In fact, the bulging population of the Wasatch Front region, extending from Logan south to Provo, wouldn't be here without the water supply the Wasatch Range provides via springs and its annual inundation of snow.

It's that snow that sends winter-sports devotees into flights of hyperbole - - waist-high gouts of talc-like powder snow fall regularly through the cold months, accumulating an average of 500 inches each winter. There are more than half a dozen major alpine resorts on Wasatch-Cache land, including Alta, arguably the holy of holies to die-hard powderhounds. And in the national forest's voluminous backyard are the even higher Uinta Mountains, one of the prime backcountry and heli-ski playgrounds in the Lower 48.

Wasatch-Cache's winter recreation may get more national attention, but Salt Lake-area locals might well pick summer as their favorite time to be up in the mountains. Right outside their backdoors is an endless array of high-country wilderness hiking, a spider's web of world-class fat-tire biking, unsung but very satisfying trout fishing, and more than 300 sport-climbing routes in Logan Canyon. And the deeper recesses of the Wasatch, Uinta, and Stansbury Mountains (a western fragment of the national forest, west of Tooele) backcountry - - the domain of elk, eagles, and bighorn sheep - - are all an easy shot from the Salt Lake Valley.