June 10, 2026
While camped for 11 days on Skyline Drive, I took Wednesday off work so Mark and I could hike East Mountain. This was the third time I summited the mountain. My first time was in 2004, when I climbed straight up cross-country from Indian Creek, and it was the fourth Utah county high point I ever hiked. The second trip was in 2018, when I drove up the Flat Canyon road from the head of Cottonwood Creek. That was a much easier hike than the first since I gained most of the elevation during the drive, and it was a pleasant albeit longer walk along a rolling ridgetop. This third hike was longer and had more elevation gain than the others but was perhaps more interesting.
We started at the Scad Valley trailhead and went up the trail into the head of Horse Canyon, most of which follows an old road. We climbed about 900′ in that first mile and a half, and since I’d done this portion of the hike in 2018 on the way to the summit of Seeley Mountain, I tried to avoid stopping to look at the aspen carvings along the way. There were a lot of them and I didn’t the hike to take longer than necessary. 😀 At one of the few places along the old road where we could see the view west through the trees, I noticed a bunch of vehicles now at the trailhead. We wouldn’t find out until later what they were doing there. It was a nice view across Scad Valley toward peak 11,096′, which I didn’t know at the time that I would be hiking to 10 days later.
We rested briefly at the head of Horse Canyon. This was also my third time visiting this spot, the second of which was in 2020 when I hiked with Loa up from Huntington Canyon. We went south up the ridge, still following an old road, and in less than a mile we reached the site of an old sawmill. All that’s left is a huge pile of lumber scraps from the mill and a pit or trench. Many of the aspen carvings in the sawmill area date to the late 1950s so perhaps that’s when they were logging here. One carving stood out to me, made by Vernell Rowley in 1957. I had the pleasure of meeting Vernell in about 2011, coincidentally just a few miles from here at Potter’s Ponds. He passed away in 2023.
A bit beyond the sawmill were some troughs at a spring, and Mark and I looked nearby for several minutes for a geocache before finally finding it. A sign there points east to the Spoon Creek Spur Trail, but I think it must have gotten turned around. Spoon Creek is what all the USGS topo maps prior to 1979 called what is now Indian Creek, which you can reach via the trail to the west. It’s curious that the Forest Service would install a trail sign with the Spoon Creek name well after the name was changed to Indian Creek. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the name changed back to Spoon Creek in my lifetime. We followed the East Mountain trail, still on the old road, a few hundred yards beyond the spring to a fork. I actually wasn’t paying attention to my GPS and passed the fork that goes to the summit. The old road contours to the east toward a spring but we were supposed to turn off south and stay on the ridge, but the fork wasn’t obvious and we had to backtrack once I realized my error. The trail up East Mountain had been maintained at one point but now it appears only the trail to the spring receives any maintenance, and we had to climb over some logs before breaking out above the trees.
The rest of the hike was out in the open, without much of a trail. The steep hillside leveled out closer to the summit, and there on the flat ridgetop were several logs carved out with an axe that were much too small to be water troughs. I assume they’re sometimes used to hold mineral salt for livestock, like I’ve seen before about five miles away near Skyline Drive. There was also a metal fencepost and some buried PVC pipes whose purpose I couldn’t figure out. It had been windy all day but it was particularly bad at the summit. I spent some time poring over the entries in the summit register and I got pretty cold. The views to the west and north were nice, and I could see the Wasatch Mountains in the distance, including Provo Peak which, again, I didn’t then have plans to hike but would find myself on its summit in a couple of weeks.
We walked over and found the nearby geocache and, before leaving the summit area, explored the boulders down off the west side of the summit. There we saw a memorial inscription for Harold and Mary Poulson, and part of the original 1937 survey tower. We retraced our route back down and at the spring near the sawmill we sat down for lunch, then took a different trail (the “Spoon Creek” trail) that would lead us back to the trailhead. Unlike our ascent trail, this one was never a road. There was what I’m pretty sure is bear scat in a couple of places along it. We made quick work of the descent, going from the spring to the trailhead in one hour. Back near the trailhead, after crossing the bridge over Scad Valley Creek I kept thinking the bridge looked different. At the truck I reviewed my photos from earlier and, sure enough, the people in all those vehicles I’d seen at the trailhead had been there to replace the wooden bridge supports with steel I-beams. The hike was just over seven miles with 2,200′ elevation gain and had taken us five hours. This is probably my favorite of the three routes I’ve hiked to East Mountain, but only because I’m in good enough shape for the elevation gain to not suck.
Photo Gallery: Scad Valley to East Mountain