Best sleepover ever

If you’re bored tonight, tune in here to read about what is sure to be the best sleepover ever.  I can’t say much about it– mainly because I don’t know much about it.  Yet.

Bridger will be with me, along with a couple dozen strangers.  Not sure how that will work, but we’ll have sleeping bags, maybe pillows, perhaps a laptop, and my smartphone.  And I think some beluga whales and/or a polar bear might make an appearance at some point in the evening.

If I’ve got service, I’ll be tweeting and liveblogging.  Talk to you tonight!

 

Iosepa becomes Polynesia in desert – if only for a weekend

The sun had begun to sink behind the Cedar Mountains, its burnt orange rays reflecting on the surfaces of Skull Valley’s normally unseen network of springs. The scents of smoke and juniper hung in the air as the last groups of hikers trickled back along the wishbone trails that lead down from Salt Mountain. The day was waning, but the atmosphere pulsated with the spirit of aloha.

Jacob Mulivai twirls a pair of flaming machetes in a traditional ailao warrior dance during this year's Iosepa celebration (photo by Clint Thomsen)

The following originally appeared in the June 3, 2010 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

“Talofa!” Josh Mulivai called as he walked on stage waving a ceremonial war knife that flamed audibly at both ends.

“Talofa!” Came the crowd’s retort, though with less gusto than the warrior-garbed 14 year old had hoped.
“You can do better than that!” He yelled before repeating the Samoan greeting.

This time the response was sufficiently enthusiastic. Mulivai began twirling the burning machete to the beat of a single tribal drum as he and his brother, Jacob, ramped up a jaw-dropping performance of a traditional Ailao warrior dance.

The sun had begun to sink behind the Cedar Mountains, its burnt orange rays reflecting on the surfaces of Skull Valley’s normally unseen network of springs. The scents of smoke and juniper hung in the air as the last groups of hikers trickled back along the wishbone trails that lead down from Salt Mountain. The day was waning, but the atmosphere in the old Hawaiian ghost town, accompanied by Mulivai’s drum, pulsated with the spirit of aloha.

I have no genetic ties to Polynesian peoples, which makes my bond with the culture a challenge to explain. Whatever its roots, it runs much deeper than the allure of exotic locales and the much coveted “island mindset” we mainlanders tend to attribute to them.

Less difficult to define is my interest in Iosepa, the Skull Valley town settled by Hawaiian converts to the LDS Church in 1889. The town’s story is punctuated by faith, hardship, and its unique position at the crossroads of extremes—tropics and desert, gathering and seclusion, joy in desolation. Few places speak to the history-minded adventurer like Iosepa.

The contrast with their island home was certainly not lost on the Hawaiian pioneers as they set about carving a new life in the desert. Hawaii it was not, but faith was the impetus for their migration, not greener pastures. The town—named in Hawaiian for LDS leader Joseph F. Smith— became well known for its industrious attitude, being designated in 1911 by Utah as the “best kept and most progressive city in the state.”

Iosepa’s history spanned a relatively brief 28 years, ending in 1917 when the bulk of its settlers returned to Hawaii to support the newly announced temple there. Iosepa was sold off, its buildings dismantled. Only the town’s small cemetery remained, along with overgrown sidewalks and images of sharks, sea turtles and palm trees carved in nearby rock outcroppings.

A photo of Iosepa residents (courtesy the Iosepa Historical Association)

A resurgence of interest in Iosepa several decades later resulted in the 1971 placement of the cemetery on the National Registry of Historic Places. In 1980, a collection of Iosepa descendents and other Polynesian families began a tradition of beautifying the graveyard annually on Memorial Day. Then LDS apostle Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated a monument on the site in 1989.

The Iosepa Historical Association was organized the same year. A pavilion was constructed adjacent to the cemetery, and the annual Memorial Day activities evolved into a weekend-long celebration with additional emphasis on general Polynesian heritage.

On the historic front, an archaeological study of the old town site by a team from the State University of New York at Potsdam began in 2008 and is shedding some light on day-to-day life in Iosepa. After a year-long hiatus, the study will resume there next month. Iosepa is coming full circle, its story fleshed out little by little as stories are recorded and discoveries made.

I’ve been attending the Memorial Day weekend festivities at Iosepa since the late 90’s, when curiosity led some friends and me to the Saturday evening luau. We were greeted with open arms and filled plates, and I’ve only missed one year since.

The pot-luck dinner was under way when the kids and I arrived at the pavilion last Saturday evening. Opting not to wait in the hundreds-long food line, the boys headed for the hills. I placed our fruit platter on the serving table and sat with 1 year old Dillon beneath the pavilion. To my surprise, a friend who had seen us arrive set a food-packed plate before me. Dillon allowed me a few bites before commandeering the fork and clearing the plate.

After dinner, I walked up the mountain to meet the boys on their hike. 4 year old Coulter pointed toward a distant ridge. “Dad, I think the ocean is that way,” he surmised.

If he was referring to the Atlantic Ocean, I suppose he was technically correct. I played along. As far as he knew, we were really in Hawaii. And given the cheery air at the pavilion when we returned, we might as well have been.

Josh Mulivai plays with fire (photo by Clint Thomsen)

Children wearing flower leis danced to the music of various Polynesian performers. When two young boys decided to ride their skateboards across the stage, a woman wearing a traditional Hawaiian dress stepped to the microphone to chide them.

“You rascals riding skateboards—that’s something you do on the mainland, not here,” she scolded.

Her symbolic reference to the mainland sparked a thought: The Iosepa celebration to me is like the otherworldly portals you see in science fiction movies—there one precious moment and gone the next. For a short period each year, Iosepa becomes a window to a world where the past is lauded and the present enjoyed for what it is. Worries and cares are checked on the mainland. They have no place here.

Small American flags marking Iosepa’s graves waved gently as the Mulivai brothers finished their knife dance. Crowds began to disperse with the sunset. Silhouettes carrying bundles of wood made their way from the ridge into camp. Soon the darkened hillside was dotted with bonfires.

Many people would stay the night in tents and trailers and participate in more activities in the morning. Those less fortunate would say goodbye and make their way home. The boys and I walked back to our car. Soon we’d take our place in the long string of tail lights that wound slowly down the hill—away from Iosepa, and back to the mainland for another year.

 

Hiking West Canyon

Last weekend I took my trusty lab, Ziggy, on a hike in West Canyon in the northern Stansbury Mountains.  The trip will be documented fully in Thursday’s TTB and here next week, but here is a video clip and a few photos from the hike.  Please excuse the extremely poor quality– I discovered my camera was dead at the trail head, so my wobbly cell phone camera would have to do.

Thanks for the travel info!

The gateway to this mysterious, undocumented canyon

My trusty companion, Ziggy

 

Photographing Great Salt Lake poses challenges of patience

Our hyper-saline inland sea is eye-catching—that’s a given.  That’s why you can spot tourists aiming cell phones and point-and-shoots toward it from the I-80 rest stop at any given hour of the day.  It’s why so many bridal photographers drag their subjects to its shores to have them boulder hop at the marina or climb onto rusting train cars in their wedding dresses.

A long exposure captures lightning over the Great Salt Lake. (photo courtesy Charles Uibel)

The following originally appeared in the April 29 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

It might have been the fastest half-mile I’ve run since high school gym class.  I can’t be certain because I had no way of timing it; in fact, timing it was the last thing on my mind at the moment.  What particularly impressed me about my dash was the fact that it completely was spontaneous—involuntary, even.  One millisecond I felt the dense cloud of bugs envelop me.  The next I was sprinting at superhuman speeds over beach and bog, through a dense phragmites jungle.

Were the tiny flies biting me?  I didn’t matter.  They were swarming me by the thousands—latching on, transforming my head into a Dipterid Chia Pet.  No, I wasn’t scared of them.  But something about the way they feverishly burrowed into my eye sockets I found deeply disturbing.  Some flight responses can’t be suppressed.  I aspirated a dozen with every breath as I raced toward the safety of my car.  Yes, I had come to this forsaken Great Salt Lake beach to get a taste of the ecosystem, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.

“They’re midges,” a Great Salt Lake ecosystem biologist chuckled when I recounted my panicked retreat.  He recommended visiting the beaches earlier in the morning or later at night—or better yet, during high winds and storms.

That’s also what Salt Lake City based photographer Charles Uibel suggested, but for different reasons.  Uibel has a special affinity for the Great Salt Lake.  He’s been interpreting the lake and its environs through his lens since 2005.

“You need to go see [the lake] when there’s some weather, or else it is disguised as just a bland stinky mud hole,” he told me, although he considers the lake photogenic in any condition.

Our hyper-saline inland sea is eye-catching—that’s a given.  That’s why you can spot tourists aiming cell phones and point-and-shoots toward it from the I-80 rest stop any given hour of the day.  It’s why so many bridal photographers drag their subjects to its shores to have them boulder hop at the marina or climb onto rusting train cars in their wedding dresses.

So what makes the lake so visually arresting?

Geologically speaking, the lake is nothing more than pooled water at the bottom of the Bonneville Basin.  As a terminal lake, it contains all the minerals left over from Lake Bonneville and those introduced by rivers and streams.  Yet the lake’s chameleon surface and its islands create a starkly beautiful setting.

The key component of lake’s subtle ecology is algae.  Aside from imbuing the water with a patchwork of reds, blues, and greens, these algae provide sustenance for brine shrimp brine flies.  Believe it or not, these two minuscule creatures are responsible for the unique look of Great Salt Lake beaches.  At the core of each sand grain is a brine shrimp fecal pellet.  Over time, concentric layers of calcium carbonate form around these pellets until they’re washed onto an alkaline shore.

Shorelines are striped by wind-blown rows of amber-brown material.  These are the product of the brine fly, whose total lifespan from larvae to death is about a week.  After feeding on algae in their larval phase, the brine fly’s pupa traps air and floats to the surface.  Once the flies emerge and fly away, pupae are blown onshore in rows of millions.  The flies themselves stick close to the water; their remaining hours are spent mating and laying eggs on its surface.

Higher up on the food chain are the millions of shorebirds who stop to dine on shrimp and flies on their way along Pacific Flyway.  Their presence makes the lake a birding Mecca and fleshes out the lake’s wildlife scene nicely.

Rounding out the lake’s mystique are man’s attempts to comprehend it and his repeated—yet most often futile—quest to harness its charm.  The Great Salt Lake itself is an enigma.  It’s constant and imposing, yet distant and strange.

I’ve tried to capture this concept on film for years with varying degrees of success.  Truth be told, I’ve been photographing the lake longer than Charles Uibel has.  The difference is he knows what he’s doing, as evidenced by the stunning images featured on his website, greatsaltlakephotos.com.

This photo depicts a the bacteria-dyed waters in a solar evaporation impoundment. (photo courtesy Charles Uibel)

I turned to Uibel for a few tips specific to photographing the lake, then I set out to give them a whirl.

His first tip?  Watch the sky.

“The lake reaches far into the sky with its water vapor and weather effects.  So consider the sky.  It will tell you when you need to drop everything and go take pictures.”

Next, make it personal.

“Take a few moments to stop and become perfectly still,” he said.  “Then ask yourself, ‘What’s important here?’ Make the connection between you and the lake.“

His bottom line: “Don’t let other people’s photos interpret the lake for you.”

My first stop was to the Saltair area—my favorite place on the lake.  The current pavilion is picturesque, and ample relics of the old resort make excellent photo subjects.  Then I stopped at the marina to shoot spiders and docked sailboats.

Uibel suggested I visit the beach north of the I-80 rest stop between Saltair and Lake Point.

“It’s a beautiful, rocky, muddy beach,” he said.

He didn’t mention the midge flies, the last component of the ecosystem which was virtually absent until I walked onto the beach ½ mile from the trail head.  I snapped only precious few shots before the black cloud descended and my mad dash began.

The flies don’t bite.  The swarm is only a mating frenzy—a last hurrah before they, like their cousins on the water, die.  It’s thought that they swarm humans to reduce drag so they can devote more energy to the mating process.   The hundreds that accompanied me to my car were dead by the time I arrived at home.  While their millions of siblings will have been replaced in the ecosystem by the time you read this article, the Great Salt Lake—in some picturesque form—will remain forever.

———-

Check out Uibel’s work at www.greatsaltlakephotos.com.

 

Orienteering provides old-school test of speed and smarts

I pulled out my compass and unfolded my sweat-soaked map.  CP 7 should have been next to a boulder close to two other boulders, right along a faint foot track 400 feet southwest of CP 6, and 100 feet north of a dirt road.  It was perfectly obvious, yet perfectly baffling.

A control point flag hangs against an Oquirrh Mountains backdrop. The striped orange and white flag is a universal orienteering control point symbol. (photo by Clint Thomsen)

The following originally appeared in the April 22, 2010 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

Finding Control Point 7 was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Except the haystack was 300 square feet of flat, open terrain, and the needle was a neon orange and white striped flag that should have stood out clearly against the drab landscape.  And I had a map—a very accurate paper map that showed me exactly where Control Point 7 was.

But I won’t let those minor incongruities spoil my analogy.

“Twenty seconds,” I thought to myself.  That’s how long it would take me to grab my smartphone, swipe over to my navigation apps screen, activate its internal GPS, scale a satellite image to my paper map, and watch myself walk straight to Control Point 7.  But rules are rules—no GPS allowed.

Instead, I pulled out my compass and unfolded my sweat-soaked map.  CP 7 should have been next to a boulder close to two other boulders, right along a faint foot track 400 feet southwest of CP 6 and 100 feet north of a dirt road.  It was perfectly obvious, yet perfectly baffling.

“You could get really pumped up and excited, then you’ll overrun the control point,” I remembered Orienteering Utah president Suellen Riffkin warning me during a pre-course briefing.

Riffkin, 48 operates Orienteering Utah (O Utah), a Salt Lake City based affiliate of the United States Orienteering Federation.  Her enthusiasm for the sport couldn’t have been more evident as she explained the sport against the backdrop of the Oquirrh foothills.

“This is the perfect spot,” she said as she scanned the day’s course, a large patch of BLM land near the community of Pine Canyon.  “Not too hot, no snow.”

The club holds 8-10 public orienteering competitions each year between spring and fall in various localities in the Salt Lake region.  The season-opener is almost always held here.

The term “orienteering” classifies a family of sports that share a common goal: timed navigation between control points over diverse terrain using only a map and compass.

Land Navigation as a sport traces its roots to the Nordic countries in the late 1800’s.  The first public orienteering competition was held in Norway in 1897.   Competitive orienteering made its way to the U.S. in the early 1940’s, thanks in large part to Swedish orienteering champ Bjorn Kjellstrom.  Kjellstrom promoted public orienteering events and helped found the U.S. Orienteering Federation in 1971.

Orienteering Utah (O Utah) was originally founded around 1995 by The Utah Nordic Alliance (TUNA), a Park City based cross-country skiing club, as a way to keep their members busy during the warmer months.  Riffkin assumed leadership of O Utah in 2006.

Events are set up and run by regional meet directors.  Each competitor is supplied a custom course map created by Riffkin and the meet director using topographic maps, aerial images, and computer-aided design software.

Each event runs beginner, intermediate, and advanced courses simultaneously.  Start times are staggered, and competitors must find control points in order and punch a card with a unique needle punch.  If a control point is missed, the competitor is disqualified.

“There are lots of different tricks to it,” Riffkin explained, pointing to the symbols on the course map “If you were here and you needed to get there, you could run along this trail, or could just try to go cross-country with a compass reading.  That’s where experience comes in.”

Riffkin started orienteering as a teenager with her father in southern New Jersey.

“I was really fast, but he was really smart,” she recalled.  “So we made a good team.  There’s a young guy that I like to compete against now.  He’s super fast, but I’m smart.  I run a lot slower than him but I don’t make as many mistakes.”

The more Riffkin spoke, the more I learned that the key to success in this sport isn’t speed, but patience and terrain smarts—two things I do not possess but which I couldn’t imagine I’d need on the beginner course.

Sure, I can make my way around backwoods pretty well, but I’m mostly a GPS man.  When I’m not using GPS, I tend to explore first and consult maps later.  This method works fine when I’m not trying to find orange flags on a timed course.

I found CP’s 1 through 3 pretty quickly, then made my way toward CP 4 thinking I had the course licked.  20 minutes later, after passing CP 4 by half a mile and retracing back to it, I began to appreciate Riffkin’s wisdom.

“I know how many of my steps equal one hundred meters,” she had explained.  “If I’m running level for ten minutes, I’ll probably make a mile, but if I’m running uphill for 10 min I’ll probably only make 1/2 mile.  You’ve got to know, by your sense of distance, when to slow down so that you can get ready to find the control.”

I paused to study and calculate my route to CP 5.  Amazingly I found it quickly, no backtracking needed.  My compass and a careful eye on landmarks helped me reach CP 6 without mistake.  I was back on track and making good time—until the elusive CP 7 blew my mind.

It turns out I wasn’t the only competitor to miss CP 7.  Riffkin suggested later that the flag might have blown upwind.  After 25 minutes of brain racking and frantic triple checks of every boulder on the hill, I was happy to accept that explanation.  I punched my card at the eighth and final control point, then sprinted to the finish line, where meet director Jack Cochrane waited to check me in.

My failure to locate CP 7 technically disqualified me from the competition.  Still, I felt a distinct pride mastering my impulses and finding flags the hard way.  I’m still a GPS man, but I might keep the old compass closer at hand from now on.

TRIP TIPS
Orienteering Utah’s next event will be held at the Jordan Parkway in Draper.  For more information visit www.o-utah.org.

 

County’s forgotten corner still holds suprises aplenty

Believe it or not, prehistoric Utah was a tropical place covered mostly by shallow seas.  The limestone bands on these hills were reefs on which huge populations of these invertebrate creatures lived and died.  The fossils are those of organisms that were covered with sediment shortly after death and were subsequently locked in the rock’s matrix.

From the top of the archipelego: Stepped hills curve outward. The limestone bands are prehistoric coral reefs.

The following originally appeared in the March 4, 2010 edition  of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

It was high noon when I crested the unnamed desert ridge and gazed toward the thin strip of blue to the east.  Strangely, the Great Salt Lake looked small from my vantage point—and much further away than Google Maps was telling me it really was.   Curious too was the sense of prominence of this low summit.

The vista to the southwest boasted every element of a perfect computer desktop wallpaper—the expansive Puddle Valley against a distant Cedar Mountains backdrop, the geometry of cascading step pyramid hills that diminished  as they curved outward to form a photogenic archipelago.

Looking down, I noticed that the limestone outcropping I stood on was peppered with fossilized horn coral, relics from this place’s pre-desert days.  I’ve written about fossils further south in the Lakeside Mountains, but these were a pleasant surprise—a satisfying reward for finally revisiting Tooele County’s Great Wide North.

Last weekend’s trip was inspired by a flight I took to Reno a few days prior.  I spent the short flight studying the terrain below from my north side window seat.  While I can usually recognize most of the topography south of I-80 from above, the landscape north of the highway between the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats had me stumped.  Clearly I had neglected this region in my travels, and it was time to make things right.

So when I got back I loaded the boys up and we headed out.  Our destination: Puddle Valley and the Lakeside Mountains.  The Lakeside Range and other minor ranges in the area are replete with unique vistas, old mining camps and interesting geologic formations.  A person with extra gas containers and a good supply of Gatorade could spend weeks exploring everything out there.

I didn’t have weeks, so before we left I consulted the forums at Expedition Utah, an online community where desert rats like me, but with better four wheel drive vehicles than mine, gather to plan overland treks and shoot the breeze about roads less traveled.

Curt Hall, one of the site’s curators, suggested we explore the Delle area and make our way to the public road leading to the Air Force managed Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR)—a loose itinerary, and a liberating one.  When it comes to desert preparedness, overplanning is essential.  Itinerary-wise, not so much.  Too often, the desert’s finer corners are missed in the rush to make a prescribed destination.

The Monster Eyes at Delle

My only prescribed destination was the “Monster Eyes” at the Delle exit.  If you’ve ever driven past Skull Valley, you know what I’m talking about—the twin caves in the hillside that bear a disturbing resemblance to eye sockets.  Some clever prankster has taken the time to paint eyeballs on drum lids and secure them in the caves so that westbound travelers are met with a monstrous glare.  I always wondered whether they were really shooting targets.  As it turns out, those eyeballs may be the only man-made items in Skull Valley not riddled with bullet holes.

We caught the Puddle Valley Highway at the next exit and three pronghorn antelope stood clear as we and followed it north along the western flanks of the Lakesides.  Puddle Valley derives its name from its clay floor and lack of drainage.  Roads are often impassably muddy during the wet months.  They solidify nicely when they dry up.

Looking for a good dirt road to turn off on, I fired up my phone’s GPS and watched my little blue dot move across the satellite image as I drove.  The boys, whose Nintendo DS’s I had confiscated back home so they could enjoy the drive like real people, were quick to point out my double standard.

They were itching to get out for a hike, so we turned off on the road leading over Wrathall Pass and forked off toward a chain of fin-like hills that give rise to the 5,830 foot Jedediah Mountain.  We parked at the northern end of the curving archipelago and hiked to the ridge.

8 year old Bridger led the way with 6 year old Weston close at hand.  4 year old Coulter hung back, unloading imaginary bullets into ant hills with his toy gun.  Two large birds of prey flew separate routes above the pass while the occasional vehicle rolled by silently below.

Around the bend and up Monarch canyon would be the Monarch Mine, which was abandoned in the 1940’s and has hardly been touched since.  So far, the Monarch and the nearby Silver Queen have been spared reclamation by the BLM, thanks mostly to the protests of Gold Rush Expeditions, an organization dedicated to the preservation of historic mines and ghost towns.

We steered clear of the mines and stuck to the fossil-laden limestone outcroppings on the ridge.  The Lakesides are a hot spot for invertebrate fossils like crinoids, bi-valve seashells, and horn coral that date past Lake Bonneville to roughly to the Mississippian Period 350 million years ago, before the land that would one day be Utah rolled to its current position on the globe.

Believe it or not, prehistoric Utah was a tropical place covered mostly by shallow seas.  The limestone bands on these hills were reefs on which huge populations of these invertebrate creatures lived and died.  The fossils are those of organisms that were covered with sediment shortly after death and were subsequently locked in the rock’s matrix.

The fossils seem out of place in this now inert no-man’s land where clay and sagebrush rule.  The range’s sun-washed ridges and the and petrified coral were pleasant reminders that life’s more interesting things are often found along unnamed dirt roads and on limestone walls.

TRIP TIPS
The Lakeside Mountains are accessible via the Delle and Lakeside I-80 exits.  Most area roads are dirt and pass through BLM and State lands.  Though many roads are passable by car during dry months, high-clearance or 4WD vehicles are recommended.  Small amounts of loose fossils can be collected on BLM lands.

 

Lakeside Mountains Road Trip

I took the boys out to the Lakeside Mountains last weekend.  The full report comes in tomorrow’s Transcript Bulletin, but here are a few pictures from the trip:

The Monster Eyes at Delle

A closer look

Fossilized coral in Utah??? Yep, horn coral. And shellfish. Loads of them.

The boys

No caption necessary.

This rock sits near the entrance of the Air Force test range. I guess it's some sort of hippie expression.

 

Snow on the beach: Tahoe’s Zephyr Cove

The last few days have found me at Lake Tahoe.  Well, they’ve found me mostly in Carson City, the sort of podunk capitol of Nevada.  But Tahoe is a short drive up the canyon, so I got up there as much as I could.  Of the limited terrain I was able to cover, my favorite place was Zephyr Cove on the lake’s eastern shore, just a couple miles from the California Border.  These pictures don’t do the place justice, but they’ll give you a sample:

The beach at Zephyr Cove. Not pictured are the faux palm frond cabanas covered in snow. Lake Tahoe, America's largest alpine lake, never freezes.

Looking down the pier with the riverboat M.S. Dixie II in the distance

A view from the end of the pier

 

Old spirit of gold rush evoked Boy Scout Klondike camp

“We trudged up and down the road in a futile search for our troop.  Visibility was hampered by the falling snow.  Trucks all looked alike.  Bundled scouts were indistinguishable from one another.  We stopped to listen, because hearing was the only reliable sense.”

Stuck trucks line the road to Big Hollow during the BSA Deseret Peak District's 2010 Klondike Derby camp (photo by TJ Wallace)

The following originally appeared in the February 4, 2010 edition of the Tooele Transcript Bulletin.

They came from all over the world.  Over 100,000 strong, they braved the wild Chilkoot Trail and the Yukon River in 1897 to reach Canada’s subarctic hinterlands—all because a man named Skookum Jim Mason found gold flakes in a tributary of the Klondike River.

Word of the discovery had spread like wildfire through the states, sparking what would come to be known as the Klondike Gold Rush.  Interestingly, many of these would-be prospectors weren’t career miners.  They were doctors, politicians, and teachers—regular people.   Few of them ever struck it rich, but there’s little doubt it was the excursion of all of their lifetimes.

The Klondike rush went down in history less for its goal than for its concept—the untamed wilderness, the sleds, the rivalry, the epic procession.  It’s no mystery why the Boy Scouts of America adopted the Klondike model for its district-wide winter camps.  The organization celebrates its hundredth birthday on February 8.  According to the BSA press office, districts have run “Klondike Derbies” annually since at least the 1940’s.

The Stansbury foothills are no Yukon, to be sure.  But Deseret Peak District’s recent Klondike Derby camp there gave 250 scouts and their leaders a taste of that storied stampede.  While snow had been scant on the valley floors that evening, nearly two feet of powder greeted Boy Scout troops at Big Hollow just west of Clover.

I knew the camp might get interesting when the snow began to fall.  I’ve been to a few Klondike camps in my day and most of them, ironically, have been snow-free.  Foggy?  Yes.  Cold?  Always.  But snowy?  Not since I was 14.  This would be an adventure.

An adventure for the scouts and scoutmasters, that is.  Our troop was attending, but I was there for more opportunistic reasons; I had been asked to help judge the Dutch oven cooking contest.

“I probably won’t be much help to you,” I boasted to Jason “Brownie” Brown, our scoutmaster, earlier in the week.  “I won’t be there for long, and I’ll probably be up with the district guys eating Dutch oven most of the time.”

I cooked a can of Spaghettios for my pre-scout age sons Bridger, Weston, and Coulter, before we left that evening.  I abstained– no need to spoil a good Dutch oven dinner with city food.  There would be 36 scout units in camp, which meant I’d soon get my fill of cast-iron cooked goodness.  I grabbed a couple packets of fruit snacks just in case.  It’s a good thing I did.

When we arrived at the turnoff to Big Hollow, it was obvious something was wrong.  Snow had halted the convoy along the narrow dirt road that led to the hollow, creating a single-file, bumper-to-bumper jam that spanned the road’s entire 1/4 mile length.  Subsequent arrivals had pulled into the clearing just off the highway, and latecomers like me parked on the shoulder of SR-199.

Snow swirled around us as we made our way up the road.  I would find Brownie and leave the boys with him while I looked for my district contacts.  Troops were unloading gear from stuck trucks and making camp on the spot.  Small campfires lined the road as camp shovels dug platforms and tents went up.

The Klondike sleds, which troops build from scratch and use for morning races, were a godsend at this point.  Scouts passed me hauling gear via sled up the hill from trucks parked at the bottom.  The hustle and bustle reminded me of the old northern boom towns in movies– chaotic but curiously organized.   Seasoned leaders and newbies were easiest to spot.  Everybody was making do, and spirits were high.

We trudged up and down the road in a futile search for our troop.  Visibility was hampered by the falling snow.  Trucks all looked alike.  Bundled scouts were indistinguishable from one another.  We stopped to listen, because hearing was the only reliable sense.  Most audible voices were those of hungry scouts who admired their makeshift camps and looked forward to dinner.  There were some gripes about the weather, but not many.

I listened for Brownie.  No luck.  It was only after wandering around for another half hour that I met him on the road.  He and the troop had left their trucks at the bottom and hiked in.  I also met my district contact, who informed me that they had diverted 15 units (about 100 people) back north the Mormon Trail and up to Grantsville Reservoir.  There was now a “Klondike North” and a “Klondike South.”  And as far as he knew, Klondike South’s Dutch oven cook-off wasn’t happening.

I reached for my fruit snacks.  Brownie offered me a hot dog and a roasting stick.  We helped pitch another tent while the scouts showed Bridger, Weston, and Coulter the art of falling backward into the snow.  When it was time to pull out, I made one more walk up the road.  The little camps were quiet now.  Most scouts still sat around fire rings or were settling into bed.  A few stalwart troops were nursing Dutch ovens.

District Chairman John Poulson briefed me later on the activities up at Klondike North, which was able to set up quickly and hold a downscaled Dutch oven cook-off.  In the morning they held a formal flag ceremony, sled races, knot tying and first aid relays, and a fire building contest.

Klondike South eventually held their Dutch oven cook-off.  The snow situation there limited morning activities to the sled race, in which scouts pushed their sleds on a set course.  Leaders then worked to pull their trucks from snow banks.

“The scouts will remember this camp for the rest of their lives,” Poulson said.  “They’ll remember having to thaw out their eggs before cooking them for breakfast or thawing out socks and pants.  What a great way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of scouting!”

The Stansbury foothills aren’t the Yukon.  But for those scouts that weekend, they might as well have been.

 

More photos from Camp Floyd

Here are some more pics from our recent trip to Camp Floyd and the Stagecoach Inn.  If you missed the write-up on that trip, check it out here.

A view of the commissary from the creaky balcony of the Stagecoach Inn (Clint Thomsen)

CSI: Camp Floyd - This is a shot of two aligning bullet holes in the guest room area of the Stagecoach Inn. A guest in the back room was cleaning his shotgun when it accidentally discharged, sending shot through his wall, across the hall, and through the wall of the front room-- much to the surprise of its guest, who had just laid down to sleep. (Clint Thomsen)

The old Fairfield District School, built in 1898 (Clint Thomsen)

The bell tower (Clint Thomsen)

Boo, West, and Coulter stand in front of the Commissary in this 1860's newsprint photo-- pay no attention to the Hot Wheels hoody or the vehicle headlight at the left edge of the photo. (Clint Thomsen)