Bonneville Shoreline Trail – Parleys Section.

 

We are currently being blessed with an extended fall. Either that, or I took notice earlier this year. But I believe it to be the former as normally by now my tree has dumped, and is has not. The mountains are currently an explosion of color. Knowing this, I decided I wanted to go get a hike in and get some color!

I had timidly planned to meet some friends and when we met up we would decide what we would do. Upon arriving at Monica’s house I could not help but notice the explosion of color just above her house. So I asked her if there was a trail up there. She said she was pretty sure there was but didn’t know how to get there, but what could it hurt lets go explore. This caused some issues as there was concern that we would either drive around forever, or end up going through someone's yard. This didn’t happen. We did drive around the neighborhood for a few minutes looking for a trail. All of the houses looked like they had access, but well how awkward would it be?

Knock Knock

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice your backyard has access to this canyon, would you mind if we tromped through?”

or worse:

creep, creep, creep

“Hey! what are you doing in my yard?”

“Uh.. just cutting through, don’t mind us!”

Haha yea, we weren’t going to do that.

We did see one light trail that looked a little steep so we opted not to try it. Instead we drove to the nearby trailhead at the mouth of Parley’s Canyon.

We had done this once before, heading down into the Suicide Rock area. This time however we went up taking the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.

After hiking just a little way up where the trail split we noticed the trail to the right, the direction we wanted to go was closed for re-vegetation. So we continued up to the left, into Parleys canyon.

Here is a quick glimpse of what I was hoping to head towards.

Shortly after we had another fork, and I really wanted to go right, but for some reason it seemed off so we continued left. Before long we had reached a cell tower. It did however offer a cool view of Parleys.

Mouth of Parley’s

Not much further up we started noticing loads and loads of these shells. They are definitely too fresh to be remnants of Bonneville, but I have never seen a land snail with a shell like this. Interesting.

This trail was uh… narrow, and it was steep below us. I was hoping it eventually widened and would lead to the side canyon. We passed a few forks that looked like it did, but did not appear to be as safe. So we followed a fork back the direction we came from.

The hillside above.

We are now on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail (for non locals, this is a bench that was the shoreline of an ancient lakebed that had once filled most of Utah.)

The fall colors are exploding along the foothills.

Grandeur Peak

Another side canyon. I tried to climb up to that little cave, but uh… too steep, and too old. Didn’t quite make it.

I did catch a butterfly on the sage brush though.

Like a moth to a flame, this just drew me closer and closer.

Speaking of Moths. Couldn’t get any closer to this one.

Most of the sage brush had any number of Butterfly/Moth/Bee on it. This on in particular was just humming with activity.

We reached the color!

View up this small canyon.

View of Downtown SLC.

After this small jaunt around this vivid little forest we decided to head back. The trail up, as well as the trail around the ridge were both thin, and the kid was getting mad. If it were just me I might have gone on a little further.

SLC again.

I decided to take a quick run towards Grandeur Peak. I would really like to hike all the way up sometime soon. From what I can ascertain on the interwebs, apparently it is best traversed from Mill Creek Canyon (another canyon I have yet to explore). Maybe we will do that sometime soon, although this didn’t seem all that bad from this direction. I only made it up a little bit before heading back to join the group.

Not a bad little trail, but be warned it is mostly in full sun. I would not recommend doing it on a hot day.

I am not sure if I can properly rate this trail. I got what I wanted with some nice fall colors, it wasn’t very crowded. We did kind of have to figure it out in a few places which is always upsetting. I guess I would land on a good 7.