Fish Creek

August 11, 2015

Fridays have become jam packed for me this summer!  Between articles I am out there on the trail, which I choose for that week, making sure it is in good shape, collecting GPS data, double checking mileage and directions to the trailheads and stretching my own legs.  Then the following Friday I go steal someone’s wifi connection, sit down with notes, Google Earth, and my photo’s to compile a story that hopefully conveys what neat stuff there is to see in the wild.  I wanted to focus on trails that you can get to without 4x4 or ATV’s, thereby appealing to more folks.  I see too many kids these days who don’t get out because their parents don’t get out.  Please go try an activity that doesn’t require a controller or a password.  These are your public lands,  this is your life, and it is your health at stake if you don’t get up and MOVE!  

This weeks hike is a really easy one and is accessed by 100% asphalt.  It requires a 35 minute drive North from Beaver and the hike is relatively flat with soft sandy tread.  Just like a walk on the beach, so NO EXCUSES!  The trail crosses Fish Creek 7 times(in the first 2 miles) so you’ll get to cool off in the stream periodically.  Because this hike is only at 6200’ it can be done almost year round, but it also means there could be rattlesnakes.  What also makes this hike so exciting right now is seeing the incredible erosive forces of water at work.  Following the Twitchell Fire of 2010, Fish Creek drainage has seen some dramatic changes and flash flooding events over the past five years.  For this reason it is important to watch the weather around you, should rainwater cause the stream to rise up, becoming uncrossable or dangerous.  So how do you get to this easy, yet perilous gem of a hike?

Leave Beaver heading north on Interstate 15 and then in 20 minutes go eastbound on Interstate 70 towards Richfield.  Get off the freeway at exit 7 and turn Left onto the Clear Creek Canyon road.  Before 1980, this was the main highway so it is nice and smooth, having been repaved in 2012.  Fish Creek joins Clear Creek just before mm 5 and park here on the South side of the road.  You’ll be hiking Southwest from here alongside Fish Creek on trail 048A.  The first stream you cross at the parking area is actually Clear Creek, which puts you on Fish Creek’s west bank for the first half mile.  Up in the Oak brush to the right there is an old out-house which could be 60 to 80 years old, dating back to when this trail was the road up into this canyon.  It takes about one hour to walk the two miles to I-70’s bridges spanning Fish Creek and if you make it that far it is an amazing sight to stand at the foot of these massive concrete supports.  You’ll feel like a tiny ant, circling a giant table leg, trying to figure out how to get up to the watermelon.  The drainage bottom under I-70 is 200 feet wide here and you should check out all the different colors and textures of the river rocks which may have tumbled down from the north slope of Belknap or Baldy millions of years ago.  The canyon walls you’ll hike past have interesting pockets and hollows, resembling the miniatures display cases where grandma kept her thimbles, trinkets and silver spoons.  It wouldn’t hurt to take along a fishing pole because the trout are back!  I’m so thrilled to know that Fish Creek has and will continue to recover as a fishery, that native Bonneville cutthroat were stocked, and that they can now be seen feeding in their usual haunts.  May God bless this little stream so these trout can keep swimming “Into the Tushar’s”.