TIMPANAGOS CAVE

Last Updated on September 12, 2023 by

One of my favorite day trips of our entire stay in Salt Lake City. Unlike so much of where we have been, Timpanagos Caves are in a canyon filled with pine, Gambel Oak (remembered that one!) and poplar.

According to the story, in the fall of 1887, a farmer named Martin Hansen followed mountain lion tracks up the mountain though freshly fallen snow. Eventually they led him to the discovery of the cave. Enterprising fellow that he was, he immediately saw revenue potential and began charging folks 25 cents to provide a tour. Years later, two teenage boys, James Gough and Frank Johnson, explored the mountain range further and discovered another cave entrance. This is the entrance known as Timpanagos Cave today.

It also reminds me why I enjoy the west. There is a safety orientation given by the Ranger before you can take the trail to the caves. It consists of: It’s hot and the only place to get water is right here; it’s paved, but it’s steep; good luck! They aren’t kidding. While it is paved, it is an 1100′ climb over a mile and a half and at many points, the path is about 4′ wide with a drop off of about 70-80 feet with no fence, rope, or safety warning. I just can’t see that happening anywhere on the East Coast. A great walk for us, but some of the grandparents with their younger grandkids were clearly in over their heads and had to turn around.

Once you have completed the fairly strenuous climb, hopefully you have left yourself a chance to catch your breath and put on a long sleeve shirt or light jacket before your tour starts. If you are touring during the summer months, it is not uncommon for outside temperatures to reach 100 degrees while the temperature once inside the cave is a pretty steady mid 40’s. Cave tours last about 55 minutes and that’s a long time to try and adjust to the 50 degree temperature swing without some additional clothing.

The caves themselves were some of the most unique I have seen. The formations in many places were like popcorn and super curly straws. Also, again because I believe we are on the west coast, the maneuvering through the cave required navigating around many formations including Headache Rock, 18 Stitches, and others, in addition to several spots you had to squeeze by and or duck under.

My favorite part of the day was that, even though it was our daughters birthday, Shawn and I were the ones to get a present. We showed up with no tickets to the cave because we were ill prepared (happens to the best of us). In any case, we decided to do the hike up to the caves since we were there. While taking the “safety orientation”, another group was checking in and happened to have three spare tickets. Me, being me, I jumped right in and asked if we could purchase them. Shout out to Stephanie who worked with us to get her the moola. No, we didn’t have cash on us (again with the poor planning) and no, there was no internet (remember the afore mentioned national parks being in the middle of nowhere), so we couldn’t Vinmo her. She did, however, let us have the tickets in the hopes that we would pay up once we got back to civilization. Which of course we did. Karma and all that. Happy UnBirthday to Us!

The caves were great, too.