Top of the World
Nine years since we saw Top Of The World? Crazy! We remembered it being a bumpy but fairly short trail, so we headed out to see how things had changed. The difference between what it looked like in 2006 and what it looked like in 2015 were like night and day. It's a pretty challenging trail now, and we had a blast.
The first section of the trail before the first obstacle is definitely bumpy. Almost annoyingly so. You can never go very quickly, and you're always doing the "rock and roll" motion with your head whipping back and forth. It seems like it will never end, but then you get to the first fun bit.
The first hill is a blast, and we remembered why this trail is worth all of the bumps on the way to the last third or so. We all found our own lines through the obstacle, and it was all fun for a while after that.
At the intersection at the loop, we headed up the easy side to get to the end sooner rather than later. The light was going to be perfect. We had some more fun ledges to go up, and then it looked like the trail might not exist anymore too far ahead of us. That was it, the Top Of The World. We all parked to check things out.
Monica passed on driving to the end, but Julie was really looking forward to it. She worked her Jeep up to the edge, and then we all took a bunch of pictures. It's a special area, and it's a classic photo. There are lots of places where you can drive up to the edges of cliffs in Utah, but not many have a way to photograph it as well.
Mike S. was next, driving up to the edge and then getting out for photos. The sky was blue and the valley was filled with so many different colors. It couldn't have been better, and the photos were great.
Mike C. went after Mike S., getting some great pictures. Though the photos of a vehicle on the edge seem crazy, it's almost crazier in real life. I guess we are all a bit crazy.
We were realizing that this trail might be our last for the day, so we didn't hang out much longer at the end. We wanted to see the other side of the loop, and a group that passed us on our way up said that it was really torn up. We headed down it, and it wasn't long before we found ourselves at the first big obstacle.
Everything was downhill, and this was a wide series of big ledges. There were many possible ways down it, and we all walked it to find our own path. In the end, each of us chose the drop off that seemed reasonable for our Jeep's clearance. It was definitely fun and definitely more eroded than it used to be. This side of the loop really changed the trail's rating.
We had barely finished that obstacle when it was time to work our way down another one. This time it was a series of big holes and big rocks. There were lots of fun ways through it. No one got too hung up, though.
We'd barely left the end of the trail and we'd already been at it for an hour. It was nuts! After that obstacle, there were still more challenges in tippy hills and bits of rock. Though the sun was setting, we were definitely having a good time.
Sometimes it seems that the trail is longer on the way out, but this time we made better time working our way back to the trailhead after joining the main trail again. Bumpy uphills always seem to take longer than bumpy downhills, and it was all downhill on the way out. We soon found ourselves in a group at the trailhead. We talked about doing other trails, but we were losing the light and we felt like getting back to town. Everyone seemed to have different plans the next day, so we planned on regrouping again on the last day. Top Of The World is definitely a good time!
Reports from Other Days: 3
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Top of the World. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
