Utah County Hiking

This week I finally hiked to the top of the Cascade Mastiff. You’d think the big mountain behind my house would be the first one I’d hike, but it just hadn’t happened until know. I was a long, but rewarding hike. Much of the hike consisted of walking along the ridge-line, which was pretty cool to do.

Pros

• Great views while walking the ridge-line.
• It’s a beautiful hike mostly through aspens.
• It can be done as a round trip.

Cons

• It’s a long one.
• While walking the ridge-line there were some parts that were tricky to get past.

Directions

• Drive up Provo Canyon.
• Turn right at Vivian Park, and continue driving up the following canyon (South Fork Canyon).
• Turn right at Big Springs park. There’s a rock in front of the park with the works Big Springs Park painted on it.
• Continue to parking lot at the end of Big Springs Park
• From here you’ll hike 6 miles to the ridge-line.
• Take a right on the ridge-line towards the valley, the other direction will take you to rock canyon (alternatively you could also do this hike starting at rock canyon)
• You’ll go up and down many times as you traverse the ridge-line. There will come a point where the trail will take you from walking on the top of the ridge-line, to walking along the outside edge of the ridge-line. The trail disappears at times, but it was usually easier to walk along the trail slightly lower than the ridge-line than it was to walk directly on top of the ridge-line.

I lost some GPS data at the end. You would continue hiking along the ridge-line until you hit the summit.

I ended up hiking back down the rock canyon side. It took me all day to complete (7:30am – 5pm). You can also climb this mountain by going up the west side. It seems much more dangerous but there have been many people that have climbed it from the west side. (link, link, and link)