With the late ski season and the late season snowpack Skidog, Tcope and I had yet to get out on a backpacking trip this summer. Even this past weekend we had to pick somewhere high enough to escape the heat, yet low enough -- or sufficiently shadowed from deep snowfall -- to avoid snow on the ground.
We opted to start from Big Mountain Pass, elevation 7420' and head west along the ridgeline along an underutilized stretch of the Great Western Trail. This is about halfway between the high peaks of the central Wasatch and the Ogden Valley, home to Snowbasin and Powder Mountain. Mountains in the area range from 7,000 to over 9,000 feet in the Sessions, one of the places Wasatch Powderbirds regularly fly to. We'd do an out-and-back route of 3.8 miles each way, with a gross elevation gain of 1,544 feet but a net gain of only 788 feet, meaning a bunch of up and down along the ridgeline along the way. The beauty of this spot is that it's only a 20-minute drive from my Salt Lake City home.
View attachment Big Mountain Pass.kmz
The one thing that made this trip a bear, at least for me was the water, or more accurately the lack thereof. We usually pick a destination where we have a reliable source of water from which to filter what we need. On this trip, however, we were to camp atop a ridgeline. The topo map showed a spring nearby but I didn't know how dependable that source was. There was also the possibility that we could find a patch of snow from which to melt drinking water. I didn't want to take a chance, so in addition to the two liters I had in my backpack bladder to drink while hiking I had another four liters of camp water in an MSR Dromlite bag. I'm a small guy, so for me this represented a significant percentage of my body weight that I'd have to carry. It was enough that halfway in my hip joints felt like someone was injecting them with sewing needles.
The trail ascends steeply from the pass via a series of switchbacks to gain the ridgeline.
A short while thereafter the trail skirts the summit of Big Mountain itself. Views are sweeping, stretching from Mt. Olympus at the edge of the Salt Lake Valley to the southeast, to Park City to the southwest. You're able to see the entirety of the central Wasatch Range, all at once.
Once leaving Big Mountain the trail is diverse. At times it wanders through thick aspen and fir forest where the fierce deer flies had no reservations about biting, while at other times it's right out in the open following the barren landscape of the ridge where a stiff southerly wind kept the annoying pests away.
Eventually the single-track hiking trail meets up with an ATV trail that comes up the north side of the ridgeline from Little Dutch Canyon through private property of East Canyon Resort, which owns an enormous land holding on that side of the mountain and has all of it posted. It was at this intersection that we'd see the only other people we'd see all day, riding a couple of ATVs. Given how busy parts of the Wasatch can be it's amazing to me that this stretch of the Great Western Trail is so quiet.
While planning this trip I'd settled on a low, flat spot on the ridgeline for camp. I picked it because it was immediately adjacent to one of the springs marked on the topo. But Skidog was well ahead of the rest of us and we watched him march right past our intended camp and continue off into to the woods. Tcope and I stopped where we meant to, and while swatting away the deer flies I pitched camp.
Skidog, however, didn't return, so after donning long pants to keep the flies away I headed off the trail to the west in search of our partner. About a quarter mile away I found him heading back east, but I followed him back to what he reported to be a great campsite to check it out. Indeed, it was...a room with a view from 8,300 feet, so tcope and I packed things up and moved up the road to Skidog's spot.
We gathered wood for a campfire. Skidog captured and filtered runoff from a large patch of snow only 100 feet from our campsite (so I didn't need to bring all of that water after all!). Skidog and tcope have both been watching a bit too much of the Discovery Channel, for they were determined to start our campfire with just a knife and a flint stick a la Dual Survival. I've got to give them credit, for after about 20 minutes of trying they actually pulled it off, even with the stiff southerly breeze still persisting. We had dinner and sat around the campfire until after dark, which doesn't arrive in these parts until 10 p.m. at this time of year.
I awoke Sunday morning around 7:45. Skidog was already up and tcope followed shortly after me, insisting that sometime in the middle of the night a moose was standing over his tent, close enough to leave moose snot on his tent. Skidog and I had our doubts, for surely the tall grass surrounding tcope's tent would have been trampled a bit and it showed no signs of such. We were sure that he dreamt it. We spent the rest of the morning breaking camp while asking tcope if that moose was wearing a pink tutu, along with other less printable comments.
Compared to Saturday, without the water on Sunday I felt like I had wings. We made it back to the car in about an hour and a half.
Last evening Mrs. Admin and I went up Big Cottonwood Canyon to have dinner at Silver Fork Lodge. On a side tour to the Cardiff Fork trailhead I think I spotted tcope's moose:
Maybe not, though...it wasn't wearing a pink tutu.
We opted to start from Big Mountain Pass, elevation 7420' and head west along the ridgeline along an underutilized stretch of the Great Western Trail. This is about halfway between the high peaks of the central Wasatch and the Ogden Valley, home to Snowbasin and Powder Mountain. Mountains in the area range from 7,000 to over 9,000 feet in the Sessions, one of the places Wasatch Powderbirds regularly fly to. We'd do an out-and-back route of 3.8 miles each way, with a gross elevation gain of 1,544 feet but a net gain of only 788 feet, meaning a bunch of up and down along the ridgeline along the way. The beauty of this spot is that it's only a 20-minute drive from my Salt Lake City home.
View attachment Big Mountain Pass.kmz
The one thing that made this trip a bear, at least for me was the water, or more accurately the lack thereof. We usually pick a destination where we have a reliable source of water from which to filter what we need. On this trip, however, we were to camp atop a ridgeline. The topo map showed a spring nearby but I didn't know how dependable that source was. There was also the possibility that we could find a patch of snow from which to melt drinking water. I didn't want to take a chance, so in addition to the two liters I had in my backpack bladder to drink while hiking I had another four liters of camp water in an MSR Dromlite bag. I'm a small guy, so for me this represented a significant percentage of my body weight that I'd have to carry. It was enough that halfway in my hip joints felt like someone was injecting them with sewing needles.
The trail ascends steeply from the pass via a series of switchbacks to gain the ridgeline.
A short while thereafter the trail skirts the summit of Big Mountain itself. Views are sweeping, stretching from Mt. Olympus at the edge of the Salt Lake Valley to the southeast, to Park City to the southwest. You're able to see the entirety of the central Wasatch Range, all at once.
Once leaving Big Mountain the trail is diverse. At times it wanders through thick aspen and fir forest where the fierce deer flies had no reservations about biting, while at other times it's right out in the open following the barren landscape of the ridge where a stiff southerly wind kept the annoying pests away.
Eventually the single-track hiking trail meets up with an ATV trail that comes up the north side of the ridgeline from Little Dutch Canyon through private property of East Canyon Resort, which owns an enormous land holding on that side of the mountain and has all of it posted. It was at this intersection that we'd see the only other people we'd see all day, riding a couple of ATVs. Given how busy parts of the Wasatch can be it's amazing to me that this stretch of the Great Western Trail is so quiet.
While planning this trip I'd settled on a low, flat spot on the ridgeline for camp. I picked it because it was immediately adjacent to one of the springs marked on the topo. But Skidog was well ahead of the rest of us and we watched him march right past our intended camp and continue off into to the woods. Tcope and I stopped where we meant to, and while swatting away the deer flies I pitched camp.
Skidog, however, didn't return, so after donning long pants to keep the flies away I headed off the trail to the west in search of our partner. About a quarter mile away I found him heading back east, but I followed him back to what he reported to be a great campsite to check it out. Indeed, it was...a room with a view from 8,300 feet, so tcope and I packed things up and moved up the road to Skidog's spot.
We gathered wood for a campfire. Skidog captured and filtered runoff from a large patch of snow only 100 feet from our campsite (so I didn't need to bring all of that water after all!). Skidog and tcope have both been watching a bit too much of the Discovery Channel, for they were determined to start our campfire with just a knife and a flint stick a la Dual Survival. I've got to give them credit, for after about 20 minutes of trying they actually pulled it off, even with the stiff southerly breeze still persisting. We had dinner and sat around the campfire until after dark, which doesn't arrive in these parts until 10 p.m. at this time of year.
I awoke Sunday morning around 7:45. Skidog was already up and tcope followed shortly after me, insisting that sometime in the middle of the night a moose was standing over his tent, close enough to leave moose snot on his tent. Skidog and I had our doubts, for surely the tall grass surrounding tcope's tent would have been trampled a bit and it showed no signs of such. We were sure that he dreamt it. We spent the rest of the morning breaking camp while asking tcope if that moose was wearing a pink tutu, along with other less printable comments.
Compared to Saturday, without the water on Sunday I felt like I had wings. We made it back to the car in about an hour and a half.
Last evening Mrs. Admin and I went up Big Cottonwood Canyon to have dinner at Silver Fork Lodge. On a side tour to the Cardiff Fork trailhead I think I spotted tcope's moose:
Maybe not, though...it wasn't wearing a pink tutu.
