Cascade Springs, October, 2012

Drove up to Cascade Springs today. It's up the Provo Canyon and beyond Sundance.  I discovered it when we first moved back to Utah and were living in Midway.  It is really a lovely place and I haven't been back there in a few years.

For those of you here in the Wasatch front, you should take your families up there this fall if the weather holds - it will be unaccessible as soon as we get any significant snow since the US Forest Service will close off the Alpine Loop.  You have to drive to the top of the Alpine Loop and then head east (the turn is well-marked).  It is all paved road.

I have posted pictures of this spot before (I think in 2007) so that was long enough ago that maybe you have forgotten :)  So here are some pictures I took today.


The place has been upgraded some
since  I was last there and I was surprised

at how many people were there - about 12 cars in the parking lot, mostly families.  I guess they were out enjoying the beautiful weather and lovely fall scenery.  They have raised boardwalks all around the falls and pools area where the water ends up after flowing from the springs a couple hundred yards up the hill.

 

 There are brown trout in all these pools (natural, not stocked) but no fishing is allowed in order to preserve them.

 As you make your way up the hill you see the stream that originates at the spring and feeds the many pools and falls at the bottom.

Then as you near the springs you can see where the stream originates.  The water flows out of the ground over about an acre or two and flows together into the stream.  It is a large stream of water.

Below is one of many signs posted around the springs.  As you note, the springs flow year around - at the same temperature and the same flow rate all year, every year.

Another couple views of the actual springs and the trail around the springs.  You can see it is paved and even your youngest  could make their way around these springs.










The area was burned over in a forest fire in late 2003, not long after we moved to Midway, but after I had discovered the place.  I was really disappointed at how it looked for a few years. You can see just a few of the smaller, dead, burned-out trees in this picture below, but it has mostly pretty much recovered.  The forest-service signs talk about how the fire (it was a prescribed burn that got out of control) covered a much larger area than they had planned, but that it was actually good for the area.

 

This area is near the bottom of the pools and falls that the springs create and you can see one of the (many) streams from those pools flowing down to a creek that then makes its way down to deer creek in Provo Canyon just below the Deer Creek Reservoir.

I stopped and took a few pictures on my way out, back up to the Alpine Loop - it was towards dusk and the pictures are a little dark - but I wanted you to get some idea of how lovely the drive is also.

I then drove on over the Alpine Loop through American Fork Canyon.  It was absolutely spectacular.  All the aspen were bright yellow; leaves covering the road and the ground and it was gorgeous.  I didn't stop and take pictures on the loop.  You really just have to see it yourself to know how beautiful everything was.  Perfect weather with temperatures in the 70's even at the high elevations.

I love Utah and the great outdoors!