Erin Alberty: Exploring the wild side in an industrial jungle

It’s probably hard for Utahns to relate to what exploring the outdoors is like when you live in a place that is farther than a stone’s throw from national forests and national parks.

I hail from a meat-packing town in southern Iowa, and while I spent a lot of my youth roaming outside, those expeditions had a distinctly industrial vibe. I whiled away many an afternoon playing on an old shale mine that I called “Ash Mountain.” I rode my biked and “hiked” gravel roads that meandered through hog operations and farmland rather than wilderness. As a teenager in a land without boulders, I climbed a train bridge for a thrill. My friends and I liked sight-seeing, so at night we’d drive out of town to look at the lights on a coal plant that we called Future City.

Yes, we were that cool.

Railroads were ubiquitous around the outskirts of my town, and the sound of trains still reminds me of discovering old bridges and roads and ponds and whatever else you might find in a state where more than 97 percent of land is private property and very little has escaped development.

So the newest segment of Parley’s Trail revived a familiar sense of adventure for me.

This trail rises and falls from 300 West to 900 West, through a jungle of cement and metal in a part of Salt Lake City that I’d never seen before. It passes by retaining ponds, where you can see carp splashing vigorously, and over an impressive train yard.

Most will use the 1-mile trail for commuting; it allows cyclists and pedestrians easy travel through the “spaghetti bowl” of freeway ramps near Interstates 80 and 15. As a recreational hike, it may sound like a joke.

But for someone like me, who grew up wandering the wilds of a factory town only because it seemed worth knowing every nook and cranny, it kind of feels like home.

Getting there: The trail begins at 300 West and Bugatti Drive (2260 South), behind the fantastic cevicheria Del Mar al Lago. There is parking north and west of the building.

The trail: The path begins as a sidewalk heading west, alongside the Utah Transit Authority railroad. It passes under massive freeway ramps, and follows the UTA rail bridge up and over the train yard at about 700 West. It descends to 900 West, with a ramp down to the street, or you can turn around and walk back for delicious ceviche.