As promised, this hike did indeed turn out to be the most challenging outing in the short history of the Intuit Utah Hiking Club. Jeffry, Dave and I departed the parking lot at about 7:05am. Besides stopping to locate a couple of geocaches, we made excellent time for the first three miles. The trail up Grove Creek is very nice. There is a little steep hill at the beginning but then it quickly mellows out into a really enjoyable walk. There is nice waterfall and some gorgeous mountain views. I would recommend anyone who likes walking should give it a try. You can go up however far you like and make the walk any length you want.
Unfortunately the well traveled path did not match the trail on the topo maps which threw us off track a bit. As Jeffry and I planned how best to get back on track Dave decided he was going to head back to the trailhead. Dave had planned on going two or three miles up so the trail adjustment came at just the right time.
Jeffry and I decided to bushwhack over to where the trail was marked on the map and continue on. As it turned out, there was no obvious trail that we could find but we used some info from other hiker’s reports on the internet to make a direct assault on the Mahogany Mountain ridge. We continued bushwhacking now going up the side of the ridge where the track enters the shadow in the map above.
Though the terrain was steep we soon scaled the ridge and stopped for pictures from the end where it overlooked Grove Creek. We could now see the peak to the north and began the final climb. Though there was no real trail, the hiking was fairly easy along the ridge. There were a few bands of trees we had to pass through but other than that the hiking was straight path to the peak. The temperature had risen to 100 degrees and the sun was straight up. I made the peak just around noon with Jeffry about ten minutes ahead. We drank, ate, took photos and enjoyed the view from the peak for about 15 minutes before heading down. We were able to see the fire by Bridal Veil Falls from the Peak but noticed from the trail head that it had kicked up considerably during a decent.
From the peak, Jeffry spotted what he thought was a fairly reasonable way down the front of the mountain straight to Cedar Hills. Since the trail we had planned for both up and down hadn’t been obvious I agreed to go for the direct approach. At lease I was sure our cell phones would work on the front of the mountain so it would be better that getting stuck in the back. I made sure Jeffry knew I was going to blame him for any problems we would encounter.
The going was much tougher than we had expected but at least it was all down hill. We both had some blister issues and I stopped and put on some fresh socks at one point. I tried to get some directions from Dave over the phone by having him look up our position on Google Earth but in the end Jeffry was able to make a path to the bottom. My biggest fear was getting to a dead end (like cliffs) and having to climb back up to get around an obstruction. Thankfully we avoided that situation, well, mostly.
We called in a ride from Jim Ferry and he was nice enough to give us transportation to the trailhead from where we made it to the Cedar Hills streets. It was a very hot day for such a long hike and most of it was on the sun baked hillsides. Our bushwhacking did save us a mile over the planned trail but probably not any time.
GPS Tracks: kml gpx
Planned Trail: kml gpx
IUHC Photos on Flickr: Mahogany Mountain Peak Other Hikes
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