Kevin – Tuesday. Oh, how we wish we could have taken you along for our hike today.
Today’s goal was for both of us to hike together up from Mormon Flat to the top of Big Mountain. This is the ‘back side’ of Emigration Canyon – the part before you come down into the Salt Lave Valley. This was the last big test of the pioneers. It’s a 4.2 mile uphill from 6,745 feet at the Flat to 7,420 at the Pass. It’s an AVERAGE grade of 3 feet up per 100 feet of trail. But the truth is, a good portion is a gentle incline. It’s that last pitch of about a mile which gets progressively steeper. And at the altitude, that last HALF-MILE has you sucking for oxygen. Pity the poor draft animals!
Since we wanted to hike this together, we took both vehicles. We posted the truck up at the finishing site at the Big Mountain Pass parking area, then drove back down in the other car to Mormon Flat where we ended yesterday and were to start our hike today.
The trail head at Mormon Flat has pit toilets but no water, so come prepared if you decide to hike this section. The start isn’t well marked and the brush by the creek is tall, so we kind of had to poke around to find the entrance gate. It’s across the creek and southwest of the parking area. Google Earth is MUCH better for the imagery.
It was a mostly cloudy morning for us though much of the trail is well wooded. The sunshine and shadows were interesting and helped keep it cool for us. William Clayton said the creek bottoms were thick with willow brush in 1847. The Donner group had a tough time whacking through them the year before. Took them 13 days. We just got to walk in their footsteps.
There was a great variety of trees, plants and animals along the way. The north facing side of the canyon was populated with spruces, firs and pines while the south (sun) facing side still had sagebrush and other dry-loving plants.
The true excitement for the day was the anticipation of coming upon wildlife that might be dangerous. We discussed what should we do if we ran into Cosmo the BYU Cougar. How about a black bear? There are different strategies for how to behave in such situations.
What we DIDN’T discuss was what to do if we came upon an elk or moose. We should have. Sure enough, Denny rounded a corner and said, ‘Look – a clearing.” And two heartbeats later, “Look – a moose!”
Yep – a BIG bull moose. We froze in place watching him watch us for a few minutes. Then he trundled off uphill to the left of our trail. “What do we do,” asked Denny. “Well, if he comes our way, you high-tail it for the nearest trees and try not to trip and fall,” was my reply. Somewhere in the back of my mind the word ‘Protector’ flashed for a second and I suppose I would have tried to distract Bullwinkle. The scene in Jurassic Park when the professor waves the red burning railroad flare in front of the T-Rex comes to mind. Not a pretty idea to contemplate.
We waited a few more minutes to give moosie time to clear out, then we slowly started walking forward. Lo! And Behold! Bullwinkle comes charging back down the hill across the trail in front of us by only about 30 yards … followed closely by his mate and her calf!
The bull went plunging into a small water catch basin (which we couldn’t see) Making a tremendous splash, followed closely by the mate and calf. Seconds later the bull pokes his head up over the embankment, staring at us, then aggressively advances towards us by about 10 yards – leaving us only 20 yards from an obviously worried bull moose daddy with ‘Protector’ on his mind too! I began to regret my decisions to not carry a handgun on this trip.
In the excitement (read that as preparation to run for our lives) I didn’t catch a photo of momma and baby moose. Trust me; they were there. Denny started singing, I Am A Child of God. The line, “… and so my needs are great” seemed to apply.
Obviously, since you’re reading this we escaped with our lives.
A couple trail items.
Sometimes there were pretty wagon road swales to be seen, but often in this canyon, the melting snow and rainwater runoff has eroded much of the road into deep gullies. Trail workers have made efforts to prevent more erosion, but more work is needed to preserve the trail. Volunteers?
Long story short, we saw lots of pretty nature. We followed the pioneers and the Battalion detachments up from Mormon Flat to the top of Big Mountain Pass. And we did it together, like we’ve done most things for the past 46 years.
BIG UPDATE TOMORROW