Dedication marker at the Willow Heights trailhead.
Click on image for full-sized version.

Images (.JPG format):

• IMG05360 - From across the meadow and the canyon, the Honeycomb Ridge.  Slightly zoomed version is #5361.
• IMG05362 - Dale, Tim and Ron briefly discuss important matters of the day during a pause, just before arriving at the lake.
• IMG05365 - A view across the beaver pond at Willow Heights
• IMG05380 - The obligatory group picture.  L->R:  Dale, Tim (in front), Ron, Gordon, Bruce and Clint.
  
• IMG05393 - Toward the sunset, across the pond, from the eastern shore.  Here is a picture, taken by Bruce, of me standing on the log, taking the picture.  Similar is this one.
  
• IMG05399 - Dale, holding onto the big, iron thing.  (Image was rendered in monochrome.)

• Willow Heights Pano 1 - Across the beaver pond.  (1.51 Meg)

• A detailed map with the GPS track of the hike (plus surrounding landmarks, 645 kB)
• The elevation profile of the hike - This shows the ups and downs of the trail.  There is an altitude anomaly in the meadow - the actual peak altitude never broke 8600.
  

This was the last Wednesday Night Hike of the 2007 Wednesday Night Hike season.

A slow gathering.  At least, that what it seemed like, at first:  Gordon was the first of the WNH crowd to arrive at the parking lot but what, at first, seemed to be a trickle, became a more normal-sized group.  The topic of discussion of the arrivees was not the hike, but the plume of smoke that, from a great distance, seemed to be emanating from the mouth of Big Cottonwood canyon.  As it turns out, the smoke was from a brush fire near the mouth of Bell Canyon - quite a ways south of Big Cottonwood.

Before too long, Dale and Bruce arrived and after deciding that the traditional last-of-the-season hike was in order, everyone piled into vehicles and headed up the canyon.  Although Dale experienced a bit of delay due to construction, we found ourselves up-canyon and, after a bit of back-and-forth driving, trying to spot the trailhead, we finally parked, extracted ourselves from the vehicles, and started up the trailhead.

Unlike in some previous years, the trail was free of mud, wet leaves, or even snow.  Even though the beginning of the trail is somewhat steep, it isn't steep for very long, soon emerging from a stand of quaking aspen into a wide meadow.  While a few clouds can improve the lighting, too many aren't necessarily a good thing:  Unfortunately, there was little or no alpenglow visible this time to highlight the nearby peaks and due to the recent weather - plus the fact that the last WNH of 2007 was slightly earlier than usual - there wasn't much fall color visible this time.

Crossing the broad meadow, one climbs a small hill and is soon overlooking a fairly large beaver pond.  Missing, this time, were the usual ducks:  In past years, our appearance has induced their appearance as well, sometimes with a small flotilla of ducks heading in our direction, hoping that someone would throw some carbohydrates in their direction.  Not so, this year, as there was nary hide nor feather of our familiar Anatidae avians, leaving us to wonder if they had already gone south, had yet to arrive at this pond on their way, or if they just knew something that we didn't know...

Undaunted by lack of duck, we proceeded with our circumnavigation of the lake.  Just before we traversed the beaver dam, it begin to rain - but just barely:  The appearance of the splashing circles on the water was noted before everyone finally felt their first raindrop.  On the shore opposite the dam, we stopped for a few minutes to look around and take our obligatory group picture before moving on.  Other frequently-sighted denizens of Willow Heights are moose - but like the ducks, none were in sight, although we saw evidence of large animals having been there in the mud near the top end of the lake.

After successfully crossing the lakes inlet - an area in which it is easy to lose any remnant of the trail - we concluded our circumnavigation, pausing along the shore opposite the dam to briefly take a few pictures.  At about this point, the trail around the lake (one of several, in fact) petered out, so we headed across through the forest, intersecting the main trail and following a short detour to what had been a dug-in hunting blind.  This blind, on a short bluff, has continued to succumb to nature, becoming shallower every year.  At what appeared to be a fire ring, we dug out our flashlights, as it was now getting fairly dark, and Dale stumbled across a very large iron piece which, to our best guess, had possibly been part of a wagon.

Twilight was fairly deep by the time we crossed the meadow and re-entered the trees, but the descent was uneventful and before too long, we found ourselves back at the vehicles, piled in, and headed back down-canyon without incident.  After regrouping at the parking lot, everyone headed over to Rocky Mountain Pizza for food, company, and live bluegrass music, finishing the 2007 Wednesday Night Hiking season.

According to the book"The Lady in the Ore Bucket" by Charles 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, taking his daughters with her and divorcing 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 the 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.

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...

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Comments about pictures taken by Clint:

• 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