Grove Creek Canyon, and the three places to stop

The standard outing is about four miles round trip with roughly 1,500 feet of climbing, ending at a bench and a bridge above the second waterfall, and it takes most walkers two and a half to four hours. Carrying on to Grove Creek Spring and the Indian Springs campground makes it about six miles and 2,200 feet, generally reckoned at five hours or more. Above the bridge the trail keeps climbing toward a junction with the Timpooneke and Chris Flat trail 151.

Harder than the listings suggest. The Forest Service publishes trail 048's grades at 10 to 35 percent, describes the tread as narrow and exposed to cliff bands, and asks all users to take caution on it. There is no water at the trailhead and effectively no shade above the first mile. It is a sustained climb rather than a moderate walk, and the most common mistake is arriving prepared for the neighboring canyon a mile south, which is a completely different proposition.

At the top of Grove Creek Drive, which is the eastern continuation of 500 North on the city's east edge. Coming off the freeway, the route runs northeast on Pleasant Grove Boulevard, along Center Street, north on 100 East and then east until 500 North turns into Grove Creek Drive and stops at the lot. The lot is small, nothing there supplies water, and the trail leaves it climbing straight away.

The Forest Service permits both on trail 048 and then recommends in writing that neither use it, which is about as clear as an agency gets about its own route. The reasons are in the same description: grades running to 35 percent, a narrow tread, exposure to cliff bands, and heavy foot traffic on a trail that leaves a residential street. If you are going to do it anyway, do it on a weekday morning and expect to be walking rather than riding for a good share of the climb.

A traverse over the ridge between the two canyons in this city, following the Great Western Trail alignment, making a circuit of about eight miles with roughly 2,600 feet of climbing that takes most walkers five and a half to six hours. Most parties go up Grove Creek and down Battle Creek, which puts the sustained climbing in the cool of the morning. It is a loop on the map and a point to point on the ground: the two trailheads sit about a mile apart at the bottom, so plan the finish.

Two of them on the way up. The first is not reachable from the trail. The second has a bench and a bridge over the creek above it, which is the natural turnaround at about four miles round trip and where most people stop. They are not the reason to walk this canyon: the reason is the climb and the view back down the valley from the bridge. If a waterfall is the objective rather than the exercise, the canyon a mile south delivers one of about fifty feet in a quarter of the effort.

Not in the way the name suggests. The city's culinary water is groundwater, drawn from a set of springs and wells rather than from a surface diversion off the creeks. The published source list includes Blue Creek, Lost, Hangman and Wade Springs alongside a Battle Creek Well and a Grove Creek Well and a further set that runs Anderson, Monson, Brimley, Ekins, Gibson, Atwood, Adams and Petersen. The canyon names appear on the water system; the creeks running past your feet are not the mains.

Because this is Wasatch Fault country and the mountain front along this stretch of the valley is a fault front, with fresh scarps cutting the slopes near the canyon mouths. That is why the ground goes from a flat residential street to a published 35 percent grade over about fifty yards at both canyon mouths, rather than easing through a mile of foothills first. It is also why both trailheads sit exactly where the streets stop, which is unusual for a city of this size.

The trail is not gated and people walk it in every month, but winter changes what it is. Snow and ice on a narrow tread cut across cliff bands is a different exercise from the same tread in September, the exposure that is merely uncomfortable in summer becomes the thing that matters, and the canyon loses light early. Traction on your feet is the minimum. If the plan is a winter walk rather than a winter climb, the shorter canyon a mile south is the more sensible one.