Stewart Falls

I have done Stewart Falls a couple of times in the past, but this time in particular was an adventure. My friend and I have both been dying to go hiking, but the rain and snow had kept us out of the canyon. We finally found a time to go and decided to see how big the falls were with all the rain and snow we have gotten this year. We were shocked!

Location: Provo Canyon

Directions: Drive up Provo Canyon. Once you drive through the tunnel, the road will bend and you will turn left. Get into the left turn lane and be careful to watch for oncoming traffic around the bend. Head up the road. You will pass Sundance and Aspen Grove. Right past the pay booth you will take your first left. This parking lot is used for both the Stewart Falls trailhead and Aspen Grove trailhead to the top of Mount Timpanogos. Be sure to put in “Aspen Grove trailhead” in Google Maps as your destination instead of Stewart Falls trailhead. We tried Stewart Falls trailhead and it lead us to a private road that we couldn’t use. You can click on the location link above to pull up the correct destination quickly. When you get to the parking lot, you will see a trail that forks within the first few yards. If you take the right trail, you will start hiking up to the top of Mount Timpanogos. Be sure to take the left trail to Stewart Falls.

Length (round trip): about 3 miles

Difficulty: Easy, great for those looking for a quick hike, great for kids.

Steepness: This hike really isn’t very steep. For the most part, this hike is a series of going up and then going down again. It doesn’t gain or lose much altitude over the course of the hike. This makes it great for trail running and a great hike for those looking for something that isn’t too strenuous.

Low Points: There are a lot of people that know about this hike and traffic this trail. It is busy during pretty much any time of the day. If you're looking for something quiet, I wouldn’t recommend this hike.

Highlights: The waterfall is particularly big this year, so you don’t even have to go to the bottom of the falls to feel the temperature drop and feel that refreshing cool.

Our Adventure: Because we started this hike around 5 pm, there wasn’t much sunlight on the trail. This was nice, but it also made it a little chillier. We were surprised to see that not very far up the trail, there was a huge snowbank.

It was a bit of a challenge to get around, but we made it and kept going. Later on, we came across a couple of snow slides. The trees were all bent and broken from the weight of the snow that had slid down the mountain. We had to climb over these trees, and hike through a good amount of snow before the trail was dry again.

At the waterfall, we were amazed at how big it was and how much snow was at the bottom. There was even an additional waterfall to the left of Stewart Falls that was gushing out the extra water that was melting. It was crazy to see so much snow up there!

The bottom of the two water falls meet and make a pretty big stream of runoff.

If I weren’t going on my mission in July, I would love to hike Stewart Falls again in like August to see what the snow situation is like at that time. I guess I’ll just have to have someone do that for me though ;)