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Images:
Notes:
With the ever-diminishing daylight, the practical choices of Wednesday night hike destinations also continues to diminish. This time, we chose a frequent late-season hike, although it is one that we'd not visited for several years - since 2005, to be exact: Cardiff Pass via Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Piling into vehicles, we headed up-canyon, parking near the Shallow Shaft restaurant. Upon arriving, we donned our gear and started up the old mining road above the restaurant, heading in the general direction of the pass. I was slightly delayed in my departure and as I started up the road, I could see that the main party was already one switchback ahead of me. Remembering that there was another old road that I'd blundered down years ago, I cut off one of the switchbacks and soon joined the main group.
Just out of the trees and buildings, there are remains of what were probably old mining structures and one of these was a vertically-mounted culvert pipe with a simple lid with handles. Noting that it was not secured Chris lifted it up, revealing a vertical shaft with a pulley arrangement - but also with a manhole: It was hard to say for certain, but this may have been one of the accesses to an old mine, or it could have been a part of the culinary water system...
Continuing upwards there are a number of trails that bypass the switchbacks on the road and we followed these, soon rejoining the road as it made its long west-ish traverse across the south-facing side of the canyon. Before it reached the ridge, however, this road makes another right-hand turn, working its way steeply up, toward the pass. At this point, much of the party continued up the road while I followed a path that, I'm told, provides access to the area around the Monte Cristo mine. This path also intersects another trail that bypasses the steep part of the road, so I followed it upwards - not escaping any steepness, but remembering that the trail was more pleasant to walk along than the steep road covered with loose ball-bearing gravel.
After a few minutes I intersected a trail that had broken off the main road - one that Ron and Dale, who had been in the lead, followed and I soon met them sitting and talking. Continuing along the trail we then passed among a large field of rocks - one that I knew to be a place frequented by lagomorpha - or, specifically, Pika (see picture #1331 from 2004.) These small mammals, closely related to rabbits, are increasingly rare these days but seem to be doing well in this area. Sure enough, upon watching the area for just a few moments we saw a Pika or two scampering about. We did not, however, hear the rather odd, electronic-sounding cry of the Pika: Perhaps our appearance was not sufficiently startling to them, but that seemed to be an unlikely answer...
A few more minutes of climbing brought us to Cardiff Pass where we could, from that vantage point, look down into both Albion Basin and Cardiff Fork of Big Cottonwood Canyon. In the conversation that ensued, Dale asked if we'd been in Cardiff Fork this season: While the consensus was that we had not, I see that, in fact, we had - and both Dale and his son, Scott were with us. So much for memory!
In years past we have also seen herds of mountain goats scattered across the top of Cardiff Fork and, in fact, in 2005 a large, rather brazen goat approached us fairly closely. This year, aside from the Pika and the usual compliment of birds, we saw no obvious signs of wildlife.
Eventually, the rest of the group arrived, with Gordon bringing up the rear. After lounging on the rocks for a few more minutes the obligatory group picture was taken and we soon started our way down, with Dale and Chris in the lead. Just below the pass, Ron managed a spectacular, sudden descent when, with a swear, he suddenly lurched off the trail, landing on his side, sliding in the rocks: Other than making a lot of noise, he was unhurt - owing partly to the fact that he'd donned gloves and an extra layer clothes to ward off the cold air at the pass. After he got back on the trial, I observed that he was blinking, and a after minute or so of rummaging around in his pack, he found that his minor spill had turned on his spare headlamp to the "blink" mode.
The first part of our return route followed the trail that I'd come up, rather than the road: It was remembered that, especially in the dark, the road itself is rather treacherously slippery. Although the trail itself was also somewhat of a challenge in this regard, if one started to slide, it wasn't too long before one was stopped by a rock in the trail, or simply slid into the vegetation around it, so one couldn't really go too far. Once the trail rejoined the road, however, once one started to slip, one could really get going with nothing to stop you - unless you were to fall onto your backside.
Despite these difficulties we managed to work our way downhill without incident, occasionally catching a glimpse of Chris and Dale's lights ahead in the dark. By the time we got back to the vehicles, Chris and Dale had been waiting for a few minutes, but we took a few more minutes to look up into the clear, night sky, trying to find the various major stars and constellations with our limited, collective knowledge of the subject.
After spending some time staring skywards, we piled into our vehicles and made our way back down to the meeting place where we went our separate ways.
Next week (9/16): The Lake Mary to Twin Lakes loop.
The week after next week (9/23) - the final hike of the season: Willow Heights.
None this timeMaps/profiles:
One of the features of Cardiff Pass is the pair of wires that carry power from the bottom of Little Cottonwood Canyon to the radio site on the unnamed peak just above Cardiff Pass. As recently as the early 90's, these power lines continued from the pass down into Cardiff Fork, being the last remnants of the activity at the Howell Tunnel portal farther down. These lines date back from 1917, when Utah Power and Light built these lines to supply power to the mine itself. Because of these power lines, Cardiff Pass has also been known as "Pole Line Pass."
Several years ago - at the point where the hiking trail goes under the power line - we noticed a snarl of wire laying on the ground, apparently of the same sort that was overhead. In looking at this length of wire we could see that its ends were burned, indicative of it's having fallen to the ground fairly recently. Further investigation revealed chunks of green, vitrified rock scattered over the ground where the power line had clearly spent some time sparking away, melting the bits of ground that it was touching.
Normally, one can tell of the power line is active by putting one's ear against the pole at the pass to hear the hum of the transformer. When Dale did this in 2009, he heard nothing.
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 20090912 (Copyright 2009 by Clint Turner and those credited above. All rights on images and text are reserved.)
