Bottom: The informational sign a short distance up from the trailhead.
Click on an image to enlarge it.
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If you want to hear what it might have sounded like, here are some recordings made on evening of the last hike of 2008. Because these are "ambient" recordings, one can hear talking, the clatter of the ice machine, and the various instruments of the bluegrass ensemble - warts and all! Also, I don't know the names of all of the pieces, so some are simply numbered (If you supply missing/corrected names, I'll put them here!):
Panoramas from the area:
Notes:
It's too bad that the string of hikes during which the weather was very nice didn't last just one more week.
This time, we did our traditional end-of-season Wednesday Night Hike to Willow Heights and its beaver pond. In past years some of the best lighting has occurred just after bad weather, with the sun breaking through the clouds and the low-angle light coupled with cloudy skies directly overhead providing dramatic, warm lighting, accentuating the turning leaves on the surrounding hills.
This year we had to satisfy ourselves with ducks.
The turnout for this last Wednesday Night Hike of 2010 was pretty good including, for the first time in several years, Gary, KK7DV. As we gathered in the parking lot the weather seemed to vacillate between sprinkling, not sprinkling, raining, not raining, virga, ground-reaching virga, and everything in-between. Ignoring this, we piled into the vehicles and started up the canyon.
Following Dale, we stopped at what seemed to be a familiar place, but didn't see the trailhead anywhere. When calling on the radio didn't yield any results we continued up the canyon a short distance, looking for the trail but we soon knew that we'd gone too far - just as Dale appeared on the air: It seemed as though he'd slightly overshot the trailhead - which explained our not seeing it as we'd been following him - so we did a U-turn and headed back just in time to see a herd of hikers crossing the road while Mike C. pulled in behind us, having taken the Guardsman Pass route from his Park City home.
Surprisingly, the foliage wasn't particularly wet nor the ground too muddy despite the occasional sprinkles. Continuing upwards we could see that while the leaves had started to change, they weren't as far along as they had been in recent years so we felt a bit of consolation that good color wasn't being wasted on bad lighting.
Emerging from the stand of aspen we crossed the meadow and climbed to the crest of the hill that bounded the pond. Looking back, we could see the Flagstaff Mountain as well as the Honeycomb Ridge but unfortunately, the clouds had persisted in their seeming insistence in blocking the setting sun so the view wasn't as spectacular as it had been in the past. See IMG1511 from the 2004 hike and SDIM1491 from the 2008 hike.
After waiting for a few minutes, the rest of the group appeared from the aspen and slowly crossed the meadow and after regrouping, we went a few hundred feet further to the shore of the large beaver pond. There, we could see the familiar sight of the beaver lodge at the far end while to our left were the gnawed remains of small aspen that had succumbed to castorean hydrological engineering activities. Unlike several occasions in recent years, we saw no moose standing in the reedy area to the far right.
What we did see was the usual flotilla of ducks. As soon as we arrived, we saw several of the tell-tale v-shaped wakes pointed in our direction and soon, there was a small anitidaen huddle around Dale's feet, no doubt spurred on by the pieces of crackers he was throwing in their direction. Even though they were huddled, feathered masses about his feet, they yearned to breathe free and resisted his halfhearted attempts to pick them up.
With the light fading, we crossed behind the dam (the trail over the top of the dam being completely choked off nowadays) and found ourselves on the opposite shore, soon rejoined by the ducks. There, we dug out our flashlights, ate some of our snacks - some of which we threw in the ducks' directions - and took the obligatory group picture in the gathering darkness. Having done that and seeing how dark it was getting we decided not to make our traditional circumnavigation of the lake and retraced our steps back to the other shore.
Upon re-entering the meadow following Bruce, I suddenly realized that we were following a two-track path - remnants of an old access road into the area. Not wanting to end up in unknown territory and too far from the vehicles, we crossed back over to the trail and continued on our way down, soon reaching the vehicles. By this time it was completely dark, save for the occasional, distant flashes of lightning. Waiting at the cars for the rest of the group, we watched this, noting the occasional passing of light sprinkles of rain - almost enough to keep the road damp.
Soon, bobbing lights appeared in the direction of the trail and our numbers were restored. Piling back into the vehicles we headed back down the canyon and along the road on the way down we saw our moose for the evening. Back in the parking lot we milled around for a few minutes, trying to decide if it was too late for pizza at Rocky Mountain Pizza Co. and if the recently-opened Litzas nearby was still open when Bruce pointed out that the Rocky Mountain Pizza was "officially" open until 10 PM, but that we'd better hurry if we wanted to get there before the salad bar was packed away...
Re-convening at the Pizza place, we sat, enjoying the bluegrass music and each others company, finishing a year's hiking season.
Thanks for the company on the hikes and see you next year!
According to Keller, Willow Heights was originally known as "Willow Patch Fork" (in 1888) and was the site of the 160 acre homestead of Julius Kuck who had filed three mining claims in the area, hoping to make quick money (to finance his law education) in minerals and timber. Kuck's wife found the winters to be too difficult and, after a few years, left him, she took his daughters with her and divorced him by 1909.
In about 1920, after several years as a hermit, Kuck deeded this land to Frank Bagley (one of his mortgage holders) after the destruction by fire of one of his mills at Mill D (see a previous discussion about Mill D North) and Kuck continued to live on the land. In 1934, when Kuck was 74 the cabin burned down and injured him. He rebuilt, only to have the cabin burn again in the winter of 1937, severely injuring him, and he, dragging a few possessions, managed to get through the deep snow to the ranger station at Days Fork. He spent the remainder of his life in the county hospital, dying in September of 1938. He now rests across the street from Gordon's house in the Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Bagley, who owned the land after 1920, ran dairy cows in the area of Willow Heights: Supposedly, the cement floor and foundation of the barn can be seen to the right of the trail when going up - if you know where to look - but we're not sure if that's looking from the trail or the road...
At least some of the above information was from the book "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller: This book is recommended reading if you find the history of this area to be interesting.
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 "c" or "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 2010 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 20100928 (Copyright 2010 by Clint Turner and those credited above. All rights on images and text are reserved.)
