Trail marker at the Rattlesnake Gulch trail head.
Click on image for full-sized version.

Images (.JPG format):

• SDIM0477 - Gordon and Ron looking at the map kiosk near the Rattlesnake Gulch trailhead.
• SDIM0481 - Ron, near one of the "bends" of the original pipeline.  While most of the "pipeline" was wood, metal sections were often used where the pipeline made bends.  (We don't know what the bend was doing at the bottom of Rattlesnake Gulch, though...)
  
• SDIM0482 - A view down Mill Creek canyon into the valley, from one of the first points that the valley becomes visible along the trail.
• SDIM0486 - From the end-point of the pipeline, a view across the valley, looking to the west and north.
• SDIM0487 - A zoomed-in view toward the sunset and Stansbury Island.
• SDIM0509 - A tight zoom of Ron's neighborhood.  Can you tell which house is Ron's?  If you can, Ron might be interested as to why that is...  (If you give up, here's a picture annotated by Ron that shows where his house is believed to be...)
  
• SDIM0511 - A tight zoom of the area around I-15 and 5300 south.
• SDIM0516 - The obligatory group picture.  L->R:  Clint, Mike, Gordon, and Ron.
• SDIM0522 - An attempted shot of the terminating "Y" piece of the pipeline, with the valley in the background.
  

• Salt Lake Valley Pano 1 - A wide-angle view of the Salt Lake Valley near sunset.  (8.3 Meg .jpg)  There is also a quarter-size version here - only 700k.  The black portion in the lower-left corner is a result of missing image information for that part of the picture.
  

• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks, 705 kB)
• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail. 
  

This was the first Wednesday Night Hike of the 2008 season.

Sort of.

As has the been the case in the past, several of the "regulars" have gone into the mountains on Wednesday nights before the "official WNH Season."  Those going before have often used snowshoes - or completed exploratory trips just to see what is passable and what is not.  On this occasion, a large-enough quorum was assembled to call it an "official" Wednesday Night Hike - whatever that means...

Deciding to stay low - in areas that were more-or-less guaranteed to be clear of snow - we chose to assault Rattlesnake Gulch in Mill Creek canyon.  This trailhead has been used before on Wednesday Night hikes, but mostly to access the "Pipeline Trail" heading toward the east, up-canyon.  On this occasion, however, we decided to head to the west - where the pipeline terminated at a point providing a valley-wide vista - an overlook superior, in many ways, than the "Salt Lake Overlook" that is farther up and across the canyon.

Having convened at the mouth of Big Cottonwood canyon, we reconvened in the Olympus Hills parking lot, piled into Mike's vehicle, and headed up the canyon.  Just after passing the tollbooth, we suddenly wondered if we'd already passed the trailhead:  Just at the point where we were trying to decide if we needed to backtrack, a familiar landmarks (namely, the trailhead...) were spotted, so we parked, piled out, and commenced our trek.

This trail goes up Rattlesnake Gulch (presumably named due to the frequent sighting of said reptiles - of which we saw none) and eventually attains the elevation of the old Mill Creek pipeline.  At this point one can go to the right, up-canyon toward the original source of the pipeline, or to the left, following the pipeline's course to its terminus, overlooking the valley:  We chose the latter.

Unlike the Cottonwood Canyons, dogs are permitted off leash (as are bicycles) on certain days, so we saw plenty of both:  Even if I had not seen a dog anywhere along the trail, my olfactory sense was detecting that some had been recently present at almost all points along the trail.  In addition to the dog scat, there was plenty of "bike scat" to be seen - along with the frequent need to step off the trail to let the cyclists pass by.  Fortunately, with much of the pipeline trail itself being fairly level, the cyclists were moving along at a fairly sane speed, needing to generate their own locomotion, generally avoiding the need for sudden, evasive maneuvers on our part.

After dodging a lot of cyclists, we arrived at the end-point of the original pipeline.  This end-point provided an excellent view of the valley as well as dramatic lighting of the sunset to the west.  After loitering there for a while and taking a few pictures, we decided to head back down.  On our return trip, we noticed the lack of cyclists - most of them apparently having enough sense not to attempt navigating of the trail in the dark - returning to a now-abandoned trailhead.

Making the short trip down the canyon, we paused at the toll booth, where both Ron and Mike bought a season pass for the canyon, after which we returned to the parking lot.  There, Mike parted company while the rest of us made the short walk across the parking lot to Rocky Mountain Pizza Company where, as is the case on Wednesday evenings, there was a bluegrass jam session in progress.  After a dinner of pizza, salad, and bluegrass, we finished our evening.

Bluegrass audio clip:  (.mp3 file, 1.27 Meg)  One of the numbers played by the bluegrass ensemble during the jam session.  This was a "natural sound" recording, so the instrument weighting is uneven, it was far from the vocalists, and you can hear room noises - such as talking and the ice machine.

According to Keller, there were two pipelines:  The first was built in about 1907 to convey water from a "rubble masonry" dam built at the mouth of Elbow fork:  This dam was extant until the time of the 1983-84 floods, when it was cleared to maximize stream flow.  Constructed of wood staves, the pipeline was 22 inches in size and followed the course that the trail does today.  At the end, it entered an 18-inch steel pipe and descended the slope to Porter Fork, near the mouth of Burch Hollow where it fed a 300kW generator:  This plant originally serviced the Salt Lake Pressed Brick Company through a 12-mile long power line.

In 1910, more power was needed to supply the U.S. Smelter in Midvale, so a second plant was located at the mouth of Mill Creek using water from the tailrace of the earlier ("upper") plant that was carried by another 3.5-mile wood-stave pipepline where it, too, descended through a steel penstock to drive a pair of 560kW generators:  It is this section that we walked along on this hike.

The newer "lower" station operated until 1949, when the pipeline itself was declared to be unsafe at which point both the plant and the pipeline were dismantled.  The older "upper" plant was operated until 1970, when it was torn down.

Keller's description includes a mention of steel elbows being used for right-turns (see image #481 above) of the pipe to resist the erosive force of the water and these were held in place by deadmen anchors:  These pieces were abandoned in place when the pipeline was decommissioned.

The "Y" joint at the end (see image #522) was fed by the wooden pipeline from the east, descending via a steel pipe down the slope to the mouth of the canyon.  A pipe was also attached to the "other" end of the "Y" and this went up for a short distance:  This outlet was a "fuse" to allow the surge of water (or "water hammer") to escape if the penstock was closed below, at the power station:  Keller mentions that a rocky gully - starting from the top of the ridge where this section of pipe ended and running into the drainage below - was caused by the water pouring from this pipe segment when the penstock was closed.

This information is from the book "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller.

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Comments about pictures taken by Clint:

• All images taken using a Sigma Digital SLR camera and were taken using the lens 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!
  

Go to the 2008 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike page or the Wednesday Night Hike Cross-Index page