mormon pioneer trail

H was a man with a plan last glorious Sunday morning: he found us a new point-to-point hike to do.  We each drove a car to Ruth's Diner first - and since we got seated outside on the patio, we ate very quickly, not wanting to linger in the chill despite having a heater right next to our table (note: corned beef hash is not the best pre-hiking breakfast but it was certainly tasty) - and then kept going up Emigration Canyon to leave his truck at the Little Dell Reservoir parking area.  As we continued to drive my car up to the Jeremy Ranch Road (outskirts of Park City), we noticed something that gave us pause: lots and lots of hunters garbed in blaze orange, parked and/or milling about on the sides of the road.  Dang: we'd totally forgotten about deer season!

Lots of history right here

Unlike in Maine, where deer season lasts the entire month of November but there's no hunting on Sundays, in Utah deer season is only for one week/two weekends including Sundays ... in a state where hardly anything is open on Sundays.  But we'd come too far to turn back now, so when we got to the trailhead at Mormon Flat (where there was a small, quickly-drying puddle of deer blood in the dirt), we tied our red and not-blaze orange fleeces to the outside of our packs and decided to talk for the duration of the hike.  We saw some folks coming off the trail with their dogs who told us that while they'd seen a couple of hunters, everyone seemed to be coming out for the day, so that was reassuring.

Nice path for descending

This section of the Mormon Pioneer Trail from Mormon Flat to Little Dell Reservoir is  9.1 miles long, following the creek up Little Emigration Canyon to the pass at Big Mountain, then continuing down the other side into Mountain Dell Canyon (total trip elevation gain: 1,364 ft.).  The trail is quite pleasant, hardly taxing in the bright sunshine.  It's a pretty fateful stretch of trail, however as it was right here in 1846 where the Donner party took more than a week to get through what H and I did in about three hours.  It was because it took them so long here that they were caught in that winter storm in the Sierra Nevada a couple months later - and that, of course, ended badly.

Free apples!

It went much better for us.  H kept up a running commentary for the duration (I'm not sure he's ever talked so much in his life); the trail was mostly hardpacked dirt and easy footing; and just before we reached the terminus, we spotted a beautiful feral apple tree.  Deer had gotten all the fruit on the lower branches (and the drops) but there were plenty up higher so I gave the tree a shake and then snacked on a tart, blemish-free apple as we strolled into the Little Dell recreation area.

This is a great hike, pretty, not too challenging aside from the length.  You do need two cars since it's a point-to-point, and it'll be easier on the nerves if you go when it is not deer season, but it was cool to walk right where all those pioneers walked 150+ years ago.