June 6, 2015

New Home, New Trails

We've been busy exploring the many trails available in the Salt Lake Valley.
A favorite is the trail shown in blue on google earth.  The steep part is Cherry Canyon, which begins at the Orson Smith trailhead.  The lower portion is the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, which continues south for many miles.
Cherry Canyon gains about 4000 feet of altitude in 4 miles, going all the way up the mountain to the base of Lone Peak.
It's a fantastic ride with great views of the mountains and the Salt Lake valley.
In the panorama above, you can see Utah Lake on the right, and the Wasatch Mountains on the left.
We stopped when we reached snow, at about 9100 feet.  The stream shown above comes from melting snow.
The water was clear and cold, just the way a thirsty horse likes it.
Flowers are blooming on the mountain.  A bank of orange poppies attracted out attention.
Near the trailhead, the grass is tall from all the rain we had in May.
Since we've been city folk, the horses have learned to tolerate walkers, joggers, hikers with backpacks, bikers, and an assortment of dogs.
One morning, as we traveled up the Cherry Creek trail, a dozen paragliders swooped down the mountain and passed about 10 feet over our heads.  Boss got a little freaky over that, but he got over it when he found that the big sails and whoo-whooing adventurers were not going to eat him. (The photo above came from Wikipedia.  We were way too busy keeping the horses from running down the mountain to take any photos of the actual event.

12 comments:

  1. More gorgeous photos of a beautiful place - I'm double-jealous! And, glad the horses weren't panicked by the thought that they were under threat from pterodactyls!

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  2. What a beautiful area to explore, that clear water does look refreshing!

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  3. Quite a climb up that hill. Should keep you and horses in shape!

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  4. What an adventure. Thanks for taking us along.

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  5. A beautiful ride! It looks quite different from where you rode before. 9000 -- that's 1.5 times higher than any place in our state.

    Your horses must be very sensible to tolerate the hand gliders. A good many horses would have taken off and it'd be hard to blame them. That would look pretty darn threatening.

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  6. beautiful!!!!! and snow - ahhhh. It was 95* here today. *whimper*
    - The Equestrian Vagabond

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  7. I don't blame Boss for being a bit agitated by the whooping sounds of a paraglider! That would be quite unexpected! The poppies are lovely! Cool, clear water sounds good to me too!

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  8. Hi Janie, I love the new Header! What a gain in altitude - the canyon looks steep. I liked seeing the California Poppies - we don't get them here at altitude. Finally, the snow is melted in my yard, but some remains in the forest behind me. All the peaks and shoulders are still white. We've gotten so much spring snow!

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  9. Interesting new venue. Any restrictions on horses in the Big City? My son lives in a suburb of Phoenix and the horses are everywhere...:)

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  10. Hi, Janie!
    Kate, here, fellow horse owner. Hopefully you remember me. :) Say, I just popped over to see if you and Steve have ever ridden the Timpooneke Trail to Emerald Lake -- up in American Fork Canyon? It allows horses, seems steep but do-able... I guess I was just looking for some tips from someone who had ridden it. And, since you and Steve ride everywhere you were my first thought! :-) Thanks, in advance, for any info you might have. Hope all is well.

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  11. Happy to catch up on your delightful posts Janie. Thank you so much for visiting my blog while I was away. I hope your week is going well.

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  12. I've been out of the loop for a while; glad to see you are all doing well. You've moved???
    The scenes here are just lovely and I have to say that then hang gliders would have freaked me out as well!!!
    Have a great weekend.
    XOXO

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