Olympus stands apart from the Wasatch front peaks by its light-brown craggy summit, diagonal striations below on the upper mountain, and its large stature. It looms over the southeast corner of 215, and is visible from about the entire valley. The butting up of the flat valley to the instant-steep base of Olympus demonstrates the stark transition of the Front.
Also, it makes for challenging and easily accessible hiking.
Olympus gains 4,000 feet in 3.5 miles, with a summit of just over 9,000 feet. This promises a consistently steep grade, and a calf burn. It’s also an enormously popular hike, becoming congested on weekends. To access it, there’s a parking lot on Wasatch Blvd about 2.5 miles north of the mouth of Big Cottonwood, at roughly 5400 South.
I hiked with friends Heather Kluk and Eddie Rice. Eddie was departing for a trekking adventure in Nepal the next day and utilized the final workout before setting off for mountain passes almost twice as high.
We started uphill, and it is only up until the peak. A few minutes in, we noticed two guys in their thirties enjoying a coffee, looking dressed for a day at the office, standing on a unique rock feature. The small rocky outcropping practically stuck out over the road, and they probably enjoy this spot for their pre-work coffee. I duly noted the spot, as it made sense for the office-bound populace to let the caffeine trickle into the bloodstream while enjoying a breath of fresh air.
Onward. The trail darts in and out of the shade, with Aspens and assorted shrubbery all the way to the top. A few sections are thickly lined with trees and can be a welcome respite from the summer heat, while many other sections are fully exposed heat catchers.
Being so close to the city, but on a nature hike, provides interesting perspective. Looking towards the peak while hiking up, you are immersed in the wilds, with no structures or signs of humans to speak of. But a turn of the head to the west, the ears sharpen to the hum of the cars, and the eyes look over a public golf course, a network of freeways, the pocket of downtown skyscrapers, and the wide, distant sprawl of the valley.
As we meandered up through a thick forested section, the peak felt near. Heather asserted us as being “probably two minutes until the final scramble,” and from there a few more strenuous minutes to the top.
Forty-five minutes later and we were at her declared point where the trail gives way to a network of steep rocks, and twenty minutes later we sat at the peak, in an overwhelmed quiet at soaking in the views.
This final quarter mile, however, has continually proved disastrous for hikers over the years. No signs, a disappearing trail, and an ominously steep climb with several apparent options has led to many search and rescue missions. The problem arises most commonly when descending, as the lack of an obvious trail leads people to being lost. According to a 2013 Deseret News article, Salt County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue respond to about 60 calls a year, with a third of them being on Olympus.
True to this occurrence, as we were chatting on the summit, two middle-aged women approached us and were slightly shaken at finding the right way to get down. Upon reaching the scramble they had, on advice from a friend, kept hiking to the right before going up terrain that they claimed “needing ropes for.” They refused to go down the same way.
We pointed them towards the way we came up, a bit boggled as to the info the friend had given them, especially on a place known for losing hikers on a yearly basis. It isn’t logical to go right, with the route following a somewhat straight direction once the trail peters out.
After enough valley-gazing time at the summit, we messed up our route down, and somehow veered off the main path and descended the summit in a strange and nearly precarious route, shimmying off some small ledges. We found the right trail immediately but laughed at being slightly caught at the seemingly simple yet perplexing nature of the summit.
Down we rolled, with the knees beginning to sting by the bottom. By the lower two-thirds the temps pushed into the soggy 90’s range, and we were ready to be done with the sweltering heat. Done in the morning, on a weekday, and with some attention at the final push, it will serve as the classic SLC hike that has been appreciated for years.