The informational sign past the bottom of Silver Fork, at the end of the blacktop.
Click on the image for a larger version.

Images (.JPG format):

• IMG05060 - Peering cautiously, a cow moose watching us from the border as we pass.  Only a portion of one of the calves can be seen in this picture.
• IMG05067 - Dale, looking at a cascade just above the Alta tunnel that, at the time, was only trickling.
• IMG05069 - Dale, briefly reclining near the cascade.
• IMG05070 - A look down-canyon, from the vicinity of the cascade.
• IMG05089 - Ron and Dale, just below the portal of the Wellington tunnel, just above Davenport Hill.  The top of the steam engine may just be seen above and to the right of Dale, peeking over a mount of overburden.
• IMG05090 - The pass at the top of Silver Fork.  It is over this ridge that we pass when going to the Prince of Wales mine via Grizzly Gulch.
• IMG05091 - From the same mound on which Ron and Dale were standing, a view of Davenport Hill and the meadow.  Mike can be seen along the trail.
• IMG05092 - Chris, during the final ascent to the portal of the Wellington tunnel.
• IMG05094 - Dale and Ron atop the old 20 horsepower steam engine with Chris wielding an old shovel found on-site.
• IMG05096 - The mostly-buried flywheel and piston assembly of the steam engine.
• IMG05098 - Ron, atop the steam engine.  Just like the engine at the Prince of Wales Mine, it is a crossflow fire tube boiler - the "crossflow" part referring to the fact that hot gasses flowed horizontally in tubes through the water jacket.  ("So that's where the water goes in...")
• IMG05100 - Viewed from near the portal of the Wellington tunnel, Chris, standing atop the steam engine.
• IMG05101 - Across the canyon, another mining prospect.  It is this that Dale and Mike are looking at in the previous picture.
• IMG05104 - The obligatory group picture, taken at the portal of the Wellington Tunnel.  Similar is #5107.  L->R:  Chris, Clint, Ron (in the firebox,) Bruce (atop the engine,) Dale, Mike, and Gordon.  Other photographic experiments include:  #5108 - No-one stayed still during the 2-second exposure.  #5109 - Ron and Bruce made some calculated moves while the shutter was open, and #5110 - Everyone assumed two positions during the exposure.
  
• IMG05111 - This is an experimental picture obtained by leaving the shutter open for 10 seconds while three red and two green lasers were randomly waved about at the subjects.  L->R:  Chris, Gordon, Bruce, Mike, and Ron.  Other attempts:  #5112 - Chris is assuming a "strong man" pose.  #5113 - Chris is holding a piece of paper in front of his face.  #5114 - Clint and Dale (who had been waving the lasers about for the earlier pictures) are now being bombarded by everyone else.

• DSC01585 - Mike, sitting atop the steam engine.
• DSC01586 - Ron, rummaging about in his pack, shadowed by the portal of the Wellington Tunnel.
• DSC01587 - Ron and Clint, trying to find a battery to power one of the green Lasers to be used for the "painted" images
  

• Silver Fork Pano1 - A panoramic view from the meadow near Davenport Hill.  The location of the Prince of Wales mine hidden from view off to the left, while the pass between Silver Fork and Grizzly Gulch is on the right.
• Silver Fork Pano2 - From a location just above the previous pano, a view down the canyon.  Toward the left edge of the picture was, until just a few years ago, a shack that was often used by skiers in the winter, and, according to Bruce, by those engaging in recreational pharmacology in the summer.  (On another hike, years ago, he'd visited the shack and found it inhabited by people that had chemically reduced their mental capacity.)
  

• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks, 1.08 Meg)
• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail.
  

There was a fairly good turnout for the hike, despite the beautiful weather.

Things got off to a bit of a slow start:  Mike had been delayed in getting there because he'd left work later than planned - and then had to drop by the 7-Eleven to get some water, so the fact that several of the rest of us were late didn't matter as much.  There was also an "indecision delay" - that is, a lot of time seemed to be taken by talking about things that we didn't want to do on this evening.  Finally, Chris made the suggestion of Silver Fork:  It was a bit long (but it was steep) but we knew that we could likely get to the "top" (the site of the Wellington Tunnel) before it got too dark and owing to the distinct road, it would not be too arduous a task to stumble along it after it had gotten really dark.  Another thing that occurred to me was that we'd not gone up Silver Fork on a Wednesday Night Hike since 2002 or 2003.

So, we piled into Mike's and Ron's vehicles and headed up the canyon.  Knowing that we'd likely not be emerging from the canyon before the gate at the entrance of the Solitude parking lot was to be locked, we parked along the highway:  Our hunch turned out to be quite correct.

This is one of those hikes in which the first 10-15 minutes are taken just to get to the trailhead - in this case, walking across the Solitude Ski resort parking lot, across a field of grass to the road amongst cabins, up the road, and then finally, past the end of the blacktop.  Since our last visit to Silver Fork, an informational sign had been added, right at the locked gate that blocked vehicle traffic.

Even before passing through the gate, we already encountered an example of large fauna:  As we approached the last cabin in the cluster near the bottom of the canyon, one of its occupants indicated to us that a moose was foraging in the meadow just up the road.  Sure enough, we soon saw a cow moose with a pair of calves munching away.  In spite of the fact that we detoured along the road away from them, they moved toward the woodland boarder, eying us suspiciously as we passed by.  This wasn't the only encounter with wildlife:  We'd seen what we thought was a fox (Mike thought it to be a small coyote) at about the time we passed by the Spruces campground and further up the canyon, we saw a lot of deer bouncing away or high up on the hills.

About 2/3 of the way up, an obvious landmark is the portal of the Alta tunnel.  Prior to about 10 years ago, this area deeply covered with overburden from the tunnel, but much of this was hauled away, being used for road construction and fill material.  At about the same time, plumbing work was done at the portal to more cleanly capture the water draining from this tunnel.  Prior to this rework, one could stand near the portal and hear a peculiar thing:  Over a period of 5-10 minutes, one could hear the water flow slowly increase and decrease - an effect possibly related to airflow in the mine affecting the hydrostatic pressure of the water column before it exited the tunnel.

Farther up the canyon can be seen the detritus of other former mine workings, including large pieces of iron pipe that had washed down from somewhere above - probably the vicinity of the Annie Tunnel.  As one continues upwards, what had been a mining road deteriorates into a steep and slippery (especially when wet) climb on loose rock.  Eventually, one tops the hill and breaks out into the meadow just below Davenport Hill.  The view further up the canyon is dominated by the Honeycomb Cliffs and, below it, the waste rock from the Wellington tunnel, forming a lunar-esque landscape of eroding mounds of rock.

Climbing a bit further up, one get so the portal of the Welling tunnel itself, dominated by a half-buried 20 horsepower steam engine.  The portal itself has largely collapsed and been filled in by erosion from above, but shining a flashlight, one can see back into the mountain about 30 feet or so.

Ron and Dale were the first to get to the tunnel and I followed shortly thereafter, with Chris not too far behind me.  After a few more minutes, Mike arrived and another few more minutes brought Bruce and Gordon.  Before too long, people were poking around the steam engine and peering into the portal, as well as just enjoying the interesting view around them.

After the last of the alpenglow climbed above the nearby peaks, we decided that we should start to begin to commence thinking about going back down, hopefully descending the steepest portion before it got too dark to see without flashlight.  Before this, however, was the important task of taking the obligatory group picture.  After several pictures, we finally started down.  Fortunately, we were able to descend the steepest part of the trail without any great difficulty before it got too dark, arriving at what had been the mining road:  With this well-defined path, traveling via flashlight in the dark was quite easy and safe.

Eventually, we emerged from the canyon, making the traverse along the road, the grass, and then the large parking lot.  Once we arrived at the car, I wanted to try another photographic experiment:  Painting the subjects with Laser pointers during a time exposure.  For this, I was able to con 5 victim into sitting down on boulders near the vehicles while Dale and I waved five laser pointers (two green and three red) randomly over the subjects - who, for obvious safety reasons, were instructed to keep their eyes closed:  The results speak for themselves!

The drive back down the canyon was uneventful.  Once at the parking lot at the mouth of the canyon, people staggered from their vehicles and went their separate ways, forgoing a dime-lime.

Minerals found in Silver Fork area mines:

The green rocks found laying about near the portal of the Wellington mine are probably Malachite, a copper carbonate.

Interestingly, Solitude's attempt to collect the water from the Kentucky-Utah mine for culinary use triggered a lawsuit from Salt Lake City:  Their claim was that this water was contributing, perhaps indirectly, to the flow in Big Cottonwood creek.  Eventually, a settlement was reached and this water is, in fact, used by Solitude for culinary purposes.

A link to a filing in this case may be found here.  Comment:  It seems as though the Kentucky-Utah mine near the mouth of Silver Fork, with the description (from the lawsuit) being this:

"The Kentucky-Utah Mine intercepts underground percolating water through seepages and cracks in its tunnel walls. This water is collected approximately 1,000 feet inside the tunnel and diverted to its portal. The portal of the mine is located approximately one-quarter to one-half mile south of, and approximately 500 vertical feet above, Big Cottonwood Creek. The portal is also within several hundred feet of the Silver Fork area and approximately 12 miles from the mouth of the canyon."

Comments:

• 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.
• 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.
• If you took some pictures of the hike and send them to me, I'll post them - and give you the blame!
  

Go to the 2007 Wednesday Night Hike page, or main Wednesday Night Hike page or the Wednesday Night Hike Cross-Index page