Bear Canyon, Salt Creek Canyon, Mt. Nebo Area

This is the last of several posts I've written about our recent anniversary trip down a little bit south.

It's not easy to get clear information quickly from a phone while cruising up the freeway toward home. In the car, I did an internet search on "easy hikes near me" and found one just past Nephi, Utah up a side off-shoot of the Mt. Nebo Scenic Byway. It was supposed to be a mostly level, relatively short hike. 

The Nebo Loop was closed just after the Salt Creek Canyon Road, which was also closed. There's a parking area at the bottom, so we stopped there and intended to hike up the canyon.

On our way up the road, we started seeing signs for the Bear Canyon Campground. So then we thought maybe we'd gone up the wrong canyon, that we were actually in Bear Canyon. Here at home, I did more internet searching and discovered we were in the exactly right place. It's both Salt Creek Canyon and Bear Canyon. I guess Bear Canyon is a subset of Salt. I'm still a little confused about that. 

If I had known we were in the right place, I would have wanted to push forward. Unfortunately, we stopped walking at the end of the road, at the entrance to the last campground, since we thought we'd gone up the wrong canyon. The waterfall trailhead starts at the end of that campground. We were so close to the trailhead and didn't know it. 

However, if we had continued, we would have had to walk over another mile. There was snow covering parts of the area, we were tired, we were a little concerned about time, and we had left our lunch in the car. So it was probably good we turned around. I definitely want to go back. It's so beautiful up there even in a warm winter.

We saw one couple on our way up that were walking back toward the parking lot. We saw a few other people on our way down. Otherwise, we had this beautiful, quiet wilderness area all to ourselves. It was 2.3 miles up and 2.3 miles back to our car. We walked on the road the whole time. We ate lunch, and then headed home. I'm excited to return there in summer or fall. By then we'll be able to drive up to the trailhead. It's a beautiful area. I'd love to drive the Nebo Loop, the Mt. Nebo Scenic Byway sometime.