An easy mountain hike near the Utah-Idaho border

Limber Pine Trail in Utah packs in a lot of good stuff for being only 1.2 miles long.

The loop hike has views of Bear Lake, educational signs, lots of shade, a well-maintained path, and an amazing pine tree that’s still around after 500 years.

This family-friendly trail is not far from Bear Lake, a body of water so huge that Utah couldn’t keep it all for itself – half of it belongs to Idaho. It’s popular for boating and swimming, and the surrounding hills are getting built up with oversized vacation homes to rent.

The Unshakable Husband and I and 30 others were staying in one of those homes for a family reunion, and we were lucky to have our kindred hikers there, too. True to form, Bryan and Becky agreed to an early morning start to check out Limber Pine.

Shortly after dawn, the four of us took our car up the canyon, and in a few minutes we were in the mountains at nearly 8,000 feet elevation. 

The trailhead parking lot was just off the road. At 6:30 on a July morning, it was empty, but vehicles would fill it within a couple of hours.

At the trailhead we opted for a counterclockwise direction, but both directions would get the uphill part of the hike done first. We took our time, reading some of the interpretive signs, stopping to rest. The elevation gain to the top of the trail was about 80 feet.

Parkinson’s hiking tip

If you live where elevation is closer to sea level than a mile-high city, give yourself a day or two before you exert yourself in the thin mountain air. Going uphill will be easier. But this is interesting: There’s a theory out there that people with Parkinson’s exposed to brief periods of lower oxygen levels – like mountain air – could see symptoms improve. (As if I need extra incentive to hike in the mountains!) But remember that this is very early research.

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In some sections of the Limber Pine trail, rocks added texture to the otherwise smooth path. So we had to watch our step.

At the halfway mark came the highlight: the namesake of the trail, the one, the only Limber Pine.

It’s actually five trees growing together, and scientists say they’ve been that way for 560 years.

Just imagine!  It was growing before Shakespeare found “tongues in trees” and Galileo peered through his telescope.

We enjoyed the break and photo ops, then set out to finish the loop. We were now going eastward and watched the rising sun over the lake. 

It was all a gentle downhill from there.

Back at the trailhead, all four of us weren’t ready to quit. So we went around the loop again. Total hike time was about an hour and a half.

Hike info

PD difficulty level (see chart): Easy
Distance: 1.2-mile loop
Elevation gain: 80 feet
Trailhead location: Up Logan Canyon on Hwy. 89. Look for mile marker 492.
Cell phone service: spotty
Bathrooms: Outhouses next to parking lot
Emergency medical support: 10 minutes to clinic in Garden City, Utah; 45 minutes to hospital in Logan, Utah.
Costs: none