Why circle an airport after takeoff? (SLC particularly) I left SLC (Salt Lake City) this morning heading to MCO (Orlando). On previous flights, I remember takeoff similar to other airports. We got in the air, gained altitude, and moved to our heading and left. 

This time though, we seemed to circle for a while, gaining altitude. I initially assumed it was to gain enough altitude to clear the surrounding mountain. I ruled out equipment problems because we kept climbing.

Pilots who have experience with SLC, is there a certain runway that needs this altitude gain due to the terrain? Would there be another possible reason this happened?
I would assume it was to avoid terrain, traffic and/or the restricted airspace close to the airport, but there is at least one departure procedure from KSLC that calls for a climb in the hold. The SALT LAKE TWO departure includes this:


  Continue climb in TCH VORTAC holding pattern (hold south, left turn,
  341° inbound)


And several other departure procedures call for climbing right or left turns; combined with a few ATC vectors that could easily give the impression of circling.

You might try looking for the actual radar track online if you search flightaware.com or a similar site for your flight. That would let you see what track you really flew.