From there I took Clark's trail 1.6 miles to the Peak View trailhead. I started at about 5100' in elevation, and ended up at around 5850', for an elevation gain of about 750'. It was only about a 10% grade the whole way, which was great. It wouldn't have been difficult at all without the extra weight.

One thing I love about Corner Canyon is that they have maps at all the trailheads. It's really nice to have an accurate map because there are so many trails going so many different directions. The other thing I really like is that all of the trail intersections are very well marked. Even with all the trails it would be hard to get lost.

The first mile and a half was difficult. Yes, it was the only real uphill part, but that was easy enough to deal with. What made it difficult is having Titan crying most of the way.

I was sure we'd need to turn around and cut the hike short. About 1 1/4 miles in we stopped and had some dinner: a PB&J and applesauce.

From the Peak View trailhead (1.6 miles in) we took Brock's Point Trail down to the Canyon Hollow Trail. After another mile and a half we took a side trail to Ghost Falls. It was a bigger waterfall than I had thought it was going to be. Not huge, but worth the walk anyway.

From the falls we walked back on the Ghost Falls trail, then met back up with the Canyon Hollow Trail, and eventually back up the Bonneville Shoreline Trail to the Coyote Hollow trailhead. It was a beautiful walk with no real steep parts, either up or down.

We came across dozens of mountain bikers and without fail they were all polite and fun to talk to. We didn't get run over a single time. It's a beautiful canyon and I'll definitely be back.

In all, it was 4.3 miles (exactly what the map said it would be) with about 1250' of total elevation gain. The trail was in the shade most of the way, was well maintained, and the weather couldn't have been more perfect.

Rocky Mouth Waterfall

It's March and I was able to get out and do a little hiking. It was a beautiful day for a hike and I had no other obligations so I decided to take my son up to the Rocky Mouth waterfall.

I'd heard about the hike a lot, and had wanted to go for a long time. It's still a little early in the year for there to be much water falling, but that was just perfect with a not-quite-two-year-old.

The trail starts at about 11300 South Wasatch Blvd in Sandy. There's a little parking lot (really little, in fact) and a wooden stairway that leads from there toward the mountain. Then, after climbing 100' or so you come out into a neighborhood. Really. Just like that. And there are no signs or anything telling you where to go.

I figured it was probably best to continue going uphill, and sure enough I found where the trail continues up around a curve in the road.

Being an impromptu sort of hiking excursion I didn't have a way to carry Titan. Well, just in my arms or on my shoulders (he hasn't figured out the whole hold-on-to-dad's-head-so-I-don't-fall-off thing, so I had to hold him on there. He walked quite a bit of the trail, but wasn't able to get over the big steps (and he gets distracted really easily. I'm pretty sure he pointed out every leaf and rock.)

The trail is pretty short. It's probably not even a half mile from the parking lot to get to the waterfall. It's also not very steep. I think I read that there's an elevation gain of about 280', which isn't too bad over 1/2 mile.

The trail goes in between a couple houses, which is a little odd but it works, and the waterfall isn't too far beyond the back fence of the houses. It's a really pretty area. I'd like to head back when the trees have leaves and there's more water falling.

Just short of the waterfall there's a cemented-shut mine entrance. The tunnel goes into the mountain a little bit before the cement wall, so it sort of still looks like a tunnel. Titan kept saying "tunnel" and "train", I guess expecting a train to come roaring out of the tunnel any time.

The waterfall is one of the prettiest you'll find so close to the valley. I imagine it looks better with more water, but it was nice to be able to get up close to it without worrying about it carrying Titan down the mountain.

The hike was about a mile round-trip, and took us less than an hour. In fact, it almost took longer to find Wasatch Blvd than it did to hike the hike. It was a great first hike for the year.

This would be a great hike for families with young kids. It's not too steep, you're not walking on the edge of any cliffs, and there are plenty of rocks and leaves to keep the kids interested the whole way.

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.

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.