Little Cottonwood Canyon Albion Meadow Trail Hike outside of Alta, Utah

July 27, 2011 Pony Express RV Resort, North Salt Lake City.
Well, the plan was to get up early and do a hike in the Wasatch Mountains outside of Alta in Little Cottonwood Canyon. However, we got a late start and didn't get on the road till around 9:00 and then we got lost a bit before finding the road towards the ski resorts.
Little Cottonwood Canyon lies within the Wasatch-Cache National Forest along the eastern side of the Salt Lake Valley, roughly 15 miles fromSalt Lake City, Utah. The canyon is part of Granite, a CDP and “Community Council” designated by Salt Lake County. The canyon is a glacial trough ("U" shaped canyon), carved by an alpine glacier during the last ice age, 15,000 to 25,000 years ago. A number of rare and endemic plant species are found in the canyon's Albion Basin. Mountain goats inhabit the surrounding mountains.

Once we got on the right road it was a beautiful ride up a steep mountain road before reaching the ski resort area of Snow Bird and Alta.
Alta is a ski area located in the Wasatch Mountains, just east of Salt Lake City, Utah. With a skiable area of 2200 acres (8.9 km²), beginning at a base elevation of 8530 ft (2600 m) and rising to 10,550 ft (3216 m) for a vertical gain of 2020 ft (616 m). Alta is one of the oldest ski resorts in the country, opening its first lift in 1939.^[2] It has an average annual snowfall of 514 inches (1,306 cm).^[3] Alta is one of three remaining ski resorts in America that prohibits snowboarders, along with nearby competitor Deer Valley and Vermont's Mad River Glen.

We passed some very beautiful vacation homes on the way up the mountains.

Following our visitor guide, we were supposed to continue past Alta where the pavement ends and continue up a dirt road. However, the dirt road was still closed by the Forest Service because of snow pack. So, we parked and hoofed it up the road.

After the steep climb up the dirt road we came across our first trailhead, Albion Meadow trail so, we took it and came across this mound of snow/ice on the road.

We continued walking up the steep double track trail enjoying the beautiful mountains.

We were in search of wild flowers as according to our guide book they are in bloom at this time of year. We found some flowers but nothing like we had seen in Crested Butte a few weeks ago.

After walking a few miles at about 9-10000 ft. we decided to head on back stopping at a water fall off the trail.

We had a great time and promised ourselves that we will get out more in the future and hike more often. It's so peaceful and beautiful up in the mountains!