Snowshoeing in Little Cottonwood Canyon

Nikon D700
Tokina 12-24mm f/4

Over the weekend, Manray and I returned to one of our favorite places to snowshoe, the upper section of the Little Cottonwood Canyon Trail in Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City, UT. Here's a link to a description of this trail (in Adobe PDF format) from Guidebook to The Best Snowshoe Trails of the Wasatch Range.

Our first time shoeing this trail was in January of this year (Flickr slideshow) and we've been itching to get back. This is a wonderful trail which follows and crosses over Little Cottonwood Creek several times and affords some great views of the Wasatch Mountains.



The grade is generally steady and not too strenuous but the trail hasn't been very well used both times we've been there so there's still a good bit of huffing to be done to punch down the snow. And if you like to goo off piste like we do then you'll surely get a great workout, especially if you go after a dump of fresh powder!



Utah's snow is renowned for it's powdery goodness and it's usually very dry and fluffy but on this bluebird day - even at 10 AM - the sun had warmed some it enough for Manray to make a very cute little snowbuddy:





We didn't see many folks on the trail this day, though we did stop and talk with a very nice fellow nicknamed "Lighting" Lane in honor of his surviving what sounded like a very nasty encounter with a lighting strike, from which he endured many months of recovery. Although you'd never guess he suffered for it, he spoke of his experience with great positive attitude and told us that he speaks with Scouts and outdoorsfolk about it during safety seminars.

Though it's beginning to warm up here in the SLC we hope the snow sticks around a bit longer, we really want to visit this trail again soon!



(The gallery at Flickr)