Wednesday, July 20, 2005

After having not made it up the mountain since 2003 for some inexplicable reason, Ryan and I headed up to the highest point in Sanpete County yesterdee.

South Tent is about an hour drive up the canyon from Spring City; afterwhich one needs take a forty someodd minute half-mile, 1700 foot elevation gain hike to the top.
This year, there are live springs everywhere and a great deal of verdant bounty to delight the senses on one's strenuous jaunt up the slope.

There was a large bank of snow on the west face providing quite a flow for the stream below. This bank has been melting 24 hours a day for at least a month and a half, so it must have been quite a monster of snowfall and driftage.

Ryan helped me out with this after I took at least two pictures of myself with my eyes closed. That takes talent, taking pictures of one's self blinking on accident, I hope you realize.

By the time we made it to the top, there was quite a fire on a ridge to the south, a couple five miles away. It was roaring along with a westerly gust coming over the ridges at fifteen to thirty miles an hour, setting spruces bright like torches even during the day from across that distance.

Here's Ryan in a most familiar aspect; with his fieldglasses up, scanning the area for next fall's hunt.

Here's a fine cooperative relationship, near the summit of South Tent.

Like I said, there were many more wildflowers than there have been for years, all looking like rain had fallen just last night and the carpet had been laid out new for the day.

We made our way down the mountain, down a rather rocky wash on the barren south face. There was a fresh spring running from a source about seventy five feet from the rim. This wee falls was down the slope about three-quarters of the way, providing a cool contrast to the rest of the face.

The wildflowers weren't isolated to the high peaks, these were right next to the Skyline at around 9500 feet.


As the sun went down after we got home, I was sitting on the porch watching the evening come on. I noticed a huge cumulo nimbus cloud coming up from the area close to where we were, over where the smoke was trailing to the north east of the fire, just over the ridge from our view. The dern thing looked for all the world like a thermonuclear explosion's mushroom cloud, only dappled by the colors of the setting sun.
I watched it for a while and surmised that it must be from evaporation from Joe's Reservoir to the east of the fire. The lake was cooling slower than the air, as is usual, but with the fire sending huge amounts of particulates for the moisture to condense upon, the clouds were forming in huge columns while there were not many other clouds to speak of in the rest of the sky.
I took these two photos later on after the cloud had lost most of its definition. I Photoshopped them a bit to make them show up better, so the blindingly bright blotch is the almost full moon as it came up over the clouds.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

...please where can I buy a unicorn?

adam said...

Sorry; you probably ought to ask someone else about unicorns.
Anyway...

adam said...

Gordam spambots.