Recent adventures-- Big Baldy, Grove Creek Canyon, and Battle Creek Canyon

So I'm never really sure if anybody finds my hiking blog posts interesting, but I have to say they are definitely the most fun for me to write.  So here's another one, like it or not.

I'm going to recap the last two or three weeks of hiking adventures.  First off, here's a rough map of these hikes:

A few weeks ago I hiked Big Baldy, which is a rather large bump that you can see sticking up in front of Timp.  It's right next to Little Baldy (imagine that) which my brother and I hiked back in February in the snow, and quite a bit steeper.  Big Baldy is 8,750 feet tall, starts in Dry Canyon and the hike brings you up 3,000 feet in two miles.  Not for the faint of heart.  I did it last year and seemed to remember it being pretty tough.  This time I rather enjoyed the climb and did it in about an hour and a half.  Big Baldy has a false summit, however-- you crest and then realize that the summit is actually a little further along, you have to go down and then back up a little bit.  See the two blue X's on the map.  I thought about hiking down to the saddle and from there taking the Dry Canyon trail, but instead just caved and walked straight down one of the ridges.  It was snowy, so passage was great--until I ran into scrub oak.  Avoiding the scrub oak brought be down into a narrow gully with deep snow and lots of tree branches. The going was tough until I found some elk tracks showing the best way out of the gully.  I hauled myself out of there and bushwhacked my way until I got back to the Dry Canyon trail and came out for about a five mile hike.

The next hike I did was Grove Creek Canyon.  If you guys have ever seen the mountain with the G on it, this canyon is the one to the north of "G Mountain."  It splits up G Mountain and Mahogany Mountain, further to the north.  On the map it's the canyon on the far left.  I actually really, really, really enjoyed this hike.  I had never set foot in this canyon before, so it was completely new territory.  I started out and was surprised to see a lot of water coming down the canyon, and even more surprised to see some waterfalls.

Really this hike was just one of pleasant surprises.  The terrain varied quite a bit, as well.  I started out on your classic dusty, rocky trailhead, which moved into sidling over steep scree slopes, which eventually gave way to a conifer forest, and finally coming out into a huge flat, apparently called Sagebrush Flat, where I found an awesome campground where I will be camping sometime this spring/summer, no doubt about it.  There was a natural spring up there, too.  Here are some of my favorites from that hike:

Looking back at the lake

Random bench and monument on the trail

Crossing into the conifer forest

Not my dog, but he became my hiking companion for a little bit.  I think my hiking pace suited him better.

The natural spring

Where I must go backpacking/camping soon

All in all, I loved this canyon and the destination, and will be back up there sometime soon.  That dog you see there was with a couple backpackers taking advantage of the warm winter/spring.  Really nice people, they actually talked me into going a little further than I was planning on by telling me about the campground and the spring.  Their dog followed me around, and realized how fun it would be to take a husky along with me on my hikes.  Maybe someday.  Going to the campground and back was six miles.

I'll mention Battle Creek Canyon briefly.  Last Monday I went up to scout it out with my brother, since it's another canyon I've never been in.  Actually I was asked to take my ward on a beginner's hike next week, and figured the hike up to Battle Creek Falls would be a nice one.  In reality it's just short.  It's only .6 miles to the falls from the trailhead, which makes the round-trip only a little over a mile.  Anyway, my brother and I reached the falls in what seemed like five minutes, and I took a few pictures.

The falls drop water about fifty feet.  For about a half a mile of hiking, it's a pretty nice reward.  Jeff and I kept going, though.  We kept going until we'd reached the Curly Springs Trail turnoff, and then kept going until we found a turn off that took us up onto the flat plateau leading up to the top of G Mountain.  It was getting dark by then, so we'll have to return to G Mountain sometime.  All in all Battle Creek Canyon is really great and a fun place for a short hike.  What I like about it is that although it may seem a little crowded leading up to the falls, there's a lot of beautiful terrain above the falls.  Today my dad was in town and we did this hike again, and only saw a few people beyond the falls.

Well, I decided to lump several hikes into one blog post this time, which meant a lot less description and a lot more summary.  But to blog for each one would have taken quite a bit of time, and probably bored you even more than this one did.  All the same