The Great Salt Lake Nature Center: Farmington Creek Trail

The Great Salt Lake Nature center is a great place to go bird watching. Specifically (for us anyway) hawks, eagles and other large birds of prey. We’ve been here a couple of times and had good luck, last time we spotted a bald eagle. The Farmington Creek Trail is an easy, like paved trail that gets you out into the shore land wetlands and allows you to see more. We have only done part of this before, today we decided to explore the whole thing. Currently the mountains have a moderate avalanche warning and a lot of the trails I wanted to do have had some avalanches so, we thought this was a safer alternative.

Big Pond, frozen.

A great shot of a hawk on the hunt.

Quick Details:

Length: 1.5 mile loop. If you add the short walk from the gate it comes out to be about 1.7 miles total.
Difficulty: DR2. Flat. Partially board walked and the rest is wide well packed, like paved. They even state it is ADA accessible.
Elevation Gain: 0 completely flat.
Restroom: There is a pit toilette at the (currently under construction) Visitor Center. Confirmed open even in winter.
Dogs? Seasonal. Dogs are allowed, on leash between September 16th and February 29th. They are not allowed March 1st - September 15th.
Other Info: You can print a trail map located here (external link).

To get here, take i15 toward Farmington. Take exit 322. Take the first right and follow it around the curve to the frontage rd. Turn right onto Glovers ln. Drive 1.6 miles to 1325 w, and there is the small parking lot on the left before the gate. If the visitor center is open the gate will be as well and you can drive right up to it. If not, you can park here and still hike around by going through the access opening.

So I am just going to start with: I was here for the birds. I actually didn’t intend on doing this trail today, it just kind of happened. That said, I had my telephoto lens in the whole time. I was not going to hassle with trying to switch between. particularly since you never know when a bird is going to fly by. So, not many trail photos. Sorry.

Posted Dog Info.

Nature Center Sign.

Utah DNR Sign.

Not too far in we spotted our first large bird. Still kind of far away though.

The nesting platforms are for The Great Blue Herron Breeding Colony.

There is another trail called Glovers Pond that we did the next day, that trail goes around this pond.

The short road beyond the gate. You can see the trailhead sign to the left there. The loop ends a little further west where the road curves to the right (about where the arrow signs start). The Glovers Pond trail is to the right, at the southwest corner of the parking lot.

Near the beginning of the trail. There are quite a few benches to sit down and enjoy the views.

Frozen wetlands.

Great views of the mountains from down here. Even with the cloud cap.

A hawk flying in the distance.

The weird water tower. At least I think that is what it is. Landis said it looks like a giant soccer ball.

Oooh another hawk.

Gorgeous bird!

We got to watch this guy hunt!

We got to watch this guy fly around for a while.

WOW!!!! This is definitely the shot of the day.

So, I am not very good at determining between different bird species, but I am leaning towards this being a Northern Harrier. Basing this guess on some of the markings, but mostly on the behavior I noticed. They tend to glide just above the ground searching for prey, and tend to hunt in marshes. Also, they can be seen in the area year round. I’m still not 100% certain so if anybody has a better idea, please let me know.

It was truly incredible watching him fly around us.

And off to some other hunting grounds.

Sun rays shining down below the cloud cover. We definitely have some inversion happening but it seems like the clouds are trapped above it, rather than below it.. but I don’t know.

We reached Big Pond. Definitely has a layer of ice on it.

And the bridge across it.

The sound of the ice bending around the piers as we crossed was really weird, and a little unnerving.

Little birds in the trees.

There are 2 side trails out to the pond for a dock and a blind. We did the blind before, but we decided to just complete the loop today. If you just want to do the loop, keep left.

After the bridge over the pond the trail is a boardwalk as you go through the wetlands.

Little birdie in the cattails.

Cattails around a smaller pond that was not frozen. We both kind of wondered why this might be. Landis read somewhere that cattails increase salinity and raise the freezing point. Interesting.

And this is where Farmington Creek enters the system. I’m not entirely sure how much is natural and how much is man made, but it seems they have redirected the creek through a canal to feed some, if not all of the ponds.

From the other side.

More boardwalk.

Cattails forever.

Something large in the trees.

Farmington Creek continuing out of Big Pond.

Mitigation Pond. The ponds all have very clever names.

Little bit of sunshine below the wall of clouds.

The last quarter mile or so follows this canal back to the main parking lot.

Another view of the frozen canal.

This one looks like a pheasant of some sort.

Goose Egg Island.

Hawk in the sunset. We saw quite a few along the trail about as far away as this one. Even with the telephoto lens it’s not much to look at so I didn’t share all of them.

And back to the main road. Now that I am looking at the map I see these nesting poles are a Great Blue Herron Breeding Colony.

The visitor center under construction.

The weird water tower again.

Frozen canal.

One final hawk before we left for the day.

We had an excellent day of wildlife, raptor viewing today! I have never seen as many in one adventure as we did today. I really enjoyed the adventure, even though that last quarter mile was walking into the wind and was a little bit chilly. The ponds are nice, the wetlands are nice, the views of the mountains are great, but what makes this trail for me, is all of the big birds you will see. 10 Squirrels today!

As for difficulty, seriously this is easy peasy. Only 1.5 miles and flat, boardwalk for a large section of it. It is ADA accessible (although maybe not with this much show). Definitely a DR2.

Dogs are allowed, on leash between September 16th and February 29th. They are not allowed March 1st - September 15th.

September 16th - February 29th

March 1st - September 15th