…but there are plenty of junipers, raptors, mule deer, pronghorn, bobcats, a few mountain lions, and now and then, wild horses.
In 2009 Congress designated 100,000 acres of the wild and seldom visited Cedar Mountains a Wilderness Area. Located only 50 miles from Salt Lake City, the Cedars are the third Great Basin mountain range west of the Wasatch. Typical of these types of mountains, the Cedars run north-to-south and are bordered on the east by Skull Valley and stretching to the west as far as the Nevada border is the Bonneville depression.
The ubiquitous explorer John C. Fremont passed through the range in the 1840s while later self-styled pioneer route-finder Lansford W. Hastings designated part of his infamous Hastings Cut-Off Trail to cut through a northern canyon of the mountains. The doomed Donner Party filled their canteens in this canyon for the 80 mile crossing of the Bonneville Salt Flats, unaware of the historic and grim fate that awaited them higher and further away in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.
Early settlers often mistook juniper for cedars. There are no cedar trees in the Cedar Mountains. Not much in the way of trees at all, actually. There are plenty of junipers though, and after the occasional lightning strike-induced fire, the skeletal limbs of these trees stretch skyward in plaintive and poignant fashion. Or, so it seems to me.
Being not so tall or wide as the Stansbury Mountains, nor so physically abused and trampled as the Oquirrh Mountains, nor so distant as the hyper-dramatic Silver Island Range, nor so remote and tough to get to as the Newfoundland Mountains, I have explored and wandered through the Cedars many times when I needed a close-by, West Desert escape in winter, spring or fall. Though the views can be quite grand, this is not dramatic terrain. Subtlety is the watchword for the Cedars.
I have walked the ridges in winter, punching through snow, with unblemished views to the Deep Creek Range on the Nevada border while behind me Salt Lake drowns in its own inversion. I’ve explored side-canyons in spring whilst trying to avoid trampling the occasional new flower struggling to raise its young head to the sun. I’ve seen the shy pronghorn, warily watching me, while ravens caw and circle overhead. I’ve taken my dogs for long hikes out there and, not surprisingly, I’ve done a fair amount of photography as well.
There may be no cedars, but I am glad there is a wilderness in the Cedar Mountains Wilderness.
