September 21 - Willow Heights

On this, the last "official" Wednesday Night Hike of the 2011 season, we gathered at the usual meeting place and unlike most of these hikes, we already knew where we were going: Willow Heights. It would seem that we've lost about 96 minutes of sun at the end of the day - losing about 11 minutes a week - and there really aren't very many places we can go without spending most of our hike in the dark! Willow Heights has - at least for the past decade or so - been our traditional "end-of-season" hike because it's fairly short and often has scenic rewards along the way and at the destination, a large beaver pond.

Wedging ourselves into vehicles, we moved up-canyon while Mike worked the Park City route via Guardsman Pass as we wound our way up the familiar road, finally stopping at a fairly nondescript portion of the road. Sometimes, one has to keep a sharp eye out for the trailhead - now marked with a low, engraved stone marking its presence but this time there were a number of vehicles clustered about on both sides of the road indicating that we'd possibly see some human company along the way.

Donning our gear it was decided that, as was done last week, we'd haul some 10 GHz radio gear up the mountain to our destination on the off-chance that we'd be able to detect a signal on 10 GHz. Unlike last week, there were now two possible sources: Ron's beacon near Park Valley in northwest Utah, and a beacon owned by Dave, WA7GIE, that I was testing atop my house in the valley - and it seemed reasonable that we'd be able to at least detect one of them!

While distributing the load amongst several people, Mike pulled up behind us, ready to go and we soon took off up the trail.

This year's season has been a bit skewed: Many of our traditional early-season hikes had to be postponed for weeks or even omitted owing to the extraordinarily long duration of the winter's snowfall that precluded their being done on a Wednesday after work without special equipment and we were seeing banks of still-extant snow on some of our hikes well into August - and they could still be there! Often, by the time the fall equinox rolls around, the tri-canyon area is ablaze with fall colors, but this year only a few scattered bits of yellow, orange and red were to be seen.

With the clear, blue sky, the air was cool as we hiked through the sun-dappled groves of aspen. The grasses and wildflowers were now largely past their prime with the yellowing ground cover contrasting against the still-green leaves, blue sky and warm light as we climbed the well-warn trail up from the canyon bottom. As we approached the edge of the aspen stands, we were greeted with the expanse of the sunlit meadow just below the pond backgrounded by the ridge and blue sky beyond.

Upon reaching the far side of the meadow, the nerd-herd paused for a few minutes to extract our piles of aluminum, silicon and lead as we fired up the 10 GHz radio gear to see if we could discern either beacon amongst the noise. Not immediately hearing anything with the naked ear, I fired up a small netbook computer that I'd brought along to see if, with a bit of deeper, digital digging, we could visually discern any hint of the desired signals on its display: We did not... While we were doing what we were doing, several people asked us what we were up to - including some wildlife conservation officers that had come up to survey the local moose population. While we offered a brief explanation that we'd hoped to be somewhat comprehensible to the lay-person, the description that seemed to provide onlookers with the greatest satisfaction was simply that we were using "Wi-Fi on steroids" - not an accurate description, to be sure, but perhaps the easiest!

Packing the gear back up, we made our way around the north-east side of the pond, noting the small flotilla of ducks and several moose munching nonchalantly on the far side. Years ago, we would have crossed over the top of the beaver dam, but in recent years the dam itself has become barely recognizable as it has become completely covered with plant growth, making the former path completely impassible, so we took the alternate route. Working our way along the trail behind the dam and back around, we gathered again on the shore while we took pictures and stood around enjoying ourselves as the last vestiges of sunlight leaped from the highest surrounding peaks and, eventually, taking the obligatory group picture in the gathering darkness.

It was now quite dark and the temperature was dropping under the moonless, starry sky so we headed back down, our way lit by flashlights of various colors. As has been recent tradition, was was using my "capacitor flashlight" based on a 2600 Farad (yes, that's 2.6 billion microfarads!) that I'd charged up for the August 10^th hike (but not charged it since then!) and had been using on every hike after that. Bouncing down the rocky trail, we made it back to the cars in time to watch a fairly impressive Iridium Flare before heading back up the trail.

Just as I arrived at the cars and started unloading my gear, I realized that I was one piece short: I'd left my HD camcorder where we'd taken the group photo along the shore of the lake! Being that it was, in fact, the shortest hike of the season the prospect of running (or, more accurately, walking) back up there wasn't too daunting so a group of us shed most of our usual hiking gear and headed back up the trail.

Ron, Gary and Bryan and I started up the trail and we'd only gone a few hundred feet when Ron said "Why am I carrying this?" referring to his day pack, which he promptly shed, leaving it in plain sight along the trail. After a few hundred more feet, I stopped to investigate an un-tied boot only to notice that one of the laces had broken so I knotted this back together while the rest of the group carried on, their bobbing flashlights disappearing up the hill. Resuming my progress I was soon met by Dale who'd expressed initial reluctance to join us on the return trip saying that his legs were tired. We soon passed Bryan who decided to take a brief breather and we could only occasionally see glancing flashes of Ron and Gary's lights reflecting from the white bark of the quaking aspen grove on the trail ahead. After a while, the most rocky and steep portion of the trail subsided to a more gradual slope and upon exiting the stand of trees we could see Gary and Ron making rapid progress across the meadow under the starry sky while behind me I could see Bryan's light as he tailed along not too far behind us.

Reaching the lake, we circled around the downstream side of the dam, hopped the stream and climbed the embankment and found the camcorder exactly where it was expected to be: The elapsed time since leaving the vehicles? 25 minutes.

Pausing only a few minutes to make sure that we didn't leave anything else behind, we headed back down the trail, re-retracing our steps and arriving at the vehicles 25 minutes later, having taken about as long to go back down the trail as we did going up. Piling in Ron's and Dale's vehicles, we made our way back down the canyon, our sweat and respiration fogging the cars' windows. At the bottom, the occupants of Ron's car decided to proceed directly to the Porcupine rather than stop at the parking lot to meet Mike, Gordon and Bruce who'd opted to head down the canyon soon after we started back up the trail. Dale dropped off Bryan with the understanding that he'd be along shortly, but we were somewhat disappointed when Bryan headed home in deference to his early-morning work schedule rather than stay up a bit later and inhale yet another meal for the day.

Abutting several tables with that at which the earlier group had been eating we sat down, enjoyed a good meal and talked about the past seasons' hikes - among many other things - before departing just before midnight and heading our separate ways.

I hope to see you next year!