I decided to go for a little variety today. Instead of driving to the Beus trail head I went to the top of 27th st. in Ogden and walked up Taylor Canyon. This is probably the trail I'm most familiar with. I used to come up here almost exclusively because when I first started hiking the trails above town for exercise, this one was by far the best maintained and longest of them all. It still gets more traffic than the other canyons.

I only had an hour, but today I would have gone farther if I could. Once you switchback out of the bottom of the canyon the trail climbs steeply to an overlook about 1000 feet above the end of the road. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to this point. It's really steep. In places the trail is nearly knee-deep from the erosion. It's a knee-buster on the way back down too, but the view is great, and the hike gives you a feeling of having gotten somewhere for the effort. Another 40-45 minutes (for a fat guy) gets you to the top of Malan's Peak, or Malan's Height to be more precise. It looks like a peak from town but it's actually the buttress end of a long ridge coming down from Mt. Ogden. That's a great hike. Marvellous views from the top both across the valley and up to Mount Ogden and up and down the range. The trail continues into Malan's Basin which is a great "cool and shady" on a hot summer day.

My favorite hike around here if I have half a day is to hike up Waterfall Canyon and then scramble up through the notch in the cliff just south of the waterfall. From there you pick your way up the draw until you can't go farther without getting into the scrub oak. Then you climb along the edge of the cliffs to the divide between Waterfall Canyon and the lower portions of Malan's Basin where the creek cuts through the rocks then plunges over the cliff forming the waterfall the canyon is named for. You stay well above the waterfall though, and pick your way across the top of a little cirque basin and over the edge into a deep forest of fir trees then down to the creek. From there you can follow a poor trail up into the basin, meeting up with the Malan's Basin Trail (Taylor Canyon) near the site of the old hotel that the Malans once operated up here.

Of course then you hike out of the basin, over Malan Peak and back down Taylor Canyon. Now you can finish the loop on the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. It's a great hike. Lots of exercise, a 125-foot waterfall, off-trail class 3 scrambling, a shady basin, superlative views from the peak and a well-made, if steep, trail back to the car.

Nothing like that today though. 30 minutes up and then 30 down was all for me. Meetings to go to. People to see.