Singles Events Guide

Backpacking and Outdoor Recreation Group

Miles: 28
Difficulty: Moderate
Days: 3.5

This is an excellent trip with an amazing combination of solitude, wildlife and scenery into the Mount Naomi Wilderness above Logan. Here are a couple of descriptions: (day-by-day itinerary below)

From www.wilderness.net:
“With spectacular alpine scenery, Mount Naomi Wilderness lies between the Logan River and the Utah-Idaho state line located northeast of Logan, Utah. At 9,980 feet, Naomi Peak, near the eastern boundary, is the area’s highest point, although this mountainous country contains several other peaks towering above 9,000 feet. On the western side, there are many deep, scenic canyons. Wildflowers carpet the large mountain meadows during summer blooms, and several flowers are unique to this region. You’ll find large populations of moose, elk, and deer, and beavers that are well established in several streams."

From www.utah.com
The land around this picturesque mountain lake in the Logan area has been designated a US Forest Service Wildflower Viewing Area. An easy trail circles the lake. Other trails from Tony Grove take you either deep into the Mt. Naomi Wilderness or up to White Pine Lake. All trails are scenic and provide wonderful opportunity to view flowers, which are at their peak from July through early August.

More information, including pictures can be found at http://www.uen.org/ut…

Here’s the itinerary:

Wed, July 28th
We’ll meet around 5pm at the Tony Grove Campsite about a mile off of Hwy 89 above Logan. From Tony Grove, we’ll hike 3.5 miles to our first campsite at White Pine Lake. The hike to White Pine is a very scenic and pretty easy route. It should take around 1.5 hours to get to the lake – plenty of time left to set up camp and have dinner. I haven’t done it but I hear the fishing isn’t bad at White Pine Lake.

Thu, July 29th
With approximately 10 miles to cover this day, we’ll need to get an early start. We’ll break camp and continue north. Almost immediately, we’ll face a fairly steep climb out of the basin to the ridge above. Once on the ridge, the hiking is pretty easy and mostly downhill. For lunch, we’ll break from the ridge and drop down into Steam Mill Canyon and set up at Steam Mill Lake. If we’ve kept a good pace, we should have plenty of time to play around at the lake or explore the nearby meadows.

After lunch, we’ll backtrack out of Steam Mill Canyon and back to the ridgeline. We’ll continue down the ridge another 6 miles to the northern-most point in our route, actually on the Utah/Idaho border. We’ll drop again from the ridge and set up camp near a series of springs in Boss Canyon.

Fri, July 30th
After backtracking a couple of miles from the springs back to the ridgeline, we’ll start a pretty steep decent down the “High Creek” trail. We’ll drop from 9200 feet to 6200 feet in just over 5 miles so pack the Ibuprofen for your beat-up knees. At the bottom of “High Creek”, we’ll reach a public campground where we can stop for lunch.

Unless you plan to have someone pick you up at the High Creek campground, all this downhill means we’re in for an uphill climb for the rest of the day. After lunch we’ll start to ascend the South Fork of High Creek towards Naomi Peak, the highest peak in the Bear River range. We can hike around 3 miles and camp at a series of small springs and lakes, or we can push on for 4.5 miles and camp at the picturesque High Creek Lake.

Sat, July 31st
Our final push includes doing some “Peak Bagging” by scaling to the top of Mount Naomi where the view is absolutely incredible. Our ascent will depend on whether we camped at the small lakes (2.7 miles from the peak) or at High Creek Lake (1.2 miles to the peak).

After reaching Mount Naomi, it’s a downhill 2.5 miles back to Tony Grove Lake where we started.

This will be an incredible hike. Some areas are definitely "Strenuous". A few areas will be "Easy". Overall, I’d rank this hike a “Moderate” for difficulty.

If you want to see and/or download the GPX track and elevation graph, go to: http://www.gpsies.com…
If you want GPS waypoints, let me know and I’ll email them to you .

Logan, UT 84321 - USA

Wednesday, July 28 at 5:00 PM

Attending: 13

Details: http://www.meetup.com/backpackers-128/calendar/13590055/