Trailing Ahead : Adventures in Hiking Utah

Dixie and I are using 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Salt Lake City as our guide to Summer of hiking in Utah. We hope to at least start each of the hikes and eventually finish them all. Today we tackled Malan's Peak via Taylor Canyon (the trail head is in Ogden).

The guide rated this hike as 'moderate' and right now I shudder to think what a 'difficult' hike must be like. The trail kicked me all up and down (over 2000 feet of climb in 2.5 miles to the top), but we were glad to make it to the peak; you are rewarded with a spectacular (if vertigo inducing) view.

There are (at least) four sections to this hike and the end of each section makes a worthy goal depending on how willing you are to be beat up (or exhilerated, depending on your perspective). The first begins at the trailhead to the mouth of Taylor Canyon.

 
A view of Ogden from the first part of the trail.

The second part of the trail begins after you enter the mouth of Taylor Canyon.

The stream that accompanies a good part of this portion of the trail is relaxing and beautiful (of course I love the sound of a stream as well).

Here's my wonderful wife standing next to the Malan's Basin Trail marker which will lead us to Malan's Peak.

After you cross the second bridge, you begin a 'series of steep switchbacks' according to the guide. What the guide doesn't tell you is that there are five of these switchbacks and they are super long. This begins the fourth section of the trail.

At the end of the first switchback you are treated to an overlook of the valley where I got a shot (with zoom) of the Ogden Temple (center of the picture).

 
Here's the view from this overlook without zoom.

After four more switchbacks you come to the peak and get an amazing view of the entire valley. This is the longest part of the hike and I got to wondering if we were ever going to get here. We did!

On the way down (oh my knees!) you can see this cool outcrop with a cave.

We missed this source of one of the streams on our way up. You have to climb down a really steep path off the trail to get this view. The amount of water pouring out of the side of the mountain is amazing.

One last view of the stream from the trail on our way back.

I felt quite beat up when we staggered back into the parking lot, but, as you can see, we were rewarded with some really beautiful scenery.

Happy trails!