Sigh: Hiking to Cherry Creek Falls

One day, I’ll look back on this post and be amazed at… I dunno. I can’t imagine what in this particular post is ever going to leave me thinking: yeah, that was a good use of a half-hour of my time or similar. Maybe I’m shooting too high.

Too highly? No.

This hike tl;dr –> Falls are nice, otherwise it’s kind of a steep tree prison with snakes. OTOH, lower starting elevation than a lot of the hikes around here, so it’s snow free when some other places aren’t. Also: what else did I have going on that day?

6 miles total (out-and-back), 2,000′ of elevation gain. Trail was a little overgrown with grass and weeds. Trailhead is at the Cherry Peak Ski Resort (there’s a parking lot just north of the base) near Richmond, Utah. Two creek crossings with narrow logs for bridges that the dog was too afraid of and so I had to wade across the creek both times while carrying her. Poor little dog. The water was high enough and fast enough that she made the right call.

So you spend the two miles or so in a steep tree prison. Can’t see anything but trees (sometimes the creek) and it’s pretty steep. Not my favorite kind of hiking. Eventually the trees get a little sparser and the scenery picks up.

^^ That might be Cherry Peak.

A lot of wildflowers if you’re into that sort of thing:

Sun was in the wrong place for most of the hike. Maybe it’s more of an afternoon hike than a morning one. Is that a thing? I guess it can be now.

Here we go. Eventually I turned around so the lighting wouldn’t be a problem.

And then, eventually, there’s the waterfall.

So you got that going for you.

Hard to get from the waterfall viewpoint down to the waterfall itself, so we didn’t do that. Actually Aela kind of wanted to, but I didn’t want to go down after her — it was kind of just a cliff heading down there.

And:

• Fine, it’s really just the first third of the hike that’s a chore, but still. You promise yourself things during that first third that are hard to take back later.
• The other two-thirds are mainly fine, particularly once you get out of the trees.
• I saw more snakes on the trail (two) than other humans (one).
• The trail continues up toward Cherry Peak and eventually you can get to Naomi Peak and Tony Grove this way, should you choose to do so.
• But: toward the end of June when I did this hike, there were still some serious snowfields just above this waterfall, so…
• Also: there are no campsites anywhere on the trail to these falls. Some reports online said “camping: yes”, but I have no idea what they were talking about. I think the first campsites you’d come to would be past Cherry Peak at that one lake, which is a good, I dunno, four more steep miles past this waterfall.
• Your clothes get dirty when you’re constantly having to carry a wet dog across creeks. They also get damp.

And then we got to the car and drove home.

bkd