Saturday, November 6, 2010

Upper Bell Canyon Falls

Today Joe and I were on a trail for about 8 hours. The Bell Canyon trail starts near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon (very near to our home).


It's a short climb to the Bell Canyon Reservoir, which we skirted around:




The trail started out easy, but it became progressively more challenging. It was steep, narrow and rocky. It cut through shrubs and pine trees.

At one point we came upon a tree laying across the trail. I took off my backpack and went under it. Joe bushwhacked around it.




A large portion of the trail looked like this:




Looking down at the South end of the valley:




This mountain was on the north side of our trail. We had various views of it for most of the climb:




We're not to far from our destination here:




We've been at higher elevations, but we really worked hard for this one:




Pretty valley:



Another look at that mountain:




We were way up in the mountains where we got to go down into this neat little gorge. Someone had built a bridge across the stream bed:




We didn't go beyond the bridge because we had made it to the Falls and that was all we were interested in reaching today.



We sat on rocks and had a snack while watching the water fall. The loud sound of falling water is so neat. There were a lot of pine trees. There was some other type of tree too. We were walking on deep beds of yellow leaves that were all through here. It was a very pretty spot.


At last we had to make the descent. Here's Joe up ahead of me on an easier section of trail. On other parts of the trail I was concentrating on my footing:




We found this nice little place to rest on the way down. It's just a short distance above Bell Reservoir. We saw a sign mentioning that Boreal Frogs live around this area:


After a long but good day of hiking we drove to Draper for the In N' Out Burger place. Yes, it was very much out of our way, but they do have great food. We brought some home to my daughter too. Both she and I had hamburgers, fries and chocolate milk shakes. Joe had almost the same, except with a diet drink. So, that was our day. I think it's going to snow on Monday.?

3 comments:

Susan said...

well, if it does snow on monday, then at least you got a great hike done before it did! I can't believe you guys were out there for 8 hours! That's awesome. That bridge looked scary. :)

Linda's Blog: (Alias Grandma T. said...

wow, what fantasic pictures Lesa!
That was some hike! I hope you two are proud of yourselves, cause I sure am! Thanks for sharing your
awesome pictures!

Dadoo said...

A very tough hike because of the rocks. I was having some fun with one passing hiker as we debated "who" put all those rocks in the trail?

t was great to check this one off the hike bucket list. It may be a long time before we return.