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Images:
Notes:
This is the second-to-last hike of the season, and due to a schedule conflict, will be the last one for me!
Near the end of the season, the choices are limited, so when I mentioned what the last two hikes would be, Elaine offered this response:
And she was probably not the only one to be surprised by this!"Wow! I know the last hike of the year is traditionally a planned destination, but two in a row? This must be some kind of record!"
Elaine did, in fact, appear at the parking lot - but she was not going to hike with us. Instead, she had a neighbor kid in tow and the two of them were going to take a walk around Silver Lake.
After gathering, we piled into vehicles and headed up-canyon and parked in the Brighton Ski Resort parking lot. Retracing a familiar path, we wound our way up the ski run and started the ascent toward the Lakes Mary and Dog junction. A short distance past this, we made another right turn, following the sign that said "Twin Lakes" and a bit more hiking and wandering around brought us to the cabin - the sole remainder of several that were built during the construction of the Lakes Mary and Twin dams in 1915-1916.
There, we paused for a while, wondering where Gordon was - until we saw him below, so we continued upwards slightly to get a view of Lake Mary itself.
Having passed by Lake Mary only a few weeks ago, we noted a swiftly-running stream, indicating that they were drawing water from the reservoir. On this occasion, the stream was still roaring away, so we weren't too surprised to see a much-diminished pool of water on the other side - not yet low enough to walk across the lake or expose normally-submerged Lake Phoebe, but it probably wouldn't be too long before one or both of those were true!
Stopping again to wait for Gordon, we bided our time looking at the fringes of alpenglow hitting the Sunset Peak mass and its neighbors while munching on the snacks that we had brought with us while Ron made radio contact with Elaine who, by that time, had mostly finished the Silver Lake walk. Eventually, Gordon appeared and after giving him a few minutes to "re-wind" we continued on our way.
At this point, the same thing seems to happen every time we take this trail: Most of the group follows someone who follows a false trail that quickly peters out, requiring a brief cross-country jaunt to rejoin the trail. This time, Gordon was the one to follow the "true" trail and after we re-acquired the proper track, we continued on our way, en-masse.
By this time, sunset had already passed and it was getting dark rather quickly, so we avoided the temptation to make a quick visit to Lake Annette. As we followed along the trail the group separated again into several pieces - at least until I ran into Ron and Mike standing in the trail, motioning me to be quiet. A few 10's of feet ahead were a mother moose and a calf, slowly browsing along the path, and since one doesn't try to tell a moose what to do, we simply went off-trail and waited for them to amble on, taking the opportunity to render the obligatory group picture.
After a few minutes of biding our time, we could not longer hear or see the moose - although it was dark enough that one couldn't be absolutely sure that they weren't still on the trail, so those in the lead did so cautiously, looking for pairs of eyes looking back at them, prepared to take any necessary evasive action. Fortunately, none was needed, so we continued on, uneventfully.
Again, the group separated into pieces, with the "fully fast" group ahead and the "half-slow" trailing - with me somewhere in the middle. Making our way across the boulder field to the east of Twin Lakes, we climbed the last hill, made the traverse and sight much-lower water Twin Lakes hove into view: As with Lake Mary, water was being drained at a fairly high rate.
Standing on the dam we took a few minutes to look at the darkening sky, spotting the occasional random satellite and, again, opining that it would have been a good idea if one of us had remembered to see if an Iridium Flare was likely to be seen that evening - then again, with the clouds blocking many parts of the sky, it may not have mattered, anyway...
With some trepidation, we started down the road. A decade or so ago, this road was rebuilt at same the time the Twin Lakes dam was re-grouted and on its base were laid what seemed to be granite ball bearings, making an "oops-less" descent nearly impossible. Over the years the gravel has gradually broken down, dispersed, and mixed with mud - but the road can still be very treacherous. We were pleased, therefore, to note that the bit of rain that had fallen in the area earlier that day seemed to have had the effect of slightly cementing the rocks together - so there was much less slipping, sliding and swearing than usual!
We gradually made our way down the trail and it wasn't until we were most of the way down that we realized that we were missing someone: We soon spotted Gordon's distinctive green flashlight higher-up on the road. Since it was still moving, we were fairly confident that he was still making progress!
At the bottom of the trail we were "blound" by a gaudy LED sign at one of the Brighton buildings: It was rather painful to look at and it seemed to be trying its best to despoil the otherwise good night skies. Returning to the vehicles and putting the depth of the parking area between us, the sign was still bright enough to cast shadows and wreck our night vision if we looked in its direction - and we did so occasionally, noting the progress of Gordon's green light as it slowly worked its way down the road. Eventually, the light disappeared when Gordon reach the parking lot: Apparently, he too found the sign to provide adequate illumination for the rest of the walk back to the cars.
Piling back into our vehicles, we made our way uneventfully down the canyon where we went our separate ways.
Next week (9/23) - The final hike of the season: Willow Heights.
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.About Twin Lakes dam:
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 - like this one...
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.
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.) Much of the infrastructure to haul the raw material already had been put into place during the construction of the Lake Mary dam, which had been mostly finished the summer before, but not completed until that same summer. It was during this period that the familiar Lake Mary to Twin Lakes trail was built.
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 20090921 (Copyright 2009 by Clint Turner and those credited above. All rights on images and text are reserved.)
