Training Log Archive: TomN

Meetings at Space Dynamics Lab yesterday and this morning. My part of it is done, so I took the afternoon off and moved my flight up to tomorrow morning. Time for one last trail this afternoon. Today was the hottest day of the week, high 90s, so I was not looking for a monster climb. I headed out to the Right Hand Fork area of Logan Canyon, where there are a number of trail options.

I went up the Willow Creek trail for 2 miles, and took what was supposed to be an unmarked cutoff to the Little Cottonwood Trail. But I never found that trail. After about a mile the cutoff became obliterated in a network of cow paths. The cows were not too happy that I was there, and their bellows echoed all around the hills and hollows. I went in a likely direction towards the next canyon, but I couldn't see a trail down there. So I backtracked and got lost in the cowpaths. I bushwhacked up to the top of a hill and I could see a knob I was pretty sure was on Willow Creek, but it didn't look great getting there. Looking over the other side, I saw a different part of the canyon I explored earlier, and there was definitely a trail in the bottom of it now.

So I bushwhacked down the hill, and picked up the trail, which had horseshoe tracks and maybe some boot tracks. It was a lousy trail, dusty and uneven, and washed out in places. After a couple of miles descent, it came out on the Right Hand Fork a hundred yards from my car. Turns out it was the Maughan Hollow Trail. The Little Cottonwood was probably over the next ridge from where I picked it up.

Worked out remarkably well, but I wouldn't recommend doing it on purpose.