Canyon on the Wasatch Front

Feeling more and more settled in Salt Lake in the spring of 2012 we started thinking lots about buying a house and started wondering where we should buy.  Many friends had recommend many areas or neighborhoods.  Sugarhouse is a neighborhood with a very urban/cosmopolitan feel where you can walk to stores.  Park City is only about 20 miles to the East up I-80 with easy access to ski resorts and mountain biking.  Others recommended close to the U of Utah on what is called the East Bench.  The East Bench runs down the Wasatch Front running a few houses up the hillside.  That said the East Bench runs behind the State Capitol to the University of Utah down to Draper.  It has great proximate to the many many canyons running up into the Wasatch.  From North to South some of the highlight canyons are: City Creek, Emigration, Parley’s, Neff’s, Big Cottonwood, Fergeson, Deaf Smith, Little Cottonwood, Bell, and Corner Canyons.

Because many of the houses North of Big Cottonwood Canyon are older and cost lots more money we had eliminated most houses north of Big Cottonwood Canyon.  Since most of our friends rarely if ever go south of Little Cottonwood Canyon we focused in our interest around and between those two canyons.

With this we realized we could buy a house within walking distance to one of these canyons; most of which have great rock climbs with in them.

Deaf Smith Canyon

Deaf Smith Canyon on the Southside above a neighborhood called Top of the World off Top of the World Blvd.

I had looked up directions of the web and we hiked up a shared driveway and what I presume is the County’s easement to monitor the stream runoff in the canyon.  As we hiked up a neighbor seemed to glare at us.

The canyon was interesting but the trail was bad.  We found a few climbs up in the canyon but nothing that was too impressive.

On the way down we cut out of the canyon early and hiked along the hillside to avoid weird neighbor and road past the houses.  While chatting with someone on the rock climber website mountainproject.com they claimed to me it was illegal to hike on what they said was a private drive.  While it probably is a private drive I have my questions if an easement would not exist.  Overall we felt this neighborhood just didn’t fit our personalities.

Fergeson Canyon

The next canyon we looked at was Fergeson Canyon which is on the Northside above a neighborhood called Top of the World off Prospector Dr.

Fergeson Canyon has some great granite and a cool feature called the Watchtower.  One of its big distinctions is it also allows dogs in the canyon.

Steep granite but doesn’t look well protected.

Overall it was a nice hike up the canyon and we enjoyed this area of Top of the World more.

Little Cottonwood Canyon

Little Cottonwood Canyon is where Snowbird and Alta Ski resorts are located.  It has lots of granite bouldering.

And tons of granite climbing and a mountain biking trail next to a creek.

We immediately loved this canyon and were really interested in living near the mouth of the canyon.