A couple of weeks ago I got to take a hike near my home in Utah. The goal was to hike up to some rock outcroppings on the south side of Lone Peak. Mother nature had other plans.

Last winter when I was making some photographs of Lone Peak, I found a cool trailhead only a few miles north of my house. The snow in the area had finally cleared, and I thought I could hike up to some big rock outcroppings about half way up (maybe 40% of the way up) Lone Peak.

The trail is known as the Alpine-Draper trail as it traverses the ridgelines separating the little town of Alpine in Utah County (near my home) from Draper in Salt Lake County. The trail is actually an old Jeep trail, and then I would hook up to another trail known as Jacob’s Ladder to get to the rocks.

Well, I headed up the trail, and less than a half mile later I saw a sign that the trail was closed ahead. Poop! I hiked up to the closure and found a big barricade. But there was a side trail that cut off right at closure that looked like it was going in the right direction. I took that, and it ended up switchbacking all the way back down into the canyon. I had to cross a creek a couple of places, and then the trail ended up switchbacking up the other side of the canyon – pretty much where I was headed originally.

Anyway, after much up and down I found I was back on the original trail – the Alpine-Draper trail. I took a quick stop and looked over the Salt Lake Valley at a storm that was heading east toward me.

On the upper right of the photo you can see part of the Kennecott copper mine, while on the right center is the Draper LDS Temple. After taking the photo, I found a couple of ladies that were studying their phones (maps), and I asked if they were by chance headed up toward the Lone Peak rock outcroppings. They said they were, and I asked if I could tag along until we hit the Jacob’s Ladder Trailhead. They said “sure”. (I had never been on that trail, so I figured a bit of guidance couldn’t hurt.)

Well a few minutes later we were passed by a guy on a mountain bike, and then a few minutes after that he was coming back toward us. He told us that the trail ahead was closed and that there was no way to access the Jacob’s Ladder Trail.

Being kind of disappointed we all decided to go check out the closure. Ha ha!! A few hundred yards ahead was a closure barricade with a big chain link fence across the trail. Looking past the fence we could see a huge landslide that had completely wiped out the entire trail – maybe 50 feet across and the slide went down maybe 30 to 50 feet deep.

And then I noticed something! Looking across the slide was the other end of the barricade, and what did I see? The original closure barricade from the beginning of my hike! 🤣🤣 So, all of this hiking to go absolutely nowhere! All I could do was laugh. So, we all parted company, and I decided to hike back the way that I had come with no way to get to Jacob’s Ladder from that area that day.

So, I had a lot of up and down, and a very pleasant walk with only a few raindrops hitting my hat. What a nice day for a walk to nowhere.

Oh well, I had a very pleasant walk. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

Have a wonderful time out there!