Click on an image for a full-sized version.
|
|
Images:
Notes:
Leaving work for the Wednesday Night Hike, I usually listen - but often, I don't say anything. On this day, I got in my car and heard Gordon and Gary talking to each other. Gary, who utilizes public transportation to get to the hikes' meeting place, had tried a different route and explained that he might be a bit late in arriving as he'd not managed to catch an earlier #72 bus. During the course of the conversation, Gordon asked where, exactly, he was and it turned out that he was standing at the corner of Winchester and State. As it so-happened, that is along my usual route between work and I-215 so serendipity presented the opportunity to simply have him wait for a moment in a nearby parking lot so that I could pick him up. He did, and I did.
That taken care of, we continued to converge on the meeting spot. Arriving there, I saw Tim and his motorcycle - but no-one else that I recognized until Gordon rolled in a few minutes later and the "where to go" discussion ensued.
Gordon suggested Catherine Pass via Brighton: We'd not visited Lake Mary or her sisters yet this year, so that seemed fine to us and Bruce, who arrived shortly thereafter, seemed amenable to the suggestion.
So, we piled into Bruce's car (and Tim on his motorcycle) and started up the canyon. Since Tim was on his motorcycle, with no easy access to a radio, no-one bothered to switch Bruce's radio from the '62 repeater - and that turned out to be a good thing: Just as we were approaching the Stairs plant, Dale appeared, wondering if we were listening and where we were going. We told him and he agreed to meet us in the Brighton parking lot.
Arriving at Brighton, Tim was already there (because, as we'd established last week, "Tim waits for no man!") and true to his word, Dale appeared at about the time that we'd unfolded ourselves from Bruce's car and gotten "geared up." Starting up the trail, we were pleased to note that the clouds of mosquitoes that had obscured our vision in past hikes seemed to be absent - an observation reinforced by the fact that those that had passed us, returning from Lake Mary, didn't seem to be welt-covered and dessicated.
As Tim, Dale and I approached the Lake Mary dam, we could hear the roar of water being released, causing is to wonder how much of the lake's pool was remaining. We soon had our answer: It was fairly low, but not nearly as low as it was when we visited it two years ago - see #5243 from the August 29, 2007 hike. Stopping at the shore for the lake for a few minutes, we noticed the immediate arrival of a small Anatidae armada - obviously familiar with the tendency of their distant mammalian cousins to throw bits of food at them, one that Dale reinforced.
Continuing on our way, Bruce soon caught up with us at about the time that Lake Martha hove into view with a surface as still as glass and seemingly, just as reflective, providing an almost eerie downwards extension of the mountain behind it. After a few more minutes of hiking, we entered the Lake Catherine cirque, just in time to see the last bits of sunset on - what else, but Sunset Peak.
By this time, Dale had disappeared behind us, delayed by his picture-taking, but as we were making the final climb and traverse to Catherine pass, he appeared again, gaining upon us rapidly, arriving at the pass only moments after we did. Again, we were gratified to note the near lack of mosquitoes, so we had no need to lather ourselves with DEET in an attempt to ward them off.
Soon thereafter, Bruce arrived - having done very well just two weeks after surgery - and in due course, Gordon and Gary appeared, also delayed by picture-taking and the like. We soon became aware of a lot of hooting and hollering, noticing a large group atop Sunset Peak, so cursory flashlight exchanges were made.
As it got darker, we took the obligatory group photo and started down the trail. The group on Sunset Peak seemed to have the same idea and soon, a line of bobbing white headlamps appeared on the distant ridge marking the route of their descent: I attempted to take a picture of this, but was a bit too late in properly setting up the camera...
We made our way down, retracing our path up - until we got to the top of the switchback above Lake Martha. At that point we departed from our previous track, following the remnants of the old mining road down toward Lake Dog instead. Just below the divergence from the main trail, I made a point to stop and sniff some Ponderosas, noting again that these trees smelled quite strongly of butterscotch while others that we've noted smelled more of vanilla. For an interesting NPR piece that talks about Ponderosa pines, go here.
After stumbling down the old road in the dark, we soon intersected the Lake Dog trail and quickly rejoined the main Lake Mary trail at which point we called Gordon on the radio and he, too, had decided on the same route down. In the clear, night sky, the subject of Iridium flares came up: Having seen a good one just after returning to the vehicles after last week's hike, some eyes were cast skyward. Since the flares usually occur at roughly the same time every day, we expected that a flare might be visible - but no-one saw one. In later checking of predictions, it just so-happens that this week and next that we are in a "dry spell" of really good flares, so if one had occurred, it would have been rather dim and unimpressive...
Bruce and I got down to the parking lot first, soon joined by Dale and Tim, who'd looked for a flare and hadn't seen it. Via radio, we receive word that Gary and Gordon had successfully navigated the descent to Lake Dog and were now on the main trail, so we waited, looking at the skies and talking about nothing in particular. A while later, from up the hill we could see the tell-tale green glow of Gordon's light and the rhythmic flashing of Gary's flashlight, both slowly approaching.
Upon being reunited in the parking lot, Tim donned nearly every piece of clothing he had with him in preparation for his motorcycle ride down the canyon in the now-cool night. We all piled into our respective vehicles and headed down, wary of deer (but saw none) and returned to the parking lot where we went our separate ways.
None this timeMaps/profiles:
The Lake Mary dam was constructed in about 1914 (with final completion in 1915) at a cost of $69,000 and is owned by the City of Salt Lake: Although originally scheduled for completion in 1914, considerably more excavation was required at the dam site to reach suitable bedrock, causing delays in its final completion. Materials for the dam were first taken to Park City via rail, then transported by wagon to Brighton, and then by light wagon and pack animal up to the construction site.
Lake Mary is part of a protected watershed with a capacity of approximately 600 acre-feet (about 196 million gallons) - about 2/3 that of Twin Lakes. Lake Mary is actually two lakes, but the smaller one (Lake Phoebe) is normally merged with Lake Mary and is only visible during very low water years - as happened at the end of the summer of 2007.
Lake Mary, originally called "Granite Lake," gets its name from New York artist Hartwig Borneman naming it after his wife in 1872. Lake Martha was named by Alfred Lambourne, after his mother, while Lake Catherine got its name from William Brighton (yes, that Brighton) who named it after his wife, but it wasn't until after 1890 that this name came into common use.
Lake Dog (a.k.a. Dog Lake) is so-called (by us) to differentiate it from the Dog Lake above Mill-D North fork. As with the other "Dog Lake" it was so-named due to the presence of "Dog Fish" - a name locally used for Salamander in the 19th century.
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.
Wanna send email?Go to the 2009 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike page or the Wednesday Night Hike Cross-Index page
This page maintained by Clint Turner, KA7OEI and was last updated on 20090828 (Copyright 2009 by Clint Turner and those credited above. All rights on images and text are reserved.)
