Skull Valley Part 1: Horseshoe Springs

 

Still early in the year, where I look around for low valley adventures. Today I found Horseshoe Springs which is quite the drive from us, so I tried to find some other things to do in the area. Horseshoe Springs is located in Skull Valley. To get there, from Salt Lake take i80 west, past Tooele, Past Grantsville, to exit 77 south onto SR 196 (Skull Valley Rd.) heading towards Dugway Utah.

 

A couple DBP shots of Antelope Island.

Stansbury Island (DBP)

The first landmark is Lone Rock, official name, although locals call this Submarine Rock, which I think fits better. (DBP).

Not much further down the road is the signed turnout for Horseshoe Springs. It is a short gravel road, that I think any vehicle can make.

Clear stream above it.

The trail starts on an old boardwalk that looks like it could use some maintenance. You can see the right spring clearly, and if you look really close, you can see the other side of the horseshoe middle left. It is fairly flat here.

It’s quite a bit larger than I imagined it would be.

Pretty shade of blue.

And quite clear.

So clear you can see the fish! How the heck did fish get here?

Fairly quickly after the beginning of the northern pool, the trail goes back to normal trail.

Duckies!

We heard water trickling and looked up to see water coming down the hill into the horseshoe. Pretty sure that’s another spring up there.

And here is where the 2 arms join, and then flow on downstream.

View back towards the road and the mountains.

This arm looks a little more shallow, and a little more gross.

caught this fish speeding though the shallows towards deeper water. Kicking up mud and creating a wake behind it as the stream was more shallow than his body size.

Here another stream feeds the southern arm.

And the southern pool. Also a very pretty shade of blue. There were some people wading in it. I had brought a swimsuit as I wanted to do so as well, but for some reason wasn’t feelin it at the moment. These springs are warm, at about 73 degrees so it would have been comfortable. Still kind of kicking myself for not jumping in.

Some geese enjoying it.

The source of the spring I mentioned a moment ago from the runoff. This is between the 2 arms, and is a little more on the gross looking end.

Back at the northern arm. I am pretty sure each arm has a spring in the bottom, and I think you can see the source in this image,

The stream above, and Lone Rock. So I said it was bigger than I thought it would be, but the entire loop only took us about 5 minutes or so. Not much to it, but it is pretty.

And back from the road you can better see the full horseshoe shape. I wanted to climb the hillside a bit higher to get a better image, but there wasn’t any shoulder to pull off onto, and there was a fence at the base of the hill, so this is as high as I managed today.

Quick grab of Google Maps really shows the horseshow shape.

This is a really pretty and fun spring, but I am glad I looked for some more to do as that was quite a drive just for a warm spring! So keeping that in mind, and the fact that I didn’t take a dip I’m not sure if I can give it a fair rating, but I am going to go with 7 squirrels. Its really far away, and has quite a few people, but it is pretty, and is a nice excursion from the city.

 

This post is running long so I am going to split it out into two parts. Check out Part 2: Iosepa and Timple Springs.

Saratoga Hot Springs Utah

Just clarifying this is still local, as there is a much more famous location with the same name in New York. :)

I’ve always been fascinated by hot springs, I think this stems from growing up and visiting Yellowstone National Park every year with my family. Due to that love I started looking locally. Some of my family moved to Saratoga Springs a few years ago. They have a great pool, with a set of 3 increasingly warmer hot tubs that are fed by a natural hot spring. So this got me curious if there were other springs nearby. I found one years ago, but after several attempts I was unable to locate it, that is until today.

We had a small family gathering, so I thought I would show up a little early and go tromping through the woods hunting down a hot spring.

The trailhead starts near the shores of Utah Lake and already offers a rather pretty view.

It is paved about halfway down, then turns into a dirt trail.

Woodpecker.

Getting into thicker swampland here.

And here it is.

You can see it bubbling up from the bottom, but it appears a spring above also feeds it.

These 2 shots you can see that it is actually pretty close to the shores of Utah Lake.

Here is the runoff stream. Its got a pretty good output! I wonder how many GPH that is.

Another angle. I wasn’t prepared to take a dip today, but I did stick my hand in to see how warm it is and it feels pretty comfortable. I might have to return so I can take a nice soak.

Pretty shot of the mountains.

Here is a smaller spring above, which does not look inviting at all. Ew.

Snowcapped mountains.

Its a very short trail at about a quarter mile, but considering what the forecast was today I didn’t even think I would get a hike in so I am happy with it. I will have to return when I have some more time to explore, and of course so that I can hop in for a minute. :)

So, now we have seen a hot spring with a little bit of man hands affecting it. Now lets talk about one with a very strong presence of mans hand.

Just a little ways south is the community my relatives live in we stopped by the park to meet the family and I took the opportunity to get some images of the hot spring turned pool I talked about in the beginning of this post.

Here is the run off coming out of it. The pool is behind that fence. (I really didn’t want to be a creeper and take any close up pictures of the pool with people swimming in it… maybe I am weird but that just seemed… creepy.) If you look really closely you can see the hot tub tiers. The hot spring, which I believe is warmer than the other one feeds the top one directly which is the warmest, then the next, the next and then ultimately the pool, and then runs out here.

Now you might be asking yourself why would I want to climb into a mud pit of a hot spring when there is this nice pool I could climb into. Well, when they first moved in it was pure hot spring water. I guess at some point the state said even though the water circulates itself fairly well, that they need to chlorinate. Something about the natural minerals and chlorine doesn’t feel too great.

And here is where it meanders down towards Utah Lake. I don’t know if this was the original path with some landscaping added, or if they created a new path for it to go.

The marina below.

Landscaped runoff stream. It has a pretty good output too.

Wait, does the stream end?

It does. They must have added an underground pipe.

If I remember right the hot tubs have the same color.

I thought I had caught the steam coming off, but I guess I didn’t. It is still rather warm even this far down.

So the landscaped one is nice, it looks cleaner, but I don't know. I guess I prefer to just leave nature alone and let it do it’s thing. I’ve said it before, I know I couldn’t enjoy things such as this without us interfering with nature, such as roads. I would never get around to see nearly any of the natural wonders I constantly enjoy without our road system. However I also feel there are some things that we should just leave natural.

I was going to link to some of the other local springs we’ve visited but it would appear I haven't posted anything about those yet. So I think I will write a one long post to cover them, so look forward to that. :)