summer is coming: Belated Thursday Travel Tales: Various Wasatch Hikes

Today’s focus is on mini-trips (AKA hikes). I LOVE hiking and I’m so glad it’s finally warm enough in Salt Lake City for us to go into the mountains and explore. Zach and I started our hiking season off with the most intense trip ever through the Subway at Zion National Park. Keeping with this theme of starting off super difficult, we decided to hike Mt. Olympus as one of our first hikes in the Salt Lake area. The day after Mt. Olympus we did an easier hike with some co-workers to Donut Falls and some Mines in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Then this past weekend we tried to make it to Thaynes Peak via the Thaynes Canyon trail in Millcreek Canyon.

Mount Olympus

Total Distance: 7.75 miles | Altitude Gained: 4100 ft | Time: 4 hrs 30 min | My Rating: 4.5/5

Notes: This hike is SO HARD! It’s incredibly steep and when you’re going up you keep thinking, “I must be to the top now, there’s no way this could keep going,” but it does keep going until you’ve given up on life, and then the trail opens up and you’re at the saddle. At this point you can actually see the top of the mountain, but there’s a 0.5 mile scramble to the top which is much harder than the hike up to that point because you have to use your entire body to hoist yourself over the boulders to get to the top. But once you’re at the top you’re rewarded with an amazing view, a nice cool breeze, and an enormous sense of accomplishment. The only reason I didn’t give this hike 5 stars was because this trail attracts rattlesnakes (which keeps me on edge while hiking) and it’s very exposed for a large portion of the trail (so you have to start early in the day).

Zach eating lunch at the top.

Donut Falls & Cardiff Fork to Mines

Total Distance: 7 miles | Altitude: 1350 ft | Time: 4 hrs | My Rating: 3/5

Notes: In general I think both of these trails are super lame. They’re both easy and flat, so they attract way too many people (especially families with loud, annoying children) and there’s no awesome view at the end. We went early in the season and couldn’t see much of donut falls, so maybe it looks cooler after all of the snow has melted and you can hike up to it. The trail to the mine was mainly covered is snow, so it took us forever to get there and I was wearing sandals so walking through snow and crossing ice cold streams was quite unpleasant.

This is the closest I could get to donut falls.

There was so much snow on the way to the mine.

Finally made it to the mine!

Thaynes Canyon Trail to ???

Total Distance: 6 miles | Altitude: 2500 ft | Time: 2 hr 45 min | My Rating: 2/5

Notes: I hated this trail so I’m not going to write much about it. Zach and I were trying to make it to Thaynes Peak, but after the trail split from Desolation trail about 3 miles in, the Thaynes trail disappeared and we couldn’t figure out where to go from there so we headed back down. The trail was terribly eroded causing Zach and I both to slip and fall about 5 times each while walking down. For how steep the trail was and how difficult it was to travel on, I was hoping for a nice view at the end, but we didn’t even get that, boo.