horizons near and far
The following are separate images of the same mountain ridges…the presentations are only altered by distance and the change in the elevation of my position on the opposite mountain slope and ridge.
It’s amazing how grand and vast your view becomes when you’re another few to several hundred feet higher on the mountain.
I made these images on the slope about half a mile south and above Lambs Canyon Pass in Millcreek Canyon of the Wasatch Mountains, just east of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Toward the Saddle…
The most prominent peak of the Wasatch Mountains that form the eastern geographical boundary of the greater Salt Lake Valley is actually a set of peaks named “Twin Peaks.” There is only a two-foot difference in their elevation and they lie in a somewhat east/west orientation and are often referred to with the designations of “East Twin” and “West Twin.” Located about 100 yards apart, the peaks measure 11,330 and 11,328 feet respectively, east and west, and rise approximately 7,000 feet from the valley floor.
You might remember a photo similar to the one below in my post “It’s great to be alive in the West” from March of this year. When I made this photo, I was located about 4-5 miles south of the front, or western face of the mountain, so we can only actually see the west peak from this view.
The peaks are often referred to as the Broads Fork Twin Peaks, as this is the most common approach to the peaks…and the below photo shows what they look like from Broads Fork. You might remember similar photos from my two posts on the area last summer. The saddle is located in the deepest part of the ridge-line toward the left of the image…which is still a bit of a hike from the beaver pond.
This is Sunrise Peak to the left and the southern edge of the west Twin Peak to the right…with the saddle right there in the middle.
And this photo below is right about where I ended my foray into the area last year…it should be photo #8 in the post, “Broads Fork – Part II.” Actually, I think I was a little further up the trail last year…about where you can see the people…to the right of the left-leaning stick, just down from the mass of trees…just left of the middle of the image.
There’s a man and woman toward the bottom of the below photo…the woman is wearing the neon green shirt and turquoise shorts…we’ll see them again later….
We can still see the woman and her neon clothing in the below image…just down a little and over to the right of the huge rock that is a little ways below the horizon…if it’s hard to find her, keep the rock and where the woman should be in the center third of the photo…. She’s there….
About one-third of the way up the slope, I was wondering if I was crazy…wondering if I really needed to keep going upwards…so I found a flat stone for a seat and turned around while I had another drink and an apple…….wondering…..
If you noticed the yellow hue to the side of the highest peak toward the left of the above image, here’s a closer look at it…from miles away, literally, you can see the color of thousands (and millions?) of sunflowers that covered Mt. Raymond…some of which I have already featured here.
One can only sit on the side of a mountain for so long eating an apple and having a drink before one has to decide whether to keep climbing up or to head back down to the truck…so I turned and looked up again…and up again…and figured “What the hell,” and kept climbing…one step at a time…this isn’t a race, right…….? And you can tell that we’re looking UP, right? There’s a bit of a trickle of water in that darker spot…down and to the right of the big rock that is now on the horizon….
How many of you have been to a gym or fitness center and tried their “Stair Master?” We’re still looking UP in the below photo….
Remember the man and woman from the earlier photos? I had asked them if there was a clear trail to the top…the woman said “yes” and the man said “no.” He said there’s no trail, but “you’ll know where to go.” It seemed that I needed to head toward that bit of a notch in the rock between the middle and left spots of snow….
In the notch now and still moving upward…hanging-on to cracks in the side of the rock, scrambling on hands and feet….
Looking toward the right of the notch…the lighter peak is the west twin….
…and after another bit of a scramble and a climb, I’m sitting on the saddle…
Wow! Looking toward the south, I see the southern ridges of Little Cottonwood Canyon….
…looking toward the west I can see out over the Salt Lake Valley…. Those are the Oquirrh Mountains out there, the western geographical boundary…and that lighter-colored, damnable open-pit mine is toward the right edge of the mountains.
Back south again at the Pfefferhorn on the left…
and the Lone Peak ridge….
…and now a self-portrait looking toward the east again…with that beaver pond from the earlier photo…a little bit above the tip of my boot…waaaay down there.
You can see the woman in her neon-colored clothing and her hiking companion near the top of the lower peak, down in the right-hand corner of the below image…rather tiny…. They were actually coming back DOWN from being up on Twin Peaks…already coming down and I just made it to the saddle……
After the slippery and slow climb back down from the saddle, it was nice to make it to the spring again…such clean and cold and refreshing water. I refilled my two empty bottles and headed on my way.
One last look at Broads Fork Twin Peaks before climbing a small, final rise and then hiking down the remaining three miles of trail back to the truck. If you’d like to read more about Twin Peaks and the various ways one can reach the summits, you can click right here to be taken to Summit Post, one of the leading web-sites for climbing and hiking enthusiasts…not just for Utah, but for all over the world….
If you’d like to see where Broads Fork and the Twin Peaks are located on the map I recently shared on the blog, click here, and then find the second yellow pin up from the bottom of the map in the first image…it’s just to the left of center in the photo…and then it happens to be the only yellow pin, also near the bottom, on the second photo. Also, as a reminder to help with orientation/direction, the view of the map is looking eastward up the canyons…so the right side of the map is toward the south, the left is toward the north, and behind you (not on the map) is toward the west.
Thank you, yet again, for spending a bit of your time with me…for accompanying me on another hike into the Wasatch Mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Sundial Peak rocky panorama…and perspective….
I think it looks different without being able to see Lake Blanche beneath it…. Perspective, point of view…vantage point…however we might phrase it…as with many things in life, our view or perception of things/situations is often effected by where we are…how close or far away we might be from the actual subject matter. Is it any wonder, sometimes, when we, or someone else says, “I just don’t see it that way…?” It doesn’t mean that either one of us is more right or wrong than the other, although we might truly be one or the other…we just happen to have another perspective…for whatever reason….
Scale…or perspective….
It’s nice sometimes, and necessary at other times, to take a step back…or up, to get another view of the objects of our attention…. It’s amazing what we can see when we’re not so focused on the one single thing…but on the whole and big/huge picture…. I hope you’ll enjoy these photos of one of my favorite places here in the canyons and mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, USA….
This is what appears to be an old water-wheel house on the banks of the stream in Little Cottonwood Canyon. If you were to peer inside the window, you could see the old spooned wheel that used to turn with the flow of water to generate electricity many years ago.
Here’s another view from a little farther away…. I’m actually standing in the middle of the stream-bed taking the picture. The stream is empty right now, as the entirety of the water is being captured upstream and diverted into the water supply for the metropolitan Salt Lake City area. It will be flowing bank to bank in a couple of months when the water from the snow-melt is running.
This shot is from the slope heading up the side of the mountain that is on the south side of the canyon…you can see the empty stream-bed.
And lastly, this one is from way up on the side of the mountain. You can see the wheel-house on the stream bank near the lower right-hand corner of the photo….
View from that pedestrian bridge….
Several weeks ago, I shared a post about a pedestrian bridge that’s about a mile and a half from our house. I suppose the essay focused more on despair and hope than it did on the bridge itself, but it also touched on the view from up on the bridge and how one might gain perspective or even peace in such an unlikely place. Anyway, I returned to the bridge this evening to take pictures of the view so that I might share them and maybe offer something tangible to go along with the words in the writing. If you’d like to read the essay, click on the words The Pedestrian Bridge and they will take you to it. If not, I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures by themselves.
Not real pretty to look at, but it serves its purpose.
Mt. Olympus from the side…like a plate standing on its edge.
It looks like the freeway leads right into the canyon, but it actually heads to the left and skirts the Wasatch range…kind of a peacefully distracting view on the way home from work at the end of the day.
This is the view just to the right of the last picture…incredible mountains.
Looking through the fence, the thing that keeps us safe up there, provides a boundary somehow…but one that we can see through, obviously, so that we can still measure our lives and problems against something a bit more permanent, something of a grander scale that might offer perspective to whatever is happening in our day-to-day.
Looking to the west, we find the Oquirrh Mountains, not as majestic or awe-inspiring as the Wasatch range, but still beautiful in the right light. It’s not in the picture, but off to the right of this mountain chain, viewed from the proper height, one can see the Great Salt Lake.
Can you imagine looking out your back window at all of that? Amazing….
Utahns really like their flags…they’re everywhere, it seems.
Bells Canyon’s Peaks…there’s a beautiful waterfall up in this canyon, you can see photos of it in some of my other posts.
Classic view of the Wasatch range…there was still snow on the peaks and in those veins when I visited Salt Lake last July.
