MikeSandy.net

September 2007 News Archive

Silver Fork Hike

Mindy and I hiked up Silver Fork drainage today. The trail passes some old mines on the way to a wide-open cirque with yet another old mine. The hike to the cirque was not steep, but it was fairly long.

When we got to the cirque, however, we weren't sure where the trail went from there. We wanted to make it to the top of the ridge to look down into Little Cottonwood Canyon's Grizzly Gulch, so we just started hiking up the steep scree slope in front of us. This idea wasn't the best one I've ever had. Not only was the scree nearly impossible to hike on, the rock cliff we hiked next to for handholds and support was made of something like brittle rock salt. It was weird.

Because the scree was so difficult to hike on, I had climbed onto the brittle rock and tried climbing up that way. Soon thereafter, however, the route became much too steep, and I was stuck for a minute. I couldn't go up, but I also didn't really want to go down because the rock was so brittle that it really didn't give me any purchase. I finally did (slowly) make it down, however.

Next, we tried hiking up a grassy, treed area that was just as steep, but it, at least, gave us some traction. I hiked my way up fairly easily as I made switchbacks amongst the trees. Mindy, however, went straight up. At one point, she was laying on her stomach using both her hands and feet for grip.

Finally, we both made it to the ridge unscathed. The view of Alta Ski Area was awesome. After a quick lunch on the ridge, we hiked back down and then stopped at Silver Fork Lodge for a more formidable lunch.