A beautiful sunset tonight!

I kept hoping all day for the sky to open up into blue and the sun to bathe the peaks in light. After all, we'd had a storm yesterday in the wee hours of the night and I thought that the inversion might lift for a moment. Finally, in the late afternoon, the sun won a brief battle and the Wasatch Mountains lit up. I only had my camera on my phone to take a couple of pics, and I was trying to get back to the office in my mail truck. Still, I found a good vantage point and snapped this shot.

After work, I needed to pick up a few things at the grocery store and came out just in time to see the sun going out in a blaze of glory.

So, after feeling a little disappointed that the light hadn't been what I'd wanted all day. in the end, it didn't disappoint. My phone camera leaves a lot to be desired, but I did the best I could with what I had at the time.

A fabulous sunset tonight.

It was another amazing sunset here in Salt Lake county. Here are some pics.

Looking southwest over our house.

Killing two birds with one stone, a fabulous sunset, and  my Dr. Seuss Christmas lights.

I hope the sunset was just as nice wherever you may be.

Hike of the year...Lone Peak

For years one of my goals had been to hike Lone Peak, at 11,253 feet in elevation, the 11th highest peak in the Wasatch Range. Yesterday (Monday) was my second attempt at this rugged peak.
Towering over the city of Draper, this monolith has beckoned to me for years. At 7 AM, my brother Mike and I started up the Jacob's Ladder trail to the top.
Jacob's Ladder is the quickest way to the top of Lone Peak. It is very steep. Think climbing a stairs for 1.5 miles and you get the idea. This stretch of the hike is withering and by the time you reach the ridge and the trail that intersects with the Jacob's Ladder trail (called the Draper Ridge Trail), your quads are burning. It was at this point last year that I knew I'd never make it to the top that time. I was dizzy and just didn't feel well. Not so this year. I had the strength and stamina I needed for finishing what I'd started.

Mike Roe

Along the way we saw some nice bucks a few hundred yards across the hillside.

I did the best I could to capture them on my Elph 340HS. I zoomed in on a patch of mountainside where I could barely see anything moving and captured the above image. Mike had told me all about how big the racks were on these deer, but I could barely see the deer at all, and through the viewfinder in bright sunshine, it was tough to find them, but I guess it worked.
We continued upward, through the pines and into the bottom of the boulder field. We saw one guy going way high to the left and wondered if that was a better way to make it to the shoot.
Mike had been experiencing nausea and so we sat down and ate lunch. After lunch we climbed higher into the bowl, trying to search out the cairns that marked the trail. We got off trail a few times before finding our way back.

There were some nice views of Timpanogos and other mountains to the southeast

This mare and another horse were up near the top of Jacob's Ladder, brought by bowhunters. I was hoping for a ride up the rest of the way, and if they'd have still been there when we came back down, I'd have paid them to take me down.

As always, there were some amazing flowers

Mike and I. The selfie.

Mike, finding that he'd need to put in some workout time before he could actually make it to the top, decided to stop and wait for me to reach the top. This was a little after 2 pm.
I made my way up the chute that led to the ridge I would follow to the top of Lone Peak.
I was actually feeling pretty good, considering how I'd felt the year before when I'd turned back at about the same spot we ate lunch this year. My workouts had paid their dividends and I was reaping the rewards of good health.

See the guy on the left? There was a place just behind him that I wasn't willing to risk, without having someone experienced with Lone Peak alongside to show me the safe way.

I didn't need to go any higher though. It was enough to know I'd gotten close.

This is Lone Peak.

On the way down, we saw this plume of smoke rising over the peak to the east.

This final shot of Timp in the distance and skies that had cleared of the smoke from the fires to the west of us.

That being said, I made my way up the rocks toward the pinnacle of Lone Peak. Just yards short, I decided I'd had enough. I could not see a way that did not include a huge amount of potential danger. The three people who had been just ahead of me had taken a very precarious route to the top. I wasn't willing to take that risk. There is just too much to live for. I watched those all younger than me who had made it up to the very top. I thought of when I'd been that age, full of recklessness and thinking myself unconquerable. I've learned that I'm not invincible and that often the journey is greater than making it to the top of the mountain. I had met my goal after all, the goal of enjoying myself in the midst of the great creations of God. I headed down, met up with Mike, and we began our descent at around 4 o'clock.

The sun went down and we spent the last half hour in the falling evening. We got to the vehicle at 8:22

In the end, Lone Peak defeated me. Or maybe I defeated myself in my quest to stay alive. I had beaten the dreaded "ladder" for the second year in a row, but my beautiful peak remained unconquered. For now. More adventures promise the future, and one never knows what might happen as the years go by.

Sunset hike to the Salt Lake Overlook

I needed a hike during my vacation week, which was a stay-cation. I had canceled my hike on Thursday morning, so that I could do some other things that needed doing, but I didn't want my entire vacation to go buy without getting at least one hike in. I decided to try an evening hike to try to catch a spectacular sunset and get some pics. I got off to a later start then I'd wanted. The trail to the Salt Lake Overlook begins up Millcreek Canyon, just east of the Millcreek Inn. There is a trailhead parking lot for the Desolation Trail there. That parking lot and any other bare spot around for a quarter of a mile, was filled with cars. There was a wedding reception at the Millcreek Inn, and the parking for that place itself has only about ten spots, so obviously guests were parking in the trailhead parking lot and everywhere else. I tried driving up the canyon and the only available spot was about half a mile further up. I tried down below and found a spot a quarter of a mile away, but I'd be walking downhill on the way back so it wasn't a bad option.
I started hiking at about 7:15 and made it up to the Overlook by about 8:40. The sun was getting close to the horizon and there were some clouds so I thought it might be possible to get a nice shot. One thing I found out though was that the sun was too far north and would be going down behind a nearby mountain instead of Stansbury Island out in the Great Salt Lake, so a little later in the summer is probably the prime time to take this hike for sunset purposes. Still, even though the sun wasn't where I would've liked it, and the sunset itself wasn't one of those truly amazing spectacles that we all hope to capture with our cameras, I think I got a few pretty decent pics. Here's the one that I liked the best of all that I took:

You can see how it was going down behind the nearby mountain.

I thought I'd hang around a bit and see if I could get a picture of the city lights coming on down below and ended up with this:

Salt Lake lights at dusk

There were some other people up there with me, some teen girls (sisters and friends) and a woman who was mother to at least one of the girls. I left them up at the top and headed down. I strapped on my headlamp and as I walked down the trail, I saw a small speck of flashing green light on the trail. At first, I thought someone had dropped some kind of electronic device on the trail, but as I neared the light I found out that it wasn't anything man-made at all, but my light was reflecting from the eyes of a spider! That was awesome! I found out that the flickering was caused by my movement, not anything to do with the spider's eyes. After that, I saw numerous green flashes on the trail and every time, it was a spider. Once I saw a larger white light down the trail and thought someone with a flashlight was coming up, but that ended up being a bird sitting on the trail whose eyes reflected the light from my headlamp. That was awesome too!
The party at the Millcreek Inn was still happening, as there was a cover band doing all kinds of familiar songs as I approached the bottom of the trail. I was ready to rock out and listened to some hard rock on KBER as I drove home in the cool night air. I turned it down as I rolled into the neighborhood and pulled into the driveway just before 11:00.