Still unclaimed:
Is someone missing a headlamp?  Ron found this unfamiliar device in his Jeep:  If it's yours, let Ron know - or drop me an email...
Click on image for a larger version.

Images (.JPG format):

• IMG04747 - Across Silver Fork, just below the entrance to Honeycomb Fork.  The haze is a combination of particulates from the fires and the light rain that was falling at the time.
• IMG04749 - Is this the future of our access to the canyons?  Ron discovers that he doesn't seem to have a "Honeycomb Fork" token...  Another view of is #4750, showing lift near the mouth of Honeycomb Fork.
• IMG04751 - A view down Honeycomb Fork, just before the trail/mining road enters the trees and turns into a rocky climb.  Chris can be seen just below the center of the picture - just before he caught up with the rest of us, with Bruce off to the left a bit.
• IMG04753 - Bryan and Ron looking up the canyon, perhaps wondering what they had gotten themselves into...
• IMG04754 - Looking somewhat up-canyon.  The dump of the Woodlawn  mine is visible in the left half of the picture.
• IMG04806 - The remains of the portal of the Woodlawn Mine.  A closer view is #4808
  
• IMG04821 - The obligatory group photo.  L->R:  Ron, Bruce, Bryan, Clint, Chris.  As you can see, Chris wasn't all there for this picture - or in #4822.  (#4820 is a more "normal" picture - but slightly blurred due to the long time exposure...)
• IMG04525_04528_composite - A composite of two pictures of the remains of the cabin.  Because it was quite dark (I set the camera to ISO1600) and since I was in a slight hurry, these didn't turn out too well, being handheld and somewhat blurry because it was too dark to see well through the viewfinder to adjust focus.  Two views of the cabin have been combined.
  

• Honeycomb Pano 1b - This is a composite of 12 pictures taken just below the Woodlawn mine, with the Honeycomb Cliffs rising up in the center of the picture.  The upper part of the canyon is toward the left.  (2.45 Meg)
• Honeycomb Pano 2c - This is a 360 degree composite of 36 pictures taken just below the Woodlawn mine, from about the same location as the above picture.  As you can see from the picture, it didn't turn out quite as well as there is some geometric distortion of the image due to the non-symmetrical capture of the original images - not to mention some "ghosting" artifacts as well.  "Up-canyon" is on the left, and "down-canyon" is on the right.  (1.59 Meg)  (Because he'd moved between shots, I had to reattach Bryan's head, as is it was partially missing in the "2b version" of the pano.)
  
• Honeycomb Pano 3b - This is a composite of 9 pictures taken from the hike's stopping point, the meadow above the Woodlawn Mine. (2.45 Meg)

• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks, 302k)
• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail. 
  

We weren't really sure what to expect from the weather.  The forecast had called for some rain late in the evening - but it was only about 6 o'clock and it already looked somewhat threatening.  I had also been wondering what the turnout would be, having heard that both Gordon and Bruce were under the weather.  On the way to the parking lot, however, Gordon (who still didn't feel up to hiking and wasn't coming along) announced that he'd heard from Bruce who decided that he was, in fact, well enough to participate.  By the time we were ready to depart up the canyon, a more-or-less normal-sized group had already gathered.

In deciding what to do, I suggested Honeycomb fork:  I'd only done it once before, in the rain, Ron had never been there, and Bryan had been through it in the winter, on skis.  Being that the sunset is still quite late - and that this is, in fact, one of the longer hikes - it seemed an opportune time to try it.  With this, we piled into Bryan's truck and headed up the canyon, parking outside the gate at Solitude.

When we got there, we noticed that there seemed to be something else going on:  We had followed up an old Jeep Wagoneer that had been going up the canyon fairly slowly - followed closely by another large truck with flashers blinking - and both had stopped at the entrance of the Solitude parking lot.   Passing it, we then noticed a few other things:  A few signs telling where the crew to go, a lot of other vehicles in the west end of the parking lot, and that the Jeep that we'd been behind had a faux license plate in that it looked like an old Arizona plate, but had no state or date markings on it.  With all of this evidence, we concluded that some sort of film or TV show must have been being made in the area.

By the time we got out of the truck and donned our hiking gear, the clouds had darkened somewhat.  Proceeding through the parking lot, we could see a number of catering trucks, grip trucks, light stands, and other things related to making a movie or TV show, as well as a crowd of people in amongst the trees just past the west end of the parking lot, off to the south slightly and up the hill and it seemed that if they weren't filming at that time, they were either setting up or tearing down, or were just gathering to talk:  The only notice given to our presence was from a crew member who simply waved and said "Hi" as we walked past.  We wondered what they were doing, but decided not to make an ask of ourselves.

Past the west end of the parking lot, just below the treeline, we noticed that many of the older Solitude buildings looked to be in a state of terrible disrepair and/or in the process of being razed.  We continued along and eventually intercepted the gravel road that, we believed, headed up the hill to service the ski lifts:  Being that none of us were exactly sure where we were to go to get to Honeycomb Fork - plus the fact that when we were there in 2004, we'd not followed the road much, except in the dark and on the way out - we took what turned out to be the correct guess:  The more-level right fork of the road that seemed to be headed upwards, along the side of Silver Fork.

At about this time, two things happened:  It started to rain, and Chris appeared on the radio.  Fortunately, the rain wasn't hard enough to make any bother donning any rain gear - and this was, indeed fortunate, because it seems that I was about the only one that had any with me, anyway.  At this time, Chris was still headed up the canyon - but fairly close - so we gave him a few instructions as to where we'd gone - which he seemed to have recognized, having been there both on skis and on foot before.

The rain continued fairly lightly and intermittently, doing little more than only slightly dampening us, while the canyons occasionally reverberated with thunder, but there seemed to be nothing that was both intense and nearby.  Continuing up the road, we finally go to the ski lift near the mouth of the honeycomb Fork, hung around for a few minutes take a few pictures, and then continued onwards.  Once in Honeycomb fork, what was once obvious a road (with parallel paths) starts to become a bit less distinct in places, looking more like a trail, but it is still very easy to follow.  In the fork a few hundred feet, we again noted that the trail forks - with the other trail apparently dropping down into Silver Fork:  We wondered (as did Chris on the trip back down) exactly where this trail ran, threatening to follow it all of the way down someday...

Perhaps a quarter mile or so into Honeycomb Fork, I called Chris on the radio - but couldn't remember his call, instead saying "...K7FYP - or whatever the hell it is..." to find out where he was, to which Chris, with a very good signal, replied with the response of "Excuse Me?!"  As it turned out, he'd been moving along at a good clip and at about that moment had come into sight behind us.  We slowed a bit to let Chris catch up (yes, I'm sure that that's why we slowed down...) and then continued on, again.  At about this time, the trail (the old mining road) entered amongst the trees and it more closely resembled a set of badly designed and maintained cement stairs, with the loose material having long been washed away, leaving only random boulders on the steep ascent.  During the occasional stops along this part of the trail, we asked Chris if he knew why there were many cords of cut wood stacked about the meadow farther up:  He believed that these were remains of the land-clearing when the ski lifts were put it.

At about the time the (thing that had once been a) road leveled out, one comes into view of the dumps associated with the Woodlawn mine, plus the other detritus associated with mineral extraction.  Following the trail up and around, we were amongst the remains of the buildings.  Chris, who had been there a few years ago, began looking for the portal of the Woodlawn Mine - but couldn't immediately find it, until he realized that it was just a little farther down the hill:  Looking into the narrow gap amongst the remains of one of the buildings, one could see that the tunnel still went back into the mountain, out of sight.

By this time, the light rain had subsided to little more than a few random sprinkles, so we went up-canyon even farther to the next large meadow above where there had been the majority of the mining activity.  There, surrounded on two sides by the Honeycomb cliffs and within eyesight of the pass, we stopped:  Had there been another hour of daylight, it may have been practical to make it to the pass, but with the waning light and the possibility of more rain (not to mention lightning) we decided not to attempt it.

Sitting on the remains of a mine dump (the tunnel from which the muck was extracted not being visible) we ate our snacks, talked our talk, and took the inevitable group picture(s) before heading back down.

As we sauntered down the trail, just above the remains of the buildings near the Woodlawn Mine, I happened to notice - uphill and through the trees - the remains of a fairly large log cabin.  Because it wasn't far off the trail, we decided to investigate.  Even though the roof had collapsed some time ago, we could tell that it had been fairly well-built, with an overhead loft, an interior wood plank wall (to better-keep the weather out and provide a bit of extra insulation) and that it had, at one time, probably been well-chinked.

The rest of the descent was full of talk and otherwise uneventful, with no more than a very occasional light sprinkle, and before too long we found ourselves back in the Solitude Parking lot.  There, we were met by a sheriff, who simply asked if we'd parked inside the gate:  We said no, mentioning that we'd never actually seen the gate locked at the hour posted.  He replied that, with the film crew and their gear up here, that they were keeping an eye on things, at which point we thanked him and continued back to our cars.  Fortunately, Chris, having noticed that we'd parked outside the gate, also did so:  Murphy's law implies that had he parked inside the gate, it would have already been locked and the sheriff would have been nowhere to be found.

The trip down the canyon was uneventful (aside from keeping a close eye on the many deer foraging along the road) and when we got back to the parking lot, we talked for a few minutes before going our separate ways...

(And yes, it's the "Black Bess" shaft near the top of the canyon along...)

According to Keller, Honeycomb Fork, like Alta, is no stranger to disasters, with several people having been killed in avalanches that swept down, including a large one in January of 1875 that killed the Superintended of the Annie Tunnel, and at least one more avalanche in March of 1877.  Note:  The Annie Tunnel is, apparently, connected to the Prince of Wales Mine, and is likely the source of the dump pile across the canyon (toward the west) from the Woodlawn Mine.

While the big mining boom in the Solitude area occurred in the 1870's, the remnants seen up the Honeycomb Fork of Silver Fork (near the Solitude Ski resort) are mostly those of the Woodlawn mine.  Excavation of this mine began at around 1900 and continued intermittently until the 1940s.  In 1915, the Kentucky mine (the portal of which, from what I can tell, appears known as the "Alta Tunnel" - which is the mine that one passes not too far up Silver Fork and is a source of water) was begun to excavate minerals as well as to provide drainage to the Woodlawn and other nearby mines.

The primary minerals of the Woodlawn mine are lead ores, such as Galena and Cerussite, Pyrite, as well as other Manganese and Iron-based minerals.

A very interesting page concerning a court case relating to water rights to mine discharges may be read here.  This case has a brief history of some of the relevant mines, as well as some interesting insight into the geology of the area.

The Utah Mine Locations page of the Trainweb site give the location of many of the mines in the area.

Comments:

• 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.
• Because all of the images were originally taken stored in raw binary format, they have been down-processed to .JPG for web posting:  If requested, different color/contrast/brightness may be applied and/or higher-quality uncompressed versions may be available for most of these images.
• 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 numbered 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.
• If you took some pictures of the hike and send them to me, I'll post them - and give you the blame!
  

We went to Honeycomb Fork - in the rain - in 2004 - click here to read about that hike.

Go to the 2007 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike index page.