Weather:  Cooler - in the 70's in the valley with scattered clouds..
Present were:  Mike, K7DOU;   Dale, WJ7L;  Gordon, K7HFV;  Clint, KA7OEI.
Destination:  The trail between Lake Mary and Twin Lakes.
Question of the day:  "What's that roar?"
Total distance:   2.83 miles, round trip
Times:  Depart vehicle: 1843;  Waterfall near Lake Mary/Lake Dog junction:  1906 (departed at 1915);  Cabin:  1926 (departed area at 1934);  Rockslide area:  1950;  Arrive at Twin lakes:  2001;  Returned to vehicle:  2040
Altitudes in feet ASL (approx) from GPS:  Vehicle:  8780;  Waterfall:  9450;  Cabin:  9530;  Twin Lakes Dam:  9460
Altitude gain/loss (approx.): 750 Ft.
Local sunset on this date:  7:50 PM - (We've lost 11 minutes of daylight since last week - about 73 minutes since the solstice.)

Images (244-752k each, .JPG):

With failing light, fewer pictures were taken this time.

• IMG03101 - Clint, by the roaring waterfall below Lake Mary dam.
• IMG03103 - Dale, Mike and Gordon discussing important issues of the day, just below Lake Mary dam.
• IMG03108 - Sunset on Sunset Peak as seen from the shore of Lake Mary.
• IMG03122 - Underlit clouds as seen from the Twin Lakes cirque.

These pictures are composites of many smaller pictures.  Please note that they may not display properly on some browsers.  You may need to use an image viewer like Irfanview to view them properly and zoom in on some of the details.  Note that details of these images (exposure, time, location, etc.) are noted in their EXIF "Comments" fields.

• Lake Mary wide angle - This is a wide-angle view from the shore of Lake Mary, showing Sunset peak and surroundings.

Maps/profiles:

Note that GPS elevation data is sometimes a bit "ratty" due to frequent blockage and degradation of the satellite signal.

• The elevation profile of the hike
• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks)

Just a few more hikes are left - and what we are doing now are limited by the short supply of daylight.  This is one of the traditional end-of-season hikes, arriving at Lake Mary just in time to see the sunset on Sunset Peak and arriving at Twin Lakes in time to see the last of the underlit clouds and getting back to the car at about the time it's too dark to see much of anything.

Shortly after arriving at the Brighton parking lot, we realized that the waterflow from the dams seemed higher than it had been just two days before.  Our suspicions were confirmed by mention of this by two hikers that we passed coming down on our way up and finally by the roaring of the waterfall at the junction of the trail to Lakes Mary and Dog.

Following the Mary to Twin linkage trail up, we passed the cabin (the only one still extant from the original construction of the Lake Mary dam in about 1914) and could see from the marks on the water-side of the dam that it had dropped 6 inches or so quite recently.  This would appear to be part of the traditional end-of-summer release, has this has been noted in years past.  Arriving at Twin Lakes, we could hear (and later saw, crossing the stream on the service road) that this reservoir, too, is being lowered.

After the hike, the four of us converged on the Silver Fork lodge for the traditional after-hike "dime lime."
 

The Lake Mary dam was constructed in about 1914 and is owned by the City of Salt Lake and is part of its protected watershed with a capacity of approximately 600 acre-feet (about 196 million gallons) - about 2/3 that of Twin Lakes.  Lake Mary is actually two lakes, but the smaller one (Lake Phoebe) is normally merged with Lake Mary and is only visible during very low water years.

Comments:

• If you want one (or more) of these images and wish some sort of adjustment (color, brightness, exposure, etc.) please let me know:  All of these image have been processed in some way.
• These images are in chronological order.
• No-one ever said that all of these images (or any of them) were good.  Some of them may have definite focus/exposure "issues."
• EXIF data is present for most of the images, showing time, date, and precise exposure conditions.  Recent versions of Irfanview will show this in the "View->Image Information->EXIF" tab.  Note that cropping/noise reduction required the use of another program which may have removed some/most of this EXIF data.
• Images suffixed with "h" (if any) are half-size.  This was done for images that were somewhat out of focus (due to misfocus or camera/subject movement associated with long shutter times) or those that required some extra noise reduction and had lost some detail anyway.
• All images taken using a Sigma SD-10 camera and were taken using the 18-50mm zoom lens, except as noted in the EXIF data.

Go to the 2005 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike index page.