Click on an image for a full-sized version.
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Images:
These are 30-second time exposures taken from the area around Silver Lake during the thunderstorm.
Notes:
It was pretty warm in the valley today - the low 90's - with only a few scattered clouds and light winds. After meeting in the parking lot we decided upon Twin Lakes, leaving the option of whether to go to the pass or down via Lake Solitude open, depending on daylight and whim. Informing Chris of our decision via radio we piled into Tim's vehicle and headed up.
Parking near the Brighton Store to avoid the possibility of being locked in the Silver Lake parking lot, we donned our gear and started along the boardwalk. Perhaps it was due to the lateness of the season, but I noticed that some of the normally-swampy area through which the first part of the loop passed was fairly dry, but this didn't seem to have been much of a problem with mosquitoes which seemed to be out in numbers - but not so much that there were clouds of them obscuring parents' vision while other clouds carried off their small children: Not stopping for a very long time along the water, we avoided much blood loss.
So, we started up the trail toward Twin Lakes. This trail - actually an old mining road - soon breaks out of the trees and follows a path against a rocky slope. With the past years' erosion it has become, in parts, less of a road and more of a rocky ascent - not too unlike the road in Honeycomb Fork. While we were on one of the rockier portions, we passed a mountain biker who, while coming down, had managed to tear off a pedal against the rocks and was carefully walking his bike down the trail. At about this time, Chris - who had come up under separate cover - appeared, joining us for the rest of the evening.
Getting to the Twin Lakes dam we were surprised to see that the water was very high - flowing over the spillway, in fact. Passing a group of other hikers drinking beer on the dam, we parked ourselves near the "Watershed" along the lake shore to look around and wait for Gordon to catch up and "re-wind." There, we spotted an odd-looking cast-iron do-hickey partially buried in the dirt. What it was, we could only guess: Inside, there are grooves that look somewhat like riflings - except that they were not in a spiral pattern, and being buried and partly full of dirt, it was hard to tell how large it really was. By kicking it, whacking it with rocks and observing that it behaved more-or-less like an immovable object didn't really tell us much more than that, hence the question of the day!
Deparing the Twin Lakes dam we continued up the road, soon reaching the turnoff that would take us down to Lake Solitude - if we had chosen to do so. Instead, we kept climbing and soon, Mike pointed out what he believed to be the ridge over which they were looking during last week's hike to Honeycomb Fork. Somewhat short of the ski lift we veered off to the left and made the traverse to Twin Lakes Pass.
By the time we arrived at Twin Lakes pass a few more clouds had gathered to the south and east, having been collecting for some time and these clouds, along with the low sun angle, provided dramatic alpenglow on the cliffs high above the lake. In the near distance we could see virga: This changed as we started noticing the occasional rain drop falling on us and looking upwards, we were trying to guess from which cloud(s) the falling rain might have come.
Not raining hard enough to be anything more than noticed, we continued eating our snacks and talking, eventually taking the obligatory group picture and starting down with Mike and Chris disappearing in the lead while Tim, Gordon and I brought down the rear. By the time we got to the road that lead down to Lake Solitude we had decided that it was likely too late to attempt a return via that route, so we continued our descent, returning the same way that we'd come up.
By the time we reached the dam we could see the occasional, distant flash of lightning. Also at about this time we managed to follow the trail to an apparent camping spot rather than the path downhill: While I simply struck down the side of the mountain and re-intercepted the trail, Tim and Gordon backtracked and picked it up that way. Following the trail down, ahead of Tim and Gordon, I broke out of the trees and got a view of Silver Lake and its surroundings: Not being in a great hurry, I set up my camera and took a few time exposures before continuing on.
At about this time, Chris appeared on the radio reporting that the trail was being blocked by a moose that was taking its time to lumber along - and they weren't really inclined to try too hard to move it along. A few minutes later, Chris appeared again, this time reporting that it had finally wandered into the lake so they were, once again, on their way along the boardwalk.
By the time I got down to the lake a few minutes later, I saw no sign of the moose. Because the lightning flashes were becoming more common and frequently accompanied by the distant rumble of thunder - I set up the camera again upon reaching the boardwalk and decided to take a few time exposure and wait for Tim and Gordon to appear. While I was doing so, the storm cell continued to build up with most of its electrical activity seeming to be concentrated behind the Brighton Bowl and to the south. This provided a great light show above and around the nearby mountain peaks with frequent forked flashes of cloud-to-cloud lightning to be seen as I was taking time exposures.
Tim and Gordon soon appeared and wandered past while I continued to take pictures: I would stop to make a 30 second time-exposure and then the camera would close its shutter and take a 30 second "dark frame" picture that it would use to cancel out some of the noise, giving me those 30 seconds to walk along the boardwalk while the camera was processing. Working my way back to the parking lot, taking pictures, I soon arrived to find everyone else (except Chris, who'd left earlier) looking up at Mother Nature's light show.
After another 5-10 minutes, the storm burned itself out so we piled into the vehicles and wandered back down the canyon, safely reaching the parking lot at the mouth of the canyon and going our separate ways.
None this timeMaps/profiles:
About Twin Lakes dam:
According to Keller, Twin Lakes dam was constructed in the summer of 1915 at a cost of about $72,000 and it has a full-pool capacity of about 300 million gallons (approx. 921 acre-feet.) With much of the infrastructure to haul the raw material already having been put into place during the construction of the Lake Mary dam which had been started the summer before, but not completed. The raw materials were first shipped by rail to Park City and then hauled to Brighton by wagon - and then by light wagon or pack animals from Brighton to the construction site itself. It was during this period that the familiar Lake Mary to Twin Lakes trail was built.
In 2006, armed with some 1913-vintage photographs, we traipsed around Twin Lakes in the rain, trying to match vantage points as seen here.
Some of the above information was from the book "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller.
Comments about pictures/video/audio 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 20090814 (Copyright 2009 by Clint Turner and those credited above. All rights on images and text are reserved.)
