With my family out of town, I took my free evening time to hit up Big Cottonwood Canyon to see some autumn leaves before they were all gone. Some friendly folks from the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers joined in and we had a great run (Thanks Collette, Justin and Tyson!). As it turned out, a lot of the Aspen leaves had already fallen at the higher elevations, but our route eventually took us through a gorgeous band of trees.

We parked at Mill D North and took my car up to Guardsman Pass. The Wasatch Crest Trail goes from there, north, to Desolation Lake. We then turned down Mill D to the cars. about 11 miles total (we took a wrong turn at the beginning and almost dropped down the east side of the Crest, oops!). I would like to think I could have done it faster, but I kept on stopping to take pictures.

So yeah, lots of pictures below. I just couldn’t help myself. The evening sun coming in sideways against the Aspens – wow.

10.9 miles in 2:07:21 @ 11:40 min/mile and with 1,031 ft. elevation gain