The peak Holladay
The better part of a vertical mile, starting at a kerb on Wasatch Boulevard
Mount Olympus, the wall in the east window.
The Forest Service publishes Trail 455 at 3.32 miles and 4,158 feet of elevation gain to a 9,026 foot summit, with a waterfall on the way and a rock scramble at the end. Here is the route, the two places it is honest to stop, the shorter drainage next door at Heughs Canyon, and what each season asks of you.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Holladay is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
A 9,026 foot wall at the end of the street.
Mount Olympus is the twin summited block of rock that fills the eastern sky from most of Holladay, and it is the reason a city with no downtown puts a mountain on its own signage. The high point is 9,026 feet. The valley floor below it sits near 4,300, so the face rises the better part of a vertical mile from the last row of houses, which is why it reads as a wall rather than as a hill from every street that faces it.
The ground above the trailhead is designated wilderness. The Mount Olympus Wilderness was created on 28 September 1984 under the Utah Wilderness Act and covers roughly sixteen thousand acres of the range between Mill Creek Canyon and Big Cottonwood Canyon, administered by the Salt Lake Ranger District of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. That designation is the reason there is no road, no lift and no development on any of what you are looking at.
It is also, importantly for anybody who moves here with a dog, not protected drinking water. The Forest Service lists leashed pets as permitted on the Mount Olympus trail, which is not the case in either Cottonwood canyon a quarter of an hour south. That single administrative difference does more to shape the weekly habits of a bench household than any amount of scenery.
The peak in numbers
9,026 ft
the summit
4,158 ft
of gain, per the Forest Service
1984
the year the wilderness was designated
5800 S
the trailhead, on Wasatch Boulevard
The climb itself
Trail 455, and the two honest places to stop.
Published distances for this hike vary widely because different sources measure different things. The Forest Service number is the trail. Walking apps report the outing. Both are below, and the difference is not an error in either.
The trail leaves the lot at 5800 South and Wasatch Boulevard and starts climbing within a couple of hundred yards. It works up the open lower slope in long switchbacks, crosses into the drainage between the two summits, and then follows the gully up through scrub and rock to a saddle just under the top. The Forest Service publishes the trail at 3.32 miles with 4,158 feet of elevation gain, which averages out to well over a thousand feet of climbing per mile once you subtract the flat first stretch.
The agency also names two destinations for the route: the summit itself, and a waterfall in Tolcats Canyon on the way. The waterfall is the reason the lower half of this trail is worth walking even if you have no intention of going to the top, and it turns a punishing all day objective into a manageable morning. The other named feature is unofficial: a long grinding rise on the lower trail that generations of walkers have called Blister Hill, which tells you most of what you need to know about the first hour.
The summit block is the part that catches people. From the saddle the last few hundred feet are a scramble over rock using hands as well as feet, exposed enough that some perfectly fit walkers look at it and decide against, and it is genuinely fine to decide against. The view from the saddle is most of the view from the top. Turning round there is the difference between a hard day out and a rescue statistic, and locals do it all the time without embarrassment.
| Turnaround | Roughly | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Tolcats waterfall | A short outing on the lower trail | Water, shade and the first proper view over the valley | A morning walk that still feels like a mountain |
| The saddle | The full Forest Service distance without the scramble | Effectively the summit view, on your feet the whole way | Most people, most days |
| The summit block | The same distance plus a few hundred feet of hands on rock | The 9,026 foot high point and the exposure that comes with it | Confident scramblers in dry conditions |
Nothing above is a grade or a rating. It is three places the trail gives you a reason to stop, and choosing one before you set off is the single best decision available on this hike.
The shorter way onto the same mountain
Heughs Canyon, and the trailhead that is not where you think.
A mile or so south along Wasatch Boulevard, a second drainage cuts into the same massif and ends at a waterfall. Heughs Canyon is the short, steep, creekside alternative to the Olympus grind: roughly a mile and a half in to the falls with just over a thousand feet of gain, through rock formations, with a boulder field to cross at the top if you want to stand at the base of the water. On a hot afternoon it is a far better idea than the summit trail.
The catch is the access, and it is the sort of thing that ruins an outing if nobody tells you. Parking is a dirt pullout on the east side of Wasatch Boulevard near Canyon Cove Drive, at roughly 6250 Wasatch Boulevard, and public parking in the neighbourhood above it is not available. From the pullout you walk north on the boulevard, turn into Canyon Cove Drive, take the second left onto Oak Canyon Drive, the first right onto Canyon Winds Drive, and follow it to the end of the cul de sac, where the trail begins by crossing a short private driveway.
That approach adds roughly four tenths of a mile each way before the trail proper starts, and it means the first few minutes of the walk are somebody's street and then somebody's drive. The owner has been welcoming to walkers and the arrangement holds because people behave. Park where the pullout is, keep the noise down, keep dogs on the lead through the houses, and do not try to shorten the walk by parking closer to the cul de sac.
Two drainages, one fallback plan. If the Mount Olympus lot is full by the time you arrive, and on a summer weekend it will be by mid morning, Heughs is the sensible pivot rather than a consolation prize. The third option is round the north side at Neffs, which the Neffs Canyon page covers in full, including the cave underneath it and why the Forest Service has kept that gated for decades.
The season, and what it asks
A west facing furnace in July and an avalanche slope in February.
The same slope behaves like four different mountains across a year, and almost every problem people have on it comes from bringing the wrong month's assumptions.
| Season | What the mountain is doing | What it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| Late spring | Snow lingering in the upper gully well after the valley has dried out | Turn round at the snow line unless you are equipped for it. The gully holds hard old snow |
| Summer | A west facing slope taking sun from mid morning, with no water and thin shade below | A start before six, more water than feels sensible, and an early finish |
| Autumn | The best conditions of the year: cool air, colour in the scrub oak and firm ground | Nothing much. This is when to do it |
| Winter | Snow on the upper face and genuine avalanche terrain in the gully and the bowls | Treat the upper mountain as a different sport. The lower trail is a boot walk between storms |
The valley below can be green and dry while the top of this trail is still winter, which is a normal condition on a face that rises the better part of a vertical mile. Judge the day by the gully, not by the car park.
The lower slope is snake country and the trailhead is a boulevard
Two hazards get underplayed on this hike. The first is that the warm, dry, rocky lower slope is exactly the habitat rattlesnakes prefer, and the sensible response is the boring one: stay on the trail, look where you put your hands on the rock steps, and keep a dog close. The second is the road. Wasatch Boulevard is fast and the trailhead lot is small, so crossing it casually or improvising a parking space on the shoulder is a worse risk than anything above the trail register.
Above the sign, the rules change
The trail enters designated wilderness, and the special regulations that come with that are posted at the trailhead. In practice they are the ordinary wilderness set: no mechanised or motorised travel, group size limits, and a general expectation that you leave nothing. Leashed pets are permitted on this trail, which is worth restating precisely because the answer flips in the canyons nearby. Read the board rather than assuming, because forest orders change and the sign is current.
The valley floor is near 4,300 feet. The summit is 9,026. Everything else about this hike follows from that.
What this page leaves to others
- The Bonneville Shoreline Trail. The bench route, its continuity, the gaps and the Parley's Canyon break run through six cities on this side of the valley and belong to the region's own page rather than to Holladay's.
- Big and Little Cottonwood. Two canyon roads, four resorts and a protected watershed are county subjects with their own pages, and the winter access rules for them are a separate page again.
- Neffs Canyon. It is the next drainage north, it has its own page on this companion, and the cave under it is a story of its own.
- The market and the neighbourhoods below the trailhead. Prices, lot sizes, schools and commute times all sit on the city guide at /cities/holladay/, which answers a different question from this one.
Keep reading
More of Holladay on The Local.
Things to do
The top 6, ranked
A September arts night, a 9,026 foot summit, a dog legal canyon and a creekside park.
Read the guideThe centre
Holladay Village
The plaza, the park, the arts calendar, and the city hall that moved out for two years.
Read the guideThe address
Living at the mouths
What living at the top of the canyon roads involves, from the creek to the building site.
Read the guideThe backyard canyon
Neffs Canyon
The nearest canyon that is not watershed, and the deep cave the Forest Service gated.
Read the guideMoving here
An east bench address
Bench snow, old trees, private lanes, and a city with a village instead of a downtown.
Read the guideThe companion
Holladay, the whole picture
The village, the peak, both canyon mouths, the dog canyon and the bench address, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The peak, answered.
The summit is 9,026 feet. The valley floor below it sits near 4,300 feet, so the face rises the better part of a vertical mile from the last row of houses in Holladay, which is why it reads as a wall rather than a hill from the streets that face it. The peak has two summits with a gully between them, and the trail works up that gully to a saddle just below the higher one.
The Forest Service publishes Trail 455 at 3.32 miles with 4,158 feet of elevation gain. That figure is the trail itself rather than the round trip, which is why walking apps commonly report between six and seven miles for the outing. Either way the gain is the number that matters: well over a thousand feet of climbing per mile once you subtract the flat first stretch, with no water anywhere on the route.
At the Mount Olympus Trailhead, which the Forest Service gives as 5800 South and Wasatch Boulevard on Holladay's eastern edge. The lot is on the east side of the road and the trail leaves from the far end of it and begins climbing almost immediately. The lot is not large and it fills by mid morning on summer weekends. Wasatch Boulevard is a fast road with a shoulder rather than overflow parking, and the streets below are residential.
Yes, for the last few hundred feet. From the saddle below the summit block the route becomes a scramble over rock using hands as well as feet, exposed enough that some fit walkers look at it and choose not to. Stopping at the saddle is a completely legitimate day and gives you effectively the same view. Deciding which of those you are doing before you leave the car is the single most useful call on this hike.
Yes, on a lead. The Forest Service listing for Trail 455 states that leashed pets are permitted, because this drainage is not inside the protected drinking water watershed. That is the opposite of the rule in Big and Little Cottonwood, fifteen minutes south, where dogs are prohibited outright including inside a vehicle. The trail also enters designated wilderness, so read the regulation board at the trailhead before you set off.
On 28 September 1984, under the Utah Wilderness Act. It covers roughly sixteen thousand acres of the Wasatch between Mill Creek Canyon and Big Cottonwood Canyon and is administered by the Salt Lake Ranger District of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Published acreage figures differ slightly between sources. The designation is the reason there is no road, no lift and no development anywhere on the face you can see from Holladay.
The Forest Service names Tolcats Canyon Waterfall alongside the summit as a destination on Trail 455. It sits on the lower part of the route, which makes it a realistic objective on a morning when the full climb is not, and it is the reason the bottom half of this trail is worth walking on its own. Flow is seasonal and strongest with spring snowmelt, so late summer will give you rather less water than the photographs suggest.
Heughs Canyon, a mile or so south along Wasatch Boulevard, runs roughly a mile and a half to a waterfall with just over a thousand feet of gain. The access is the awkward part: park in the dirt pullout on the east side of Wasatch Boulevard near Canyon Cove Drive, then walk the streets to the end of Canyon Winds Drive, where the trail starts across a short private driveway. That approach adds about four tenths of a mile each way.
The lower trail is a boot walk between storms, but the upper mountain is a different proposition. The gully and the bowls above the trail are genuine avalanche terrain and the route holds hard old snow well into late spring, long after the valley below has dried out. Treat any attempt above the snow line as a winter mountaineering objective needing the training and the kit, and judge the day from the gully rather than from the car park.
The mountain is the amenity and it is priced into the street below it.
Every listing on this bench sells the view of this face, and the ones closest to the trailhead sell it hardest. What that actually buys is worth talking through honestly: the walk, the winter, the road noise on Wasatch Boulevard and the traffic that comes past on canyon mornings. Tell me what you are weighing and I will connect you with a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.