Trailhead sign at Mill-D North.
Note the mention of Boreal toads.
Click on an image for a full-sized version.

Images:

• SDIM3738 - At the shore of Dog Lake:  Gordon with Kevin, Kay, Gary and Charlie
• SDIM3741 - The obligatory group picture.  L->R:  Clint, Dale, Mike, Charlie, Kay, Gordon, Gary, Kevin, Bryan and Bruce
• doglake - Interesting fisheye photo of Dog Lake by Charlie.
  
• SDIM3742 - Bruce, hiking toward a peach-colored sunset.
• SDIM3751 - A stand of quaking aspen backgrounded by the sky.
  

Notes:

As often happens mid-season, there was a problem with everyone finding a parking place, but through persistence and a bit of waiting, slots were found for most of us while those that couldn't "temporarily" parked wherever we could, staying near our vehicles.   Meeting with the rest of those gathered, the consensus was that this week we decided to do one of our June regular hikes:  The Dog-Lake/Butler Fork loop.

This is one of our (few) traditional "car spot" hikes - that is, since we come out a different fork than we enter, it is we leave one car at the end of the hike to be used to ferry the drivers to the starting point to retrieve theirs.  This week, Gary brought his parents Charlie and Kay, visiting from New Zealand, along with his 2-ish year-old son, Kevin:  Anticipating that he wouldn't be able to complete the entire loop with his son in tow, he was planning to return to his car at the Mill-D North trailhead - probably before the rest of us finished the course.

Since my car wasn't reliable (I was experiencing intermittent loss of engine power - a problem that I'd attributed to a fuel pump but later turned out to be the "Crankshaft Position Sensor") we decided to cram into fewer cars:  Bryan and Dale volunteered to drive.  Upon reaching the Butler fork trailhead, those who had ridden up with Dale (myself included) crammed into Bryan's pickup - some of us riding in the back - and we soon arrived at the Mill-D North trailhead, donned our gear and started up.

Gary's parents - fairly fresh from New Zealand and not yet acclimatized to the Utah altitude - make excellent progress, keeping those bringing up the rear (including Gary with Kevin, and Gordon) company while the rest of us - myself, Mike and Bryan - were more-or-less in the lead.

Shortly after passing the junction to the Desolation Lake trail (called by participants in the Wasatch 100 race "Blunder Fork" owing to the mistake occasionally made by the running to go down-canyon to the trailhead instead of to Desolation Lake) we ran across a large group of hikers that seemed oddly familiar - and soon we figured out why:  It was the same group from Varian that we'd encountered not only on our first hike to the Salt Lake overlook but also on the second (aborted) hike to Circle-All peak!

As the trail steepened, we were heartened by the fact that we were rapidly nearing the lake.  When we got there we were met by its familiar vista, along with harmless swarms of gnats that seemed to congregate in the patches of sunlight near the edge of the water - either that, or those were the only ones that were readily visible!

Planting our posteriors at the far end of the lake we proceeded to change into our dry shirts, rehydrate, and eat our snacks while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.  Dale, who had earlier faded back to rejoin the rear guard, soon arrived, having pressed forward again after verifying their positive progress.  When he met with us he was still in amazement over what he had just seen:  It seemed that the group had stopped at the signpost that indicated the Desolation Lake junction (a.k.a. "Blunder Fork") and there, he saw Kevin, Gary's 2 year-old son, spell out the signs letters in Morse Code with relatively little help from his father, to which Mike commented something to the effect that this would seem to invalidate the excuse that a lot of people gave when trying to explain their seeming inability to learn the code themselves!

As we sat near the lake a pair of ducks wandered over noisily, expecting to be fed a few odd morsels:  Mike complied.  Soon, the ducks wandered off again with the appearance of the rest of our group at the far end of the lake and soon, we were all reunited.  Upon taking a few photos and the obligatory group picture, the group split, with Gary and his family starting their way back down the trail while the rest of us pressed onward to complete the loop.

Along the backside of the ridge we got some rather impressive views into Mill Creek canyon and its surroundings as the interplay of the sun, clouds and airborne dust caused a peach-colored highlight in that direction.  After carefully crossing the drifts mounds of snow still extant along the traverse we soon found ourselves at the top of Butler Fork and started our descent, with Gordon and I bringing down the rear.

This trail first makes a fairly steep descent along the east-ish slope at the top of the canyon - crossing through a few muddy seeps before meeting with a babbling brook at the bottom, requiring a few stream-crossings.  As I descended I noted that Gordon was being (understandably) careful to avoid over-stressing his knees - which have been bothering him as of late in response to steep downward slopes.  Keeping him in the "rear view mirror" I continued onward - but I eventually noticed that he was no longer visible:  A quick check on the radio revealed that he'd stopped briefly for a quick break.  Keeping in radio contact, I continued downward, eventually getting to the final stream crossing.  Looking at it and the haphazard arrangement of logs, I decided that the best choice was to simply step through it rather than risk losing my balance on something slippery:  I figured that I could stand to have damp feet for the next few hundred feet of trail!

Soon, I saw two lights headed toward me which turned out to be Bruce and Mike headed up to the crossing to assist Gordon as needed in the stream crossing.  After a few minutes more, Gordon appeared on the radio, announcing that he was doing the steep descent and upon announcing where we were, he asked "Are you at Andy's crossing?"  Apparently, he'd heard the puzzled looks (and our reply) and explained that the week before - on the aborted Circle-All peak trip - Andy had found a rather easy place to cross the stream just a few 10's of feet above where the "main" trail had gone.  A brief search revealed that same crossing and we waited.  Eventually, we saw Gordon's tell-tale green flashlight in the distance and as it drew near, Mike hopped across the stream and stood in the trail for his benefit and soon the group was reunited.

After an uneventful ride down the canyon, we briefly met at the parking lot and went our separate ways.

• None this time

• None this time

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.
  

In the early days, Mill-D north fork was the source of a lot of timber for a mill established near there in 1855 or 1856:  The actual mill was located along the main stream in the canyon, near the south end of the present-day Spruces campground.  Interestingly enough, this mill apparently used a "sash saw" (a reciprocating blade) rather than a circular saw and its "rep rate" was supposedly about 200 per minute.  Driving this machinery was a 9 foot diameter waterwheel fed with a penstock with a 23 foot head.  In about 1861 Brigham Young - for reasons unknown - sold off the the assets of the Big Cottonwood Lumber Company and the different portions (one of which was the sawmill at "Mill-D") went to different investors.

As it turns out, after this sale, much of the output of the Mill-D sawmill was sold by its own lumberyard (owned by various people over the years - including a Charles Bagley and the once-mayor of Salt Lake, Francis Armstrong) in Downtown Salt Lake and its operation continued until the late 1870's.  Apparently, the remains of the sawmill could be easily seen at least until the early 1900's

It would seem that very little prospecting or mining was done in Mill-D North fork.

The body of water called "Dog Lake" is one of three (originally) so-named lakes Big Cottonwood canyon.  It derives its name from the presence of Salamanders that the early explorers and inhabitants of the canyons had noticed:  The common name for Salamander at the time was "Dogfish" - hence the name.  (There's a "Dog Lake" above Brighton, and one of the past names of Lake Solitude was also "Dog Lake" or a variant of that.)

This fork was named after the Butler Brothers - one of whom was named Philander Butler (yes, that was his name!) -  who operated a mill in Mill-G fork, along with many other similar properties in later years, including a steam-powered mill in Butler Fork in 1877.  The next year, they operated their mill near the mouth of the canyon.

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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 20100702 (Copyright 2010 by Clint Turner and those credited above.  All rights on images and text are reserved.)