See https://archive.org/details/hudspethscutoffs00cram

1.	Bear River runs south from here. Cutoff runs straight into Fort hall road but south. 8 mile basin. (The road passes between 2 extinct volcanoes about 40’ high.) After a slight decent, the road passes between mountains. The road is excellent. However, the surface of the plain is elevated, depressed, torn in fissures from violent volcanic action. The elevations were generally from north to south, in height from 3 to 5 feet. There are craters along the road for several miles. Grass along the road for 10 miles after leacing the Bear River is very good.
2.	Little water. Enter pass one mile wide between high grass covered hills. At Steamboat Springs, peaks covered with cedars about 15 miles to the north. Road turns southwest and rises by a very smooth way four miles to the summit. At the summit is a basin of mountains about half a mile in diameter, surrounded by still loftier peaks covered with snow. These peaks apparently run up to sharp points. There were small aspen trees along the valley as we ascended and a  species of dwarf cedar toward the summit of the mountains.
3.	Descend to a small cold creek that feed a large rapid stream [Fish Creek]. Small speckled trout. Fine grass is on the surrounding hills. Willows and aspen along the creek. Grasshoppers everywhere. Lots of mosquitos. Crossing the stream, the road passes through a wet gully between hills for about half a mile. Then the road begins to ascend to the top of the next ridge—long and tedious. From this point we descended a long, steep, rough, and difficult hil. [Henderson Canyon]. We descended by a ravine down which runs a small stream. The road follows down the narrow bed of a stream difficult to pass. Loose gravel. Magpies and ravens.
4.	Descended the chasm to a point 3 miles below where it ran around the base of a high peak and emptied into a larger one. Lots of rattle snakes. One as large around as a man’s arm. Find snowberries or June berries on the sides of the mountains.
5.	Arrive at a creek [Dempsey Creek] in the valley. It flows over a clear gravelly bottom. Lots of grass wood and water. Lots of trout. Water falls up to 30 feet high. Ascend the bluffs and follows the river for a ways. The road lies along the slope of the foothills of a high ridge to the left.
6.	Came to a fine stream 20 feet wide, deep, and clear. Lots of trout but don’t bite. Runs around on either side of a hill in the middle of the valley joining on the other side. On the west side is a large, loud falls cascading down with a roar that can be heard for 2 miles. 20 miles from the last volcanic chasms. Currants, wild roses, willow grow along the way. Cattails. Looks like the valley is shut in on every hand by a barrier of mountains. Mosquitos! Road leaves the creek and heads into the mountains.
7.	A long slope up an undulating valley. Easy and gradual. Destitute of vegetation. Descend by a long steep pitch into the valley of Marsh Creek. Road was very good. See bluebells. Pass a spring fed creek feeding the stream as the road enters the valley. Pond covered with cattails. Deep sluggish stream 20’ wide running in a northerly course. Luxuriant grass. Between the broad marshy meadow where our animals were turned out to feed, and the mountains which bound the valley, the soil is barren, but sufficiently fertile to produce a dense growth of wild sage with scarcely an appearance of any other vegetable production.
8.	Large number of wild ducks and geese. (Blue winged teal) Principle fuel is wild sage. Come to a clear water 30 inches deep, placid current, gravelly bottom. Not very good to drink. Dead grasses and rushes around it. Warm water. Over the bluffs and then ascended an 8 mile plane. Two classes of mountains in this region, the largest covered with snow and the smaller ones having vegetation and filling up the space between the others. Upon the peaks of some of the highest mountains is a stunted growth of cedar which gives them a rather dark appearance. Upon reaching the summit between Marsh Creek and Hawkins Creek, we found the road descended immediately on the other side. Down a steep hollow among the hills which cannot be called green. See the road travel in a large hollow and ascending the hill on the other side, disappearing between them, winding away to the southwest. White quartzite of the canyon walls.
9.	On way down, find an exquisite spring of water a little to the left of the road. In an aspen grove. The first good water since leaving the Portneuf River 13 miles back. Lots of fish. Half a mile later another creek heading south. Then the road turns south. Very steep short hill and pass the north side of a dry slew. The country does not possess the wild appearance that it had a pieve back. The hills are not so crowded around, not so rocky, more smooth, rounded, and somewhat green, and at a great distance with more extensive plain-like valleys.
10.	Two streams  in a wide bottom [Dairy Creek and a tributary from the west]. Good grass. Hill covered with juniper bushes on which can be found black obsidian rocks. The road left the creek and vame up on a small rise. Laying along a descending hollow between two mountains most of the way we arrive at Little Malad River. The valley of the river is littered with dirty blue porous stone. Two tracks, one leading to the right to a spring about 400 feet off the road. Spring is 120 yards in circumference with a good gravel bottom, about a foot deep, very clear. Can see lots of trout. Cross the stream and the road bears southwest down the creek. Travel within a half mile of the creek for a mile and a half. Turns to the west into bluffs, over two long hills, turns to the right, descended and ascended. See antelope. Heading toward a range of mountains, the Blue Spring Hills. Rise a steep hill to the summit. Quaking aspen with the white bark scared with names. 
11.	The road descends through a deep narrow ravine on the other side — long, steep, rough, tedious, and dangerous. This is decidedly the worst hill to descend we have yet found. Nearly the whole distance the passage is barely wide enough to admit a wagon, while the steep perpendicular rocks on each side often rise higher than the wagon box, utterly precluding all idea of upsetting at these points. The road is often sideling and stony; the descent is over a mile. No water at the bottom. Sage hens. Spring found a number of miles after Malad River. Beautiful grove of timber. Cross a  number of dusty ridges and come to a small green flat where two brooks united [Twin Springs]. the badgers are very numerous and make their holes in settlements or villages like the prairie dog. The hole is from 9- 12 inches in diameter running down perpendicularly 8 feet and then at an angle at the bottom. As they are very shy I have seen none alive but our .train killed one answering the description of the badger given in Natural History. They are a powerful and rather savage animal and a more wolfish head or more formidable set of teeth cannot be found. The mountains over which we have travelled the last two days are all rounded off mostly, and many of them are covered to the top with grass. Some have cedar on their tops. Host have groves of poplar in ravines and are sparsely covered with service berries, the first of which is ripening [Aug. 11, I849]. They are much like the whortleberry, perhaps a little larger. Bull Canyon to Twin Springs 22 miles w/o water except for the one spring. Two more ranges to cross before rejoining the Calif Trail. Road descends. Come to a pine shaded spring. Half a mile further on, cross the South Branch of the Raft River. Road descends winding gradually among hills. Two good springs [Summit Springs and Sublett Springs further on]. Passed several large aspen groves. Sublett Springs flows out of the side of north side of a bluff nearly perpendicular for several hundred feet. Wolves around dead ox. Dismal howlings. Half mile from the spring is a muddy creek. Road turns SSW for 2 ½ miles and WSW for 3 ½ miles. Beautiful valley. Cross the stream. Creek on left. Land only 1-2 feet above stream bed. Water very good. Sage hens and ground squirrels. And ascended a gentle slope, the summit of which overlooked a descending plain, bearing only a small growth of sage. After getting a little way into this, everything assumed a most arid appearance. The cobblestones had a burnt appearance and the air was filled with clouds of white dust. A long line of willows through the center of the plain marked the outline of a stream [Raft River].

While at Twin Springs…  “From camp this morning [at Twin Springs] I marked the highest peak bare of trees, smooth, and apparently gravelly, bearing west southwest and determined to get a view of the [Great Salt] lake from it.. ..leaving the train end the road three miles on, I immediately began to ascend the mountain due west on a smooth rounded spur which descended from near the top. At first the ascent was gentle i-r.d I walked bravely and rapidly for more than two hours. It gradually became steeper and the scattered shrubs and greensward gave place to gravelly clay and a very light covering of grass. Sharper and sharper was the ascent and slower and slower my progress, I persevered and never stopped or looked back, and at a broad 12 reached the summit. I was richly rewarded for all my present and previous tramps to get a good mountain view and the long tedious hours I have spent on this, for I began the ascent just after sunrise. The mountains are piled in heaps all around me. It is like getting on the highest stack of an Illinois farmer and overlooking all his stacks and ricks and cocks of hay. South 25 miles lies the Great Salt Lake in full view. One glance and I look again at my feet and down the mountain side and en a perfect nest of mountain perks smooth as the one I stand upon, but much lower and gradually receeding and lessening in height until they become part of the plain which seems to occupy half the space this side of the lake. Across the plain I see a constant succession of little whirlwinds like water spouts. They rise up suddenly and sweep along for a mile or more and vanish only to give place to another. Sometimes there are several at the same time. It is a barren desolate waste, no trees, no grass, no sign of vegetation after the first two or three petiks. All beyond looks utterly desolate, and all has a dreamy eruptive silence. I do not hear a sound. But the lake! There it lies, white as the driven snow, with now a dark, now a green, now a blue spot in the center stretching away towards the southeast directly against a high black looking island. Beyond the white expanse rise high black barren looking mountains. The white expanse is pure salt. The dark streak is the water, which is blue, green, or black, as it is more or less ruffled by the wind. It is a sublime but melancholy sight after all. There is not a dime's worth of anything here if we may except the salt..."
12.	We came to water in the west of the [Raft River] valley, [a] spring in a dirty slew, or say creek, (creek no. 13) [he numbered them for reference J, five miles ishort of the ravine on the west side which I suppose the road will pass through "[Cassia Gap]. The stream is some 20 feet wide and two feet deep, muddy bottom and bad landings... We soon found that we were in quite a range of streams ancaponas. We crossed them besides the one we had passed. The first was a beautiful clear stream 4 feet wide, not bad to cross, the second a swail or pond overgrown with rushes, not bad, only muddy, but the third, or last was the worst little water we have had to cross. Wood is sage and willows. The Raft River Mountains in our immediate vicinity [?AIbion Range] are lofty and grand and being capped with snow. The valley... is destitute of timber as are the surrounding mountains. Fish and mussels. Prickly pear cactus.
13.	Cross Cassia Creek.  And went up its valley about a mile. Come to the junction of the cutoff with the Fort Hall road. The junction of Hudspeth's Cutoff with the original California trail occurs here. Almost all of the diarists mention it, and only a few have taken the trouble to record distances to it. This historic cross road is now lost in an irrigated field, but the two roads can be traced to within about half a mile of each other.