GWT: Dry Canyon Trail #049

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Features Fall Colors · Views · Wildflowers

Starting at the Dry Canyon Trailhead, this trail starts immediately up Dry Canyon, which in the beginning is a cool place with towering, vertical canyon walls that look like they have some fun rock climbing routes on them. Pretty soon, the trail emerges from this short canyon section into a series of meadows, which are really beautiful in the spring, when they are green and things are blooming.

There are also a series of spur trails from this meadow, which can be confusing. To stay on the GWT: Dry Canyon Trail follow the dry creek bed, but stay on the trail that's just a bit up out of it. A little more than a mile in on the trail, you'll enter into a slightly more developed forest that offers some of the first real shade along the trail.

A little over 2 miles in, the trail starts to get a bit steeper, and emerges from the forest on a loose, rocky trail that splits from the main Dry Canyon drainage and heads up the middle of a series of erosion control terraces until it finally reaches the high point of the trail—the saddle below Big Baldy. There are some good views from this saddle of Cascade Mountain and southern Utah Valley, as well as some good views to the north, and of Mount Timpanogos.

From the Big Baldy Saddle, the trail descends for the first time, via a series of nice, gradual switchbacks through some aspens and pines, and then after the switchbacks continues to descend as it heads toward the start of the Battle Creek Trail. There are a few fun, rocky sections through here as well as beautiful stands of aspen trees and meadows.

After meeting up with the Battle Creek Trail, the trail stops descending and starts to ascend slowly through the same meadows towards Grove Creek Canyon, but before it reaches the Grove Creek Trail, this segment transitions into the GWT: Timpooneke-Chris Flat Trail.