While not on my "official" list of hikes I want to do this year, I was able to get in a bonus hike on Saturday. I had never really considered hiking up Frary Peak on Antelope Island, but my friend Tyler suggested it as a possible early season hike. After studying up on the trail a bit (I like to be prepared) I suggested that we do it last Saturday before the bugs come out for the year and before it gets too hot.
We decided to get an early start and made it to the trailhead just before 9:00am, and it's a good thing we did. It was a beautiful morning and we were able to do all the climbing before it got too hot to be comfortable.
I've been told that I went out to Antelope Island once when I was really young, but I don't remember it at all. I was amazed at how big the island is. It's also a lot prettier than it seems from farther away.
Our route is shown on the following screenshot in light blue. The trail goes southwest for the first mile, then follows the ridge south from there.
Notice the elevation profile above. Many trails are a constant, even slope from start to finish. The Frary Peak trail alternates between being very steep, level, and downhill. It made for an interesting hike.
Most of the scenery looks about the same. One surprise was how green things are on the island. Sure, it's still pretty brown, but it looks a lot more green up close than it does from the city.
About 3/4 of a mile into the hike, the trail splits. The left trail continues up to Frary Peak, and the right goes up to Dooly Knob, which, in my opinion, is one of the coolest names for a geographic feature that I've ever heard. I'll have to go back another time to hit Dooly Knob; I couldn't talk my feet into it.
One highlight of the trail is going through a "cave" about 1 1/4 miles into the hike. It's really just a few giant rocks together making a smallish opening (okay, so I had to duck, but most people probably don't). It does provide a little shade, which is nice, but it also marks the point in the trail where you start the steep ascent to the top of the ridge.
It was at about this point that we noticed hundreds of runners down on the dirt road on the west side of the mountain. Apparently we were there on the day of the Buffalo Run. Maybe we were a little crazy for climbing to the peak, but there were hundreds of other people who were completely insane running around below. (By this point we were so far up that the people just looked like dust specks in the pictures.)
Up near the top of the mountain there are actually trees. A lot of them are dead, like this one, but there are a quite a few that are alive and doing fine.
Throughout the hike the scenery stays pretty much the same, just from a higher elevation. The nice thing, though, is you switch sides of the mountain multiple times. You start on the East, climb over to the West, back to the East, back to the West, and so on. There are quite a few places where you can see both sides of the island.
On the last push to the peak the trail gets really steep. It's not like a rock to rock leaping sort of thing, but it's almost uncomfortably steep. In just 1/10th of a mile we climbed 280 feet. It was steep, but the view from the top and the sense of accomplishment were worth the effort.
It was such a perfect day for the hike. It was cool enough on the way up that we never really got too hot. I'm not even sure I even started sweating until the last little push to the peak. There was very little smog, hardly any clouds, and we could see for miles in every direction.
Going down was quite a bit hotter, and there were people everywhere. When we started at 9:00 there were only a few cars in the lot. When we got back down there were dozens. It was an amazing hike; maybe one to add to my regular rotation. If nothing else, it's a great hike to do early in the season when everything else is covered in snow.
We decided to get an early start and made it to the trailhead just before 9:00am, and it's a good thing we did. It was a beautiful morning and we were able to do all the climbing before it got too hot to be comfortable.I've been told that I went out to Antelope Island once when I was really young, but I don't remember it at all. I was amazed at how big the island is. It's also a lot prettier than it seems from farther away.
Our route is shown on the following screenshot in light blue. The trail goes southwest for the first mile, then follows the ridge south from there.
Notice the elevation profile above. Many trails are a constant, even slope from start to finish. The Frary Peak trail alternates between being very steep, level, and downhill. It made for an interesting hike.
Most of the scenery looks about the same. One surprise was how green things are on the island. Sure, it's still pretty brown, but it looks a lot more green up close than it does from the city.
About 3/4 of a mile into the hike, the trail splits. The left trail continues up to Frary Peak, and the right goes up to Dooly Knob, which, in my opinion, is one of the coolest names for a geographic feature that I've ever heard. I'll have to go back another time to hit Dooly Knob; I couldn't talk my feet into it.
One highlight of the trail is going through a "cave" about 1 1/4 miles into the hike. It's really just a few giant rocks together making a smallish opening (okay, so I had to duck, but most people probably don't). It does provide a little shade, which is nice, but it also marks the point in the trail where you start the steep ascent to the top of the ridge.It was at about this point that we noticed hundreds of runners down on the dirt road on the west side of the mountain. Apparently we were there on the day of the Buffalo Run. Maybe we were a little crazy for climbing to the peak, but there were hundreds of other people who were completely insane running around below. (By this point we were so far up that the people just looked like dust specks in the pictures.)
Up near the top of the mountain there are actually trees. A lot of them are dead, like this one, but there are a quite a few that are alive and doing fine. Throughout the hike the scenery stays pretty much the same, just from a higher elevation. The nice thing, though, is you switch sides of the mountain multiple times. You start on the East, climb over to the West, back to the East, back to the West, and so on. There are quite a few places where you can see both sides of the island.
On the last push to the peak the trail gets really steep. It's not like a rock to rock leaping sort of thing, but it's almost uncomfortably steep. In just 1/10th of a mile we climbed 280 feet. It was steep, but the view from the top and the sense of accomplishment were worth the effort.
It was such a perfect day for the hike. It was cool enough on the way up that we never really got too hot. I'm not even sure I even started sweating until the last little push to the peak. There was very little smog, hardly any clouds, and we could see for miles in every direction.
Going down was quite a bit hotter, and there were people everywhere. When we started at 9:00 there were only a few cars in the lot. When we got back down there were dozens. It was an amazing hike; maybe one to add to my regular rotation. If nothing else, it's a great hike to do early in the season when everything else is covered in snow.
