Wall lake

Two rather disparate topics tonight. I'll start with the more familiar. I went fishing in the Uintas today. I saw a moose family. Papa moose, mama moose, and baby moose. They were clearly republicans! Otherwise it would have been two lesbian mooose raising their child to only eat meat. Naturally, I left the movie camera at home. I did get them on my cell phone, but even at just fifty feet away they looked quite distant.

My rant is a simple one. While USGS terrain maps are highly accurate for the most part, they fall down hard on hiking trails. Sometimes they show trails that haven't existed for decades (White Pine canyon). Other times the trails never existed but are at least within a one or two hundred yards of each other (Silver Lake above Tibble Fork) and sometimes they are just plain wrong. I take the USGS maps whenever I go into the back country, but I get instructions from people that have been there before..........preferably old-timers like myself.

The fishing was fair. I caught four and lost a few more on the way in. The fish were not plump like the ones at Notch Lake. I caught a Brookie with the elongated jaws (for the spawn I suppose) and he was barely 12 inhces long and skinny. He was also about the brightest Brookie I've seen in a few years. I also caught a Lake trout. Yes, I know they are not indigenous to the area. I know they are not planted in that drainage. I know they prefer deep water in big lakes. I also know what I caught. I know that tiger trout are put into some Uinta lakes. Perhaps this one didn't get crossed with a brookie and somehow snuck in. He was perhaps 10 or 11 inches and pretty lethargic.

The Sand Dunes

I took my daughter to Little Sahara. A few things struck me. The obvious one being the amount of sunflowers that have taken root in the sand. The desert can be reclaimed with sufficient water after all. And of couse the inexorable shifting of the sands towards the Northeast sure didn't hurt.

We have this practice of digging trenches and watching the sand collapse. Little rivulets form and improbable structures too. These structures eerily resemble things that you would see in Canyonlands or Bryce. A little bit of sand is removed from a trench and little happens. A bit more is removed and nothing. But every so often the next 'scoop' is enough to cause great changes.....some of it cataclysmic with entire structure collapsing.

It got me thinking if geologic changes in places such as the aforementioned or Grand Canyon aren't cataclysmic every few thousand years. I also started wondering if global warming might not also make up much drier or perhaps wetter. We have seen it already in Australia. Perhaps my beloved West Desert might again be a fertile grassland. Maybe I should by a boatload of land?

Back to Notch Lake

Much cooler temperatures than last week. Much cooler. There were some clouds that were swirling and threatening and a fair amount of breeze. The fishing suffered as a result. So.......if I am going to get the calm late evening and early morning fishing, I've no good hike in/out options. I will have to overnight. And backpacking in the cold is something I've done only rarely. If I am going to do it this year, it will be Meadow Lake.

I've never been to Meadow Lake. I've heard the fishing is good. It's five miles from the Crystal Lake TH (and a relatively level five miles at that). I've also been able to confirm that there is on old cabin and some old mining activity. That will have to wait for nest summer.

I didn't see the goats at all. But about 2 miles in I came across some blue grouse that were working over some grass. I got withing ten feet of one of them and just stood there for two minutes speaking to them in soft tones. I seriously wonder if I haven't got some kind of special ability with certain wild animals now. I used to hunt grouse you see. Now, I don't. Perhaps they can sense this?

Simpson Springs

I went there this weekend........
It started out with my son and one of his friends. They invited me. Then another. Then a dad.....another dad.....a kid brother. So the seven of us went out. I arrived early to set up the tents and such. I got a flat tire on the way out. By the time I got the tents and the gear done, the unseasonably hot temps had about killed me. But a lot of shade and Powerade brought me back.

We did some shooting, had an OK meal (the fettucine didn't boil properly), and sat around the fire and told ghost stories. My ghost story happened to take place at Simpson Springs over 20 years ago. So I took the boys to the cave in the dark. On the way there, one of them commented on all the stars and asked what the 'strange cloud' was. I asked if he knew what the name of our galaxy was. He answered correctly and looked at me for a few seconds. It dawned on him.

I feel saddened that he had to wait until he was 17 to see the milky way. It makes me wonder what else he hasn't done. He came over today and I mentioned to him that I had gone up to the Diamond Fork Hot Springs yesterday (DFHS hereafter.....or Fifth Water). He said that sounded fun. He had never seen an actual hot spring.

I digress........did I mention that I got a SECOND flat tire on the way back from Simpson Springs. FUN!!! I got the metal detector out. I mostly found junk in four inches of dirt i.e. old bullets, horseshoe pieces etc. I found a large quartz-looking rock with a large reading about 10 inches down., with a VDI that would correspond with gold. Of course the rock was under a large amount of soil and was quite large. I ain't gonna dig it out for the size of whatever gold might be under there.