Sunday, June 1, 2014

Big Cottonwood Canyon


Our adventure up Big Cottonwood Canyon began in search of Donut Falls--I mean, who can resist that name?  Unfortunately, thanks to the misguiding directions of the internet (claiming to park at the trailhead 4.8 miles up the canyon instead of 9.8 miles up the canyon), we never found it.  We did find some other waterfalls though!


This was the first waterfall we came across.  It was about 200 meters up the trail.  Now that is our kind of hiking.


This trail funneled into a trail with a sign explaining the hike was 6 miles each way and "extremely strenuous."  That is NOT our kind of hiking.  We promptly turned around to find a more amateur-friendly trail.


Next, we followed this trail to Hidden Falls.




Even more exciting than the falls was the abandoned mine shaft we found on the way!


We made it about a quarter mile in before oxygen levels started lowering.  Caitlin started feeling light-headed and then suddenly she passed out.  I had to drag her most of the way out before she regained consciousness.


That's a joke.  Don't go in abandoned mines.  It's bad.

Next, we drove further up the canyon to see if there would be any signs for Donut Falls.  We stopped when we started losing hope; we found this big rock though.


There was a trail by the big rock that we ventured up, though it wasn't as pretty as the area we were in before.


Found some snow still sticking around!


We never found any explosives though, unfortunately.

We really enjoyed our day of hiking though.  We had no idea we lived so close to green forests and rivers!  The last hike we did in Salt Lake looked like this:


Not as green.  

Compare that to Cottonwood canyon:


We finally took our poor car through a car wash on the way home.  Caitlin's first big, automatic car wash--quite the rite of passage!




It successfully ripped half our antenna off, but that has been pretty inevitable ever since the automatic motor stopped retracting it when you turn the radio off.


That evening we discovered a nice park by our house and threw the frisbee around until sunset!


It was a great day!