August 18 - Lake Mary/Catherine Pass

Weather, again!

With clouds swirling and lightning ready to flash, we met at the parking lot. Despite our larger-than-normal group, for some reason - unlike last week - we didn't have much of a problem in finding parking spots!

With the threatening weather and having exhausted our three normal "ridge-free" hikes (e.g. Silver, Honeycomb and Cardiff Forks) we decided to go to Lake Mary and then, conditions, time and whim permitting, on to Catherine Pass. Another reason for going to Lake Mary was to see the lake at a historic low water level: Apparently the water managers discovered that they could not close the sluice gate when it came time to do so, so the lake drained - which should allow them to make the necessary repairs.

So, we piled into three cars and headed up-canyon and letting Mike C. know of our plans, upon which he remarked that had he known, he'd gone via Guardsman Pass instead of down Parley's and back up Big Cottonwood. At least he would be able to take a few miles off his return trip at the end of the evening!

Arriving at Brighton we could see that the weather up there was not any better than in the valley - in fact, we started to hear distant rumblings of thunder as we started up the trail. Soon, it began to sprinkle lightly, followed shortly by louder rumblings - then visible flashes. Fortunately, the rain never got to the point of "pouring" and seemed to "max out" at a "heavy sprinkle" - by which time most people had donned their rain gear. Also fortunate was the fact that the time difference between the flash of lightning and the thunder never got too small - the closest electrical activity seemed to be about 2 miles away and most of that was probably vertical distance.

The sprinkling got heaviest by the time the bolus of the group reached the Lake Dog/Lake Mary junction at which time I finally donned a poncho - and it was about this time that Mike C. reported having made it to Brighton and was on his way up. As we continued up the trail to the dam we could hear and see water flowing - and I also noted that some of the small rivulets of water along the trail that resulted from seepage from around the dam were absent - further evidence of a low water level.

We finally reached the (former) shore of Lake Mary and looked down into a hole. "Yep," we decided, "The water level is pretty low!"

Most obvious was Lake Phoebe - the "twin" of Lake Mary, slightly upstream from it, but normally submerged. Lake Mary - reportedly the larger of the two before the dam was built - was a mere puddle. As noted below, during the building of the dam it seemed as though a significant amount of the rock that had bounded the downstream side of Lake Mary had been blasted away at the time of the dam's construction: With the gates now wide open and nothing to impound it, the original Lake Mary was a mere shadow of its former self.

Taking advantage of this relatively rare opportunity I decided to walk about in the bottom of the lake and take a few pictures. The bottom was of the lake was covered (not surprisingly) with a fair amount of silt - most of which was fairly dry and deeply cracked. Also underwater had been several large outcroppings of rock - some of which form the lake's islands - and near these were stumps of trees that had no doubt graced the environs of the lake before its initial impoundment back in 1915.

In taking the tour I first walked down near the dam to to see, close up, what the problem had been that necessitated (or, at least, resulted in) the draining of the lake, and immediately spotted the problem: The sluice gate is operated by a pair of long, vertical rods - threaded at the top, each with a wheel that pulls up or pushes down on this rod. This rod drops down - guided along the lake-facing side of the dam with sheaves to a grate-covered opening with the gates themselves. On both of these rods some of the sheaves that guided the rod had rusted and broken away from the face of the dam - and one of them was clearly buckled and was probably one of the reasons why they had not been able to successfully close the gate. Ostensibly, repairs are to be made before the end of this season - but other than the lake being drained, there were no signs of such activity as of yet.

After looking at the pool in front of the dam, I hopped across the narrow stream that fed it, to the other side, skirting the far side of what remained of Lake Mary. Tromping through the occasionally-sticky mud and silt, I worked my way to the outcropping of rock that likely marked the original upstream boundary of the original Lake Mary and followed the narrow channel that had likely connected it and Lake Phoebe at some point in the past.

Carefully making my way through the boulders and mud I emerged at a fairly large rock pile that seemed to bound the exit of Lake Phoebe. At this point, Dale and Shauna appeared, to which I'd announced that the bottom of the lake was quite a "Fuddy Mucker" - referring, of course, to the occasional patches of very sticky silt. Upon inspecting the pile of rocks, we determined that it was far too porous to have any significant damming effect and that it had more likely been constructed a footbridge - although it was difficult to tell if it had been constructed recently or not.

Having circumnavigated the remnants of Lake Mary I returned to the main group which Mr. Collett had joined in my absence. By this time the sprinkling - which had greatly diminished by the time I'd arrived at the dam - had completely stopped. With the entire group finally together we took the obligatory group picture and the various parties began to decide what they wanted to do next. As planned, Kevin and his dad, Gary, started down and at this time most of the others of the group decided to do the same - although Dale and Shauna had disappeared to parts unknown by this time. Tim, Bruce and I decided to press on to Catherine Pass so we departed up the trail, calling Dale occasionally on the radio to let him know of our plans. After a few minutes, Dale appeared and we explained what the groups' plans were and after conferring with his boss, he and Shauna decided to head down as well, taking Gary up on his offer of a ride.

And then there were three.

The route up was quite dry with very little mud on the trail. By this time a fairly brisk breeze had started and the waters of Lake Martha were quite turbulent, but this had the effect to seeming to "clear" its waters by pushing the usually-floating debris toward a shore: The Moose on the opposite side of the lake seemed not to mind either the wind or us... Following the trail upwards to the switchback we got a glimpse of the evening's light show - an impressive display of underlit clouds and alpenglow, the color dramatically enhanced by the clouds themselves and their blocking of blue sky.

By the time we entered the Lake Catherine cwm the sun had mostly set and the light show had subsided - but there was still more than enough light to navigate without flashlights and we arrived at Catherine Pass shortly thereafter. At about this time, Mike appeared on the radio, having successfully transferred some loaner antennas (for use with the upcoming Wasatch 100 race) to Tim's car and he was headed back toward home via Guardsman Pass.

Finally, we decided to start down, wielding our flashlights in the gathering darkness. Because the trail is quite well-marked we made our way down without incident and at the switchback above Lake Martha I decided to take the "Dog Lake" route down - which gave us the opportunity to sniff some trees. As was mentioned in a previous year's entry, there are some trees just past this junction that smell of butterscotch rather than the more-usual vanilla. Not quite sure which variety of tree this is, I snapped off a sprig of needles for later analysis before continuing down the trail.

This route is somewhat steeper, rockier and less well-marked than the "normal" trail that we'd taken up, but it is shorter, following - at least in part - what appears to have been a mining road. Without too much stumbling, we finally emerged on the Dog Lake trail and made our way back to the Lake Dog/Catherine junction and continued down.

We had only gone a few hundred yards when I stopped: In the middle of the trail was what look to be, at first, a fairly large black lizard - but I quickly realized that it was a dark brown and mottled salamander. After harassing it a bit by taking a few flash pictures, I decided to move it from the middle of the trail - where it was likely to get stepped on - off to the side and into the still-damp vegetation, in the general direction that it seemed to have been slowly moving in the cool air: This is probably the first time that I'd seen one of these creatures on land, rather than in a lake...

The rest of the trip down was uneventful. We soon made it back to Tim's car where we noted the recent addition of Mike's antennas and coax, we piled in and made an uneventful, "deer-less" trip down-canyon back to the parking lot where we went our separate ways.