Today's adventure involved visiting Greenleaf Peak and Table Mtn as part of a long hiking loop. I wish to thank those adventurers that have gone before us in vetting this loop: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=17589
Our hiking group of SamL, Rigby the Hiking Dog and myself started from the Bonneville Hot Springs Resort/Spa TH. We headed up the Two Chiefs trail on a cool, crisp and windy morning:
Table Mtn hiding behind the forest:
Beautiful views approaching Greenleaf Falls:
Our crossing at Greenleaf Falls wasn't too bad - a bit icy, but a suitable spot was found to jump across:
Instead of immediately heading up the ridge after the creek crossing, we continued around on the forest road and ran into a massive rock slide:
We needed to get up on the forested cliff in the upper left of the above photo.
I realized we had gone too far around the ridge, but what a view of waterfalls!
The rock slide we scrambled (bouldered) through seemed to be very recent. No moss, no significant growth, and the rock field seemed somewhat unstable. We crossed the rock field, climbers left and headed offtrail up the forested area to the left of the multiple waterfalls:
We passed Upper Greenleaf Falls on our left:
There was a nice game trail that lead us past the upper falls. We left the game path to reach the cliffs we had seen earlier:
The massive rock field below the cliffs - the same field we had entered earlier:
We moved inland and into the forest and encountered the camps mentioned in earlier trip reports:
We intersected with the old forest road and continued further south, towards Greenleaf Peak:
We found the 'ol railroad rail with the 1887 date stamped on it:
After crossing through the forest, we came out to the powerline alley and headed up towards Greenleaf Peak, patches of snow/ice around us in 29F air temps:
It took about an hour to make the long trek up to Greenleaf Peak. Very icy on the trail leading to Greenleaf Peak summit:
Some wonderful views through the forest just before we hit Greenleaf Peak:
Almost to Greenleaf Peak summit! Past the shack about 30 yards from the summit:
"OK Dad, we are here now at the summit. It's cold and windy. Can we go now?"
Greenleaf Peak is forested in so no great views from its summit. Still, we had reached our first objective!
Our way back down from the peak, past the shack - big drop off to the right:
We descended the 800-900 ft ascent back to the powerline alley, had a quick bite to eat, then crossed the powerline alley:
Our objective was the reach the ridge in the distance, then head left to Table Mtn:
Three creeks ran through the powerline alley, including Greenleaf Creek. None of which were hard to cross.
Once up on the ridge from the powerline alley, we headed south towards Table Mtn:
Approaching the "back" (north side) of Table Mountain, patches of ice and snow on the trail:
Coming up the back of Table Mtn - very icy here:
Walking through the north section of Table Mtn appraching the viewpoint area:
At the table at Table:
then the viewpoint at Table Mtn where it was very windy:
Then down the Westway trail and back to the car by 440pm. What a fun adventure! Must go back again to see more things up on the plateau!
Distance: 16.6 miles
Ascent: 5450 ft
Elapsed Time: 8:32:13
Rigby the Hiking Dog is one tough little dog dude! Clearly my cat is NEVER going to show such ethusiasm for anything other than food, naps, and a good poop. And there's now a table on Table?
