Lone Peak is situated in between the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys, with an elevation of 11,253'. With the Orson Smith trailhead sitting about 4,800', the Cherry Canyon trail gains significant elevation for a long time. In fact, if you compare this to Kings Peak, you gain/lose nearly an additional 3,000' in a much shorter span. Kings averages about 400' per mile, while Lone Peak averages about 1000' per mile. This trail, from the granite walls, wildflowers, meadows, and cliffs of the Lone Peak cirque are hard to beat in terms of beauty.
On Labor Day, we went up the Cheery Canyon trail, looping around to the North of the main ridge in order to pass through some of the most beautiful scenery in the wasatch mountains. The trail winds past granite walls that surround fields of wild flowers, all covered by gigantic pine trees. This area of the trail is finished by going past the "outlaw cabin" on the way towards the summit. At this point, it's a scramble up and across countless granite boulders to reach the summit ridge. From there, the moving gets slow, as you carefully climb the last 300' to the summit along the exposed ridge.
Our overall time was 3 hours 45 minutes to the summit, and 2 hours 20 minutes to descend.
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