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If you had a hike, but no-one came, would it still be a hike?
That may have been one of the existential questions that had crossed Gordon's mind last week when he wondered aloud how many people would likely be there for the (then) next Wednesday night hike - which happened to be on the 4th of July. It would seem as though some of the answers were rather non-committal, so Gordon was still wondering about this until shortly before the appointed time when both Ron and I announced on the air that we were on our way. We we arrived, we waited patiently for a few more minutes (trying to decide where we should go, actually) to see if anyone else saw fit to choose hiking over relaxing with their families, drinking cool drinks, eating good food, and witness the display of tens of thousands of dollars of metal-tainted gunpowder explode in the air.
In keeping with tradition, we chose another hike with a fairly high altitude starting point - and one that well-utilizes the still-late sunset: Sunset Peak. Being that we had hoped to make it to the peak before sunset, we approached Catherine Pass via the Albion Basin rather than from the Brighton Bowl, making for our first Wednesday Night Hike sojourn into Little Cottonwood Canyon.
Parking at the "new" trailhead (new, as of 2-3 years ago...) we started out up the hill. I'd heard on the radio that the wildflower show in Albion Basin was 2-3 weeks early this year - and so there was a fairly good show, but it wasn't quite up to the last year or two - both of which had benefited from more rain/snow over the past winter: Perhaps, in a few more weeks there will be yet more color...
As was typical, the mosquitoes were out in large numbers, forcing is to smear ourselves with volatile hydrocarbons (e.g. DEET) when we briefly stopped at Catherine Pass. After this brief stop, we continued upwards toward the peak. Interestingly, just above Catherine Pass, we noticed an obvious trail junction that we hadn't noticed before. Because we were on the south side of this junction, we could tell that the only place that this other trail could have come up was along the ridge just above the pass, so we surmised that it was, in fact, the older, steeper trail that we thought had been blocked off a year or two ago - although it looked well-traveled to us.
Unlike our hike to Sunset Peak two years ago, there was no large snowfield at Point Supreme - in fact, there were only small patches of snow seen in the north-facing shadow areas and none at all near the trail itself. The trail upwards was in very good shape and easy to follow, so after a while we arrived on the peak - with about 12 minutes to spare before sunset.
The view from Sunset Peak is quite spectacular - as are the many views along the trail up. From this peak, one can see into both the Brighton Bowl and see lakes Mary, Martha and Catherine (no, neither Lakes Phoebe or Annette were visible...) as well as down into Albion Basin. One can also see into extreme southwestern Wyoming, the Uintas, much of the Heber Valley, as well as the back side of Timpanogas - not to mention many of the prominent peaks on the ridge between Little Cottonwood and American Fork canyons. Because of the still-extant wildfires in the western U.S., the air was somewhat hazy - but not as much as last week.
One interesting feature of Sunset peak pointed out by Ron - and made even more apparent by the haze - is the fact that it casts a shadow across Heber Valley that is almost perfectly triangular. With the haze present, the shadow line to the north was quite apparent (as seen in #4722a) and we watched as the "shadow point" (the tip of the triangular shadow) as it seemed to quickly move across the landscape below and climb the hills on the eastern edge of Heber Valley.
After loitering about on the peak and watching the sunset, we wandered back down, uneventfully - except for the large cow moose that we slightly disturbed, who slowly ambled off the trail as we cautiously passed by. By the time we got down to the parking lot, it was fairly dark, so in addition to looking at the visible planets (Jupiter toward the south, and Venus toward the west) as well as trying to identify some of the prominent stars, I was shooting a green laser pointer around at some of the nearby mountains, trying to see just how far away we could see a reflected spot. We suspected that we would have much better luck if all of the nearby peaks had been equipped with retroreflectors as only the closest ones (within a mile or so) showed a visible green spot.
After (eventually) piling into Ron's jeep, we headed down the canyon. Upon emerging, we could see, of in the distance, a number of fireworks displays that were still going on. Upon getting back to the parking lot at the mouth of Big Cottonwood, we (eventually) decided to have a dime lime, so we headed over to the Belgian Waffle Inn - one of the few places that was still open at that hour. When we emerged from the restaurant just after midnight, we could see (and smell) a pall of sulfurous smoke across the valley - no doubt from the tons of airborne explosives from earlier in the evening.
FWIW, the bright star just below Jupiter (in the south) last night was Antares, while the one more nearly overhead to the west was Arcturus. (And Saturn was the "star" next to Venus...)
According to Keller, Sunset Peak was occasionally shown as "Monument Peak" on some early (circa 1908) maps, but this name seems to have long since dropped out of use.The information about Sunset Peak is from Charles Keller's book, The Lady in the Ore Bucket.
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We went to Clayton Peak in 2006 -
click here
to read about that hike.
Go to the 2007
Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday
Night Hike index page.
This page maintained by Clint Turner, KA7OEI
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was last updated on 20070705 (Copyright 2007 by Clint Turner. All
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