Signpost at the junction of the Mill-D North and Desolation Trails on the way to Dog Lake.
Click on image for a larger version.

Weather:  Somewhat cloudy, but little threat of storminess.
Present were:  Gordon, K7HFV;  Bruce, KI7OM;  Ron, K7RJ;  Dale, WJ7L;  Brett, N7KG and his two sons Nathan (KD7YYN) and Alex;  Clint, KA7OEI
Destination:  The car spotted at the Butler Fork trailhead - although we visited Dog Lake, too.
Question of the day:  "Did that thing just bifurcate?"
Total distance (GPS):   4.85 miles, round trip
Times:  Depart vehicle:  1836;  Junction of Desolation Lake trail:  1927;  Arrived at Dog Lake:  1950;  Departed Dog Lake:  2024;  Arrive at Butler Fork trailhead:  2141
Approximate Distances (in miles):  From Mill-D north trailhead:  1.8 miles to Desolation trail junction and 2.35 miles to Dog Lake
Altitudes in feet ASL (GPS approx):  Mill-D North Trailhead:  7260;  6250;  Junction of Mill-D and Desolation Lake trails:  8270;  Dog Lake:  8820;  Maximum elevation:  8960 (on trail between the tops of Butler and Mill-D forks);  Butler Fork trailhead:  7090
Altitude gain/loss (approx.):  1700 feet gained, 1870 feet lost. 
Local sunset on this date:  2103  (we gained only about 1 minutes of sun over the past week and it is now almost as late as the sunsets around here get!)
Total 2006 WNH mileage (if you've gone on all of the hikes thus far):  17.6 miles approx.
Total number of footsteps (according to my pedometer):  About 10700 (about 29 inches/step)  This makes an estimated 45950 steps hiked during this WNH season.

Images (572-944k, .JPG):

• IMG03553 - Dale, preparing for the evening's hike.
• IMG03556 - The information panel, telling everything that it wants you to know about Mill-D North Fork.  If you want to know about how the glaciers shaped the canyon, look at #3357.
  
• IMG03558 - A view across the canyon into Mill-D South Fork (a.k.a. Cardiff Fork.)
• IMG03561 - Dog Lake!.
• IMG03562 - Dale, trying to find out where the rest of the group is while Ron refuels.
  
• IMG03575 - The group photo for this week's hike.  (L->R:  Gordon, Clint, Bruce, Alex, Brett, Nathan, Dale and Ron)
  
• IMG03580 - A view down Butler Fork and to the peaks across the canyon.

This is a composite of several smaller pictures.  Please note that due to the size, it may not display properly on some browsers and 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 (exposure, time, location, etc.) are noted in file's EXIF "Comments" field.

• Dog Lake Pano - A wide shot of the area around the meadow, taken from the large rock at which we congregated.  If you look carefully at the group of people on the left side of the picture, you'll notice that some of them are "incomplete."  This is a result of some of them walking around and having moved from one exposure to another - and I didn't bother editing the "partially missing persons" out.  (2.2 meg)  Here is A smaller version (1/3 image size, 334k.)
  
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• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail. 
  
• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks, 669k)
  

This is one of the few regular "car-spotting" hikes that we do on Wednesday night:  We park one car at the Butler Fork trailhead and then leave the remainder at the Mill-D North trailhead:  At the end, the drivers are ferried up-canyon back to their vehicles.

On this day, we ventured up-canyon the farthest yet this year - all of the way to the terminal moraine in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  We also had the largest complement of participants with Brett and his two sons joining us.

This hike is approximately twice as scenic as most of the other hikes that we do - mostly because we don't retrace our route on the return trip.  The "destination" of this hike is Dog Lake (not to be confused with "Lake Dog" - which is a similarly-named body of water near Lake Mary above Brighton.)  Interestingly, both of these lakes have the same name for the same reason:  They are so-named because they were noted to be abundant in "Dogfish" - the 19th century local name for salamanders.  For whatever reason, the Wasatch salamander population has greatly diminished for reasons that aren't entirely clear - but it is strongly suspected that salamanders, like frogs, are bellwether species - among the first to be adversely affected by relatively minor changes in their environment.

This year, Dog Lake was more-or-less at its normal water level and as is its wont, its surface was strewn with floating logs.  Ron, who had been to the lake in just the past week observed that in his previous visit, the logs were all in one location on the water whereas on this evening, they were scattered about - undoubtedly due to wind.  Because there was little or no wind, we could see that the logs that were stuck against one shore or the other wouldn't be able to break free and those that were free-floating would just wander about.

Being the natural resting point, the group eventually gathered near the shore of Dog Lake where we rested and ate our snacks - which, for some of us, seemed to include the occasional inhalation of a gnat - although the usual clouds of these creatures weren't as prevalent as had been observed in years past:  Being near standing water, however, I noted a few mosquito bites after the hike - not too much of a surprise.  Although I didn't hear it, others reported hearing a "booming" in the distance - a sound attributed to a sound made by male Grouse trying to attract a mate.

The hike itself was mostly uneventful:  We were somewhat disappointed about the lack of a show of alpenglow on some of the nearby peaks owing to the clouds blocking the sun, but still, the waxing snowfields still made for dramatic contrasts.  The closest thing to excitement came when, upon arrival at the Butler Fork trailhead, we found Bruce who was fairly wet:  He'd apparently slipped and fallen into some water where, on a steeper portion of the descent into Butler Fork, a spring cris-crossed the trail.  Being that he had been significantly in the lead, no-one else witnessed this event and since he was unhurt, he simply continued on his way to keep warm.

On the trail down Butler Fork, we found a slight complication:  Apparently the stream in this fork has been dammed slightly - probably by debris - and it jumped its watercourse in several places, following the trail rather than the lower-elevation stream bed at times and at some times following two parallel courses.  The word "bifurcation" was suggested by Dale, no doubt a result of his predilection to eschew obfuscation, to describe the now-meandering watercourse.

Without further incident, we all arrived at the Butler Fork trailhead where Ron ferried the drivers to their respective vehicles.  At the conclusion of the evening, the group (sans Dale) convened at the TGI Friday's near Cottonwood Mall where most of us proceeded to cancel out many of the beneficial effects of the hike with a late-evening meal.

In the early days, Mill-D north fork was the source of a lot of timber for a mill established near there in 1855 or 1856:  The actual mill was located along the main stream in the canyon, near the south end of the present-day Spruces campground.  Interestingly enough, this mill apparently used a "sash saw" (a reciprocating blade) rather than a circular saw and its "rep rate" was supposedly about 200 per minute.  Driving this machinery was a 9 foot diameter waterwheel fed with a penstock with a 23 foot head.  In about 1861 Brigham Young - for reasons unknown - sold off the the assets of the Big Cottonwood Lumber Company and the different portions (one of which was the sawmill at "Mill-D") went to different investors.

As it turns out, after this sale, much of the output of the Mill-D sawmill was sold by its own lumberyard (owned by various people over the years - including a Charles Bagley and the once-mayor of Salt Lake, Francis Armstrong) in Downtown Salt Lake and its operation continued until the late 1870's.  Apparently, the remains of the sawmill could be easily seen at least until the early 1900's

It would seem that very little prospecting or mining was done in Mill-D North fork.

This fork was named after the Butler Brothers - one of whom was named Philander Butler (yes, that was his name...) -  who operated a mill in Mill-G fork, along with many other similar properties in later years, including a steam-powered mill in Butler Fork in 1877.  The next year, they operated their mill near the mouth of the canyon.

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 2006 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike index page.

Historical info about Mill-D and Butler Forks was taken from "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller