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Images (.JPG format):
Notes:
This week, the weather was beautiful: Clear sky, light clouds, warm in the valley - but not oppressive - and very light breezes. Since this eliminated the need to stay off high ridges to avoid lightning, we decided to do what would be our first "high altitude" hike of the season - up to TwinLakesCatherine Pass and go to PrinceofWalesMineTwinLakesPassCatherinePassSunsetPeak, via Little Cottonwood Canyon.
First, I was late leaving work owing to a problem that needed to be addressed, so departing just after 6pm (roughly 15 minutes later than normal) I found that the bridge across I-215 on 700 West was closed, bounded on each end by a police car with flashing lights - but no obvious reason for their doing so. Turning around, I waded through traffic to 5300 South and waited my turn at the on ramp meeter before getting on the freeway. At about that time I heard Gary, who was on foot, on simplex, just as he was nearing the parking lot: I requested that he make it known, via radio, what the evening's destination would be so that I could follow under separate cover.
As I was nearing the 6200 south exit on I-215, Chris appeared on the radio announcing that everyone was going up Little Cottonwood canyon - but he was unclear as to what the ultimate destination would be. After finally starting up the canyon, I could see that Bruce was two cars ahead of me so I called him on the radio: Gordon answered and relayed that the evening's hiking goal had not been decided for certain: It seemed that Ron had been up there in the past week and observed that the Albion Basin road had been closed due to water/mud and that it wasn't certain if it was again open to the public. If it was closed, we'd park near the gate and hike up Grizzly Gulch and from there, either go to Twin Lakes Pass or the Prince of Wales Mine. If the road was open, the preferred option was to attempt Sunset Peak via Catherine Pass.
The road was open.
Chris, who was in the lead (and, no doubt chasing all of the bats from hell) had been there for a couple of minutes by the time Bruce and I rolled in and he and is company were ready to go. Not having had time to prepare my pack or change into more-comfortable hiking attire, I was delayed a bit and stayed behind as the others started up the trail. While I was getting things organized, I heard the repeated call of a bird so I took the time to set up the audio recorder to capture this sound - see below. Before too long, I spotted the source of the song: A very small, surprisingly noisy bird (see #2639) that kept alighting on nearby trees and bushes.
Finally geared-up, I started up the trail - fairly quickly at first, but slowing as the realizations of the altitude and steepness of the trail kicked in. Ahead, I caught occasional glimpses of the group rounding the corner into the gulch just as I was approaching the ski lift. At about that time, Dale appeared on the radio, asking where I was and since he was in no real hurry, he started back down the trail and met me just above the ski lift. When I asked him if I was slowing him down at all, he simply said that he was happy to get a good look at the early, but still-spectacular wildflower show that was going on all around us.
A few minutes later, at the mouth of the Gulch, I ran across Bruce, Gary and Gordon, with Gary putting his photographic gear away. Continuing upwards with Dale we were greeted with an even more spectacular view of wildflowers in the meadow, brilliantly lit by the fairly low-angle sun.
After pausing to inconvenience some electrons with the camera we continued onwards, starting up the gradual switchbacks. Just before entering the trees we passed a man lounging on a sun-warmed outcropping of rocks: "What a hard life!" was the gist of the exchange.
We reached Catherine Pass a few minutes after the lead group had arrived - and departed - but there were plenty of other people there, enjoying the scenery and being pestered by the bugs, so we struck out up the ridge, following the trail back-and-forth across both sides of the ridge line, catching occasional glimpses of Ron, Bryan and Chris in the distance and by the time we reached the base of the summit block we were only a few hundred feet behind them. Surprised by this, we found out that they'd made a detour to the first minor peak above Catherine Pass - probably unintentionally - which slowed them slightly, so we arrived at the summit only a few minutes after they did.
During this time, Elaine, Ron's wife, had driven up to the Brighton Bowl to take a leisurely stroll around Silver Lake. She'd gotten there at about the time that we'd arrived at the trailhead and once we attained the pass, we resumed radio communications with her. By this time she'd circumnavigated the lake and was, once again, near the parking lot. After I arrived at the peak I dragged out the transit compass and began flashing her - with the mirror - and after she moved to a location clear of trees, she was able to spot the flashes that Ron and I sent in her direction. To reciprocate, she flashed her headlights (the ones on her Jeep) that were pointed more-or-less in our direction - although not at all "up" toward the peak. After a few minutes and some staring with binoculars, we finally spotted the Jeep: Knowing exactly where to look, could see the lights and Jeep with the naked eye. After this fun, she wandered down the canyon, briefly impeded by a large drilling rig that had been apprehended by a patrolman - possibly for not having adequate vehicular escort.
Just a few minutes after our blinking and flashing, the "half slow" group arrived. As the sun was getting lower, the temperature at the peak was dropping and the wind was picking up making it, in my opinion, "quite cool", but not "cold." Pausing to take a few more pictures, we posed and took the "obligatory group picture" before packing our gear up and starting down the trail.
Descending in the gloaming, the low-angle, warm sun highlighted peak and tree alike, providing a dazzling contrast between the deepening blue sky, the occasional patches of snow in the cwms, and the sky reflecting in the lakes below. At about the time that we reached Point Supreme, we experienced a "local sunset," with the solar disk disappearing behind the tree-covered ridges.
This sign was seen laying on the ground at Point Supreme.
Click on an image for a full-sized version.
While at Point Supreme I noticed a large warning sign (see picture) laying on the ground at the edge of what remained of a snowfield. Upside-down and from a distance I could read, printed in bold letters: "Are You Beeping?" Of course, this required further investigation and upon reading this sign the following morbid lyrics came to mind, to the tune of Frère Jacques:
Are you beeping? Are you beeping?Another feature of this sign was a small, louvered box just below the printed portion of the sign, housing what appeared to be a speaker. Of course, I pressed the button on this box, but nothing happened... that I know of...
Beacon on? Beacon on?
An avalanche is coming! An avalanche is coming!
You are dead. You are dead.
By the time we got back down to Catherine Pass it was truly sunset - but still fairly light - and no-one else was there, so we paused only long enough to take a picture of the sign seen at the top of this page. Starting down the trail from the pass, descending into the gulch, it suddenly occurred to me that Ron had sent an email a couple of days before to remind us that there would be a visible pass of the International Space Station: He'd forgotten to bring the piece of paper with the transit times, but Gordon remembered the time as being "9:27 and some change" in the email and that, coupled with Ron's remembering that it would appear in the southwest-ish, we were reasonably confident that we could spot it.
As we were just above the meadow, Ron appeared on the radio announcing that it was "about time" for it to show up. Since he had already stopped on the trail, we all ended up re-grouping and sure enough, we spotted the ISS in its slow-moving arc to the north in an eastern-ish sky that was still too bright for all but the very brightest stars to become faintly visible. We also remembered something else: The ISS had a "shadow" craft - the Russian "Progress 33" supply ship that was scheduled to dock with the ISS in another 4-days time. (Read about that here, in the Spaceweather Archive.) Initially, we didn't think that we'd be able to see it owing to the fairly-light sky, but at about the time that the ISS was about to disappear behind the ridge to our north we spotted a very-much fainter dot, halfway across the visible horizon, moving in the same arc as had the ISS a minute or so before.
Having seen the two spacecraft, we continued on our way down, arriving at the parking lot when it was "mostly dark" - but not so dark that flashlights were really required on the well-groomed trail. Chris and company departed first and as soon as I turned on my radio I heard a "stuck" carrier on the simplex frequency - complete with a bit of noise that sounded much like a cross between multipath and acoustic pickup of the sort of sounds that one might hear when traveling on a slightly-rough gravel road: Of course, we blamed Chris as the signal quality clearly indicated that it wasn't anything in our car and it was mobile! It wasn't until just after I'd reached the pavement that the carrier abruptly dropped and Chris appeared, glad that it was gone: He, too, had surmised that it wasn't in his car, as it was too weak to have been a stuck HT...
Other than that, we uneventfully wandered down the canyon and back to the parking lot where we went our separate ways.
Additional comment: I hadn't noticed it until I looked at the pictures, but it seemed to have gotten much hazier as the evening went on - possibly due to smoke blowing in from wildfires in the region. Of course, some of this effect may simply be due to the lower angle of the light and more-apparent scattering by the dust particles.
Bird call at the trailhead:
Top: The audio spectrum of the bird call. Note the time index along the bottom and the frequency scale along the right edge.
Bottom: The creature that made the call.
Click on an image for a full-sized version.
While I was "gearing-up" I kept hearing a peculiar bird call, so I set up the audio recorder to capture it, eventually spotting the source of the sound and photographing it, catching it in the act
At the time that I recorded this, I hadn't heard the other birds - presumably of the same species - that were calling either in response or addition to this one. Especially on the 1/3 speed, you can hear other birds with similar - but strikingly different calls. In the background, you can also hear me walking around, trying to be quiet. The roar in the background is from the stream.
At the time that I recorded this, I hadn't heard the other birds - presumably of the same species - that were calling either in response or addition to this one. Especially on the 1/3 speed, you can hear other birds with similar - but strikingly different calls. In the background, you can also hear me walking around, trying to be quiet. The roar in the background is from the stream.
Bruce checked his bird books and offered this information:
I have checked our birding books and it looks like the one in question is likely a White Crowned Sparrow. It is a year round resident of the state of Utah but it ranges seasonally throughout North and parts of Central America.
There are several recordings on the [above] site of both calls and songs of the White Crowned Sparrow. A note from the site regarding the songs of the White Crowned Sparrow:
"The song of the White-crowned Sparrow Is one of the most-studied sounds in all of animal behavior. Different subspecies across the country sing clearly different songs, but they're all recognizable by the sweet, whistling introduction, a succession of jumbled whistles, and a buzz or trill near the end. Songs last 2-3 seconds. Females sing only rarely."
Video:
Maps/profiles:
- None this time
- A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks)
- The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail.
A note about Sunset Peak:
According to Keller, Sunset Peak was occasionally shown as "Monument Peak" on some early (circa 1908) maps, but this name seems to have long since dropped out of use.The above information was from the book "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller.
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. (Usually, an SD-14.)
- 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. Additional suffixes of the image file name may include "sh" to indicate that some "de-blurring" was done, "mb" for correction of motion blur, and "crop" denoting that the image was cropped.
- If you took some pictures of the hike and send them to me, I'll post them - and give you the blame!
- The video clips, if any, were shot using a Panasonic DMC FZ-8 digital camera, have been re-compressed, and are of lower quality than the originals.
- Audio clips, if any, were recorded using a Zoom H-2 audio recorder.
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This page maintained by Clint Turner, KA7OEI and was last updated on 20090711 (Copyright 2009 by Clint Turner and those credited above. All rights on images and text are reserved.)
