Thanksgiving Morning Snowshoe Past Donut Falls

I decided at the end of the year that it would be fun to start getting involved with other hikers near Salt Lake, so I signed up for Meetup.com and started going on outdoor adventures with some new groups.

This group planned a snowshoeing adventure on Thanksgiving morning to a popular hike in Big Cottonwood that I had been on before. It was to Donut Falls.

This short hike starts out on a road and goes up about a mile to a waterfall that drops into a hole in a rock that looks like a donut hole, hence the name.

In the winter the hike was similar, but a new white winter world replaced the normal greens and browns of the summer. We followed the trail and got to the base of the falls in about 30 minutes. Snow and ice cover the rocks that you can normally scramble up to see the falls from above, so we just stayed at the bottom.

Since the hike was so short, a lot of the group wanted to keep hiking. So, we went back to the main trail that split and followed the other route up a long, gradual hill to a beautiful sunlit, snow-covered basin. We stopped and admired the pristine view of the deep, untouched powder and how the sun threw sparkling flecks of rainbow at you as it reflect of the surface of the snow.

We hiked back at about the same pace to the cars and we all departed to our various holiday gatherings. It was a fun and beautiful morning and a great way to start the holiday season!