Park City Hiking?

May is off-season in Park City. Most of the snow has melted so the skiers are gone, but there's still enough in the higher elevations that the mountain bikers have not yet arrived which is fine by us. When making plans for this trip we'd assumed it would be a good time and a good place to do five days of hiking. After stopping at the third 'outdoor' store with only mountain bike trail maps we began to wonder.

SD persisted and we stopped at the fourth shop, White Pine Touring and finally found a good topo map with clearly marked trails up in the mountains. Unluckily, most of those were on the other side of Guardsman Pass, the road through which was closed for the winter. “Yeah”, one of the bike guys explained, “they don't open that til June, maybe July. But you can hike the bike trails.”

Being, well, who we are, we drove up to Guardsman's Pass, and sure enough it was closed even thought there wasn't all that much snow. There did however appear to be trails off the parking lot just below the summit. While probably bike trails, they were empty not only of snow but also of bikes and people and we weren't sure they'd make good hiking trails running as they did all over the ridges and ski slopes. The views from the ridge however were spectacular.

Inspired by the scenary, but slightly discouraged by the hiking prospects, we headed back down to Park City to check into the Inn.