The information sign/map at the head of the trail to Catherine Pass in Little Cottonwood Canyon.  Click on image for a large version, or  click here for a diagram showing the major peaks in the ara.

Images (Jpeg):

• IMG03775 - A view of Devil's Castle (center) and Sugarloaf (right) from a short distance up from the trailhead.
• IMG03778 - From the "divide" (where the three ridges come together) a view toward the south, including Timpanogos.  A much wider view is #3776.
• IMG03779 - The Uintas, through the pass between Sunset and Pioneer peaks.
• IMG03782 - Mountain goats, ruminating just below Sunset Peak.
  
• IMG03789 - A tight zoom of lakes Mary and Martha from Sunset Peak.
• IMG03790 - The obligatory group picture.  L->R:  Gordon, Chris, Bruce, Mike, Dale, Tim  and Clint
• IMG03791 - A look into the setting sun.
• IMG03792 - From the trail between Sunset Peak and Catherine Pass, a sidelong view of Timpanogos at sunset.
• IMG03793 - Devil's Castle, highlighted with the last vestiges of alpenglow as caught along the trail between Sunset Peak and Catherine Pass
  
• IMG03796 - Yet another view showing lakes Catherine and Mary, with Scott's Peak highlighted by the alpenglow.  Similar is #3795.
  
• IMG03799 - Gordon and Dale, on the descent.
  

• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail.  Note:  I had spotty reception of the GPS signal on the way up - until I remembered to clip the receiver on my shoulder strap...
  
• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks, 615k)
  

When it comes to deciding where it is that we want to go for the Wednesday Night Hike, there is only one that that can be decisively said:  We are decidedly indecisive - and we think that we are probably pretty sure about that.

Most of the time, the evening's agenda isn't decided until we meet in the parking lot.  While it is true that the likely destinations are somewhat limited by current circumstance (that is, we tend to take longer hikes in June that we do in September and we generally avoid going to mountain peaks when there is threat of lightning) most of the time we don't nail down a destination until we have a consensus or, just as often, lack of objection to a suggested hike.

This hike kept to that tradition.  The first part was decided fairly easily:  To go to Catherine Pass.  Because we wanted to visit one of the nearby peaks, we chose the Little Cottonwood approach as it is somewhat shorter.  The only difficulty (if you want to call it that) was that we couldn't decide which peak to visit:  Tuscarora or Sunset - both of which are adjacent to Catherine Pass.  Fortunately, we didn't force ourselves into deciding any sooner than necessary.

So, we piled into several vehicles:  Chris was ahead of the game, living not too far from the mouth of the canyon while Mike took Gordon and Tim and Bruce and I rode in Dale's care.  Eventually (after pedaling furiously on the steeper parts) we arrived in Dale's Geo Metro (after having to pull over a couple of times to allow stationary objects to pass us on the way up...) at the relatively new Catherine Pass trailhead along the Albion Basin road.

Although this parking lot is quite large, it was quite full - but there were still a few places left.  After gearing up, we headed off up the trail, surprised at the number of people that we saw:  At least most of them were headed back down.  (Note:  That's to be expected:  We probably wouldn't be seeing very many people headed up the trail, would we?)

Eventually, a decision had to be made:  At Catherine Pass, should we go to the left to Tuscarora or to the right to Sunset?  It turns out that Mike was this week's perpetrator of decisiveness:  He chose Sunset Peak (often known as Monument Peak in the early days) mostly due to its well-defined and maintained trail - plus the more gradual ascent/descent.

In some ways, it's too bad that Wednesday this week didn't fall on Monday or even a Tuesday as we missed the rise of the full moon.  When we got to the peak, there were already several people there, waiting for this exceedingly rare event (which happens only about once every 2.5 million seconds...) - but we really weren't prepared to stay an extra hour or so to witness it:  Tim had to be at work early in the morning, and I'd managed to forget a windbreaker or a jacket, plus it was 'fixin to get quite cold at that elevation after dark and some of us were wearing shorts - great for hiking, but not so great for sitting atop a mountain peak in the wind.  Although we missed the moonrise, some of us did manage to spot the four mountain goat that were sitting and ruminating not too far from the peak, watching us watching them.

A short way down from the peak, we were able to witness a pretty nice sunset (a fitting event, considering our hike's destination) and, uneventfully, we made our way back down to Catherine Pass and then down to the vehicles.  There was only a brief moment of concern when we arrived at the trailhead and didn't find Dale or Tim, whom we had thought were fairly close behind.  What worry there was was short-lived as they appeared (in the dark) only 5 or so minutes later.

We were somewhat disappointed that we got back 15-20 minutes too late to get to the pizza place before it closed, so much of the group went (instead) to the TGI Friday's at the Cottonwood Mall.

Comments:

• 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 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.
• All images taken using a Sigma SD-10 camera and were taken using the 18-50mm zoom lens, except as noted in the EXIF data.

Go to the 2006 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike index page.

Historical info about Sunset Peak was taken from "The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles Keller