Oquirrh Mountains - Ophir Canyon July 15, 2011

The Oquirrh Mountains lie west of Salt Lake City and represent the first range in the Great Basin heading west.  The range is private property, which means access can be tricky.  I wanted to get to the top of the range, which is in the southern end, and scoped out the quickest ascent would probably involve taking Ophir Canyon as high as car allowed, then get out & hike it.  I didn't quite get to the top, ran out of time.  Next time maybe I'll just take the whole day off and do this hike the right way instead of sneaking out of work at 3:30p for a hour & a half drive to the trailhead.

Ophir is an old mining town on the SW corner of the Oquirrhs that is in remarkably good shape, and has not only a steady permanent population of folks who don't want anything to do with big city life, but there is also a (much larger than I remembered) summer population occupying camp sites.

Ophir City Hall:

The lighting wasn't the best and I really just wanted to get to my target peak, Lowe Peak, el 10,600, so I didn't take many pictures on the way up.  I was surprised at how much water was in Ophir Creek.  The snow up top is still melting, but this canyon is certainly bigger & wetter than many other canyons in the Great Basin.

A herd of Elk spotted me from a mile away and were very wary of the stranger with the red University of Utah shirt, and subsequently didn't let me get very close.   (No problem, just use a bigger lens):

I was stopped at the 9300 ft mark, maybe 1500 feet short of my goal, but the thought of hiking back down in the dark didn't appeal to me, so here's my highest shot.  (In the top right part of the picture you can see the Elk herd, keeping distance.)

On the way back down I went through extensive stands of Aspen, and naturally people have made a practice of carving their names & the date-year on the side of the tree.  There's really no way for a amateur like me to verify these dates, but a few of the signatures seemed to come from a different time in our nation's history altogether.  This one suggests a nice summer getaway, maybe a picnic, well before World War II.