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The Legend of Timpanogos

Boy meets girl. Boy pretends to be a god. Girl jumps off mountain.

While it is not an actual Native-American legend (its origins can be traced to a tale told by a BYU professor around a campfire in 1922), the tale of Red Eagle, or Timpanac, the Indian warrior and Utahna, or Ucanogas, the Indian princess, comes in many forms. In one telling, our Romeo falls for Utahna and convinces her that he’s a god to win her love. Typical. Their love affair ends when Utahna learns he is not a god. What a let-down, right? In her grief and to atone for Red Eagle’s hubris, Utahna jumps from Mount Timpanogos. The outline of a woman in Timp’s profile is the form of Utahna, obviously.   

The Gadianton robbers will get you

A Mormon legend of evil spirits who haunt the mountains.

In The Book of Mormon, The Gadianton robbers were a notorious gang of thieves and murderers, and legends that their spirits still haunt the world are told to frighten young children. As in: “Eat your vegetables or the Gadianton robbers will get you.” In an 1861 address, LDS Church President, Brigham Young told his flock that the Wasatch mountains is home to the spirits of the Gadianton robbers, “There are scores of spirits here, spirits of the old Gadianton robbers,” Young intoned. “There are millions of these spirits in the mountains—they are ready to make us covetous.”

The Secret of ‘Cecret Lake’

A historic typo in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

In the late 1800s, Little Cottonwood Canyon was the site of a mining boom (and subsequent bust, of course). Many of the place names were coined by miners or taken from the titles of mining claims. While industrious, the miners weren’t winning any spelling bees. Cecret Lake (pronounced Secret) is a popular hike during wildflower season and a widely accepted misspelling. The USGS even goes along with the “Cecret” on its maps of the area.

The ‘Lost’ Mine

A family secret gets out and is useless.

The LDS pioneers came to Utah in 1847; two years later, in 1849, the California Gold Rush was on. Brigham Young, not wanting to lose all of his able-bodied men to gold fever, forbade his followers from heading west and, not wanting to attract outsiders and distract folks from farming, outlawed prospecting in Utah. But people being people, there was some poking around. A hunting party was exploring Ferguson Canyon, east of Cottonwood Heights, and supposedly discovered gold in them thar hills. When Brigham heard the news, he swore the men to secrecy. One by one they died, until the last, on his deathbed, decided to tell his family the secret. But his fevered directions were vague and searches for the gold were fruitless. In another account, the man is actually “Brother Ferguson” who tried to lead his family to the gold but on the way had a heart attack and died.

Alta: ‘Home of the Avalanche’

The mining boom in Little Cottonwood canyon had another side effect: The large population was vulnerable to the frequent avalanches. By 1872, Alta Town had become the home of several thousand miners and camp followers and that winter 10 died in a December avalanche. In 1885, 16 were killed in a deadly slide that destroyed the town and left 50 feet of snow on its ruined Main Street. The frequency and deadly nature of the slides prompted The Deseret News to dub Alta the “Home of the Avalanche.” Today, avalanches in Little Cottonwood canyon are still a threat but are mitigated by the Utah Department of Transportation’s aggressive avalanche control and the brave men and women of Alta and Snowbird’s ski patrols.

Does Bigfoot Bear the Mark of Cain?

Mormon folklore has it that Bigfoot = Cain.

In The Book of Genesis, the world’s first homicide is breezily reported: “Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.” Cain is exiled and marked as a murderer. Debate over exactly what the “Mark of Cain” was often takes a racist twist, but nevertheless Cain is doomed to roam the Earth in torment and the idea that he still is knocking about, forever cursed, is part of many religion’s lore. Early LDS apostle, David W. Patten, tells a tale of meeting a strange man along the trail. “His skin was very dark (there’s that racist thing.) I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the Earth (sic) and traveled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the Earth, but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men.” There have been 130 Bigfoot sightings in the Wasatch, according to the website Sasq-Wasatch (get it?), leading some tall-tale tellers to make a huge stretch and connect the tenuous dots. 

According to Austin Elliott, an Oxford geo-scientist who knows these sorts of things, the Wasatch Fault is the world’s best-studied normal fault. Thus, people like Elliot know quite a lot about the seam in the Earth’s crust that defines the Wasatch Front. Most of us actually living on or near the Fault, however, don’t know squat. So here’s a short version of the essential info, without too many big scientific words.

The Wasatch Fault forms a boundary between the relatively stable North American plate and the collapsing crust of the Great Basin and Range to the west. Slowly, so slowly we seldom notice it, the Salt Lake Valley is sliding away to the west, slipping off the Wasatch Mountains earthquake by earthquake. That’s what’s happening and has been happening for millennia. 

Of course, lots of other forces have been at work on the Wasatch, too, making the mountains we know now. Ancient glaciers formed the smooth U-shaped valleys. Much, much later, rivers cut V-shaped valleys as they found their way downhill to the Prehistoric Lake Bonneville and its remains, The Great Salt Lake, and carved the floor of the big valley between the Wasatch Front and the Oquirrhs. Erosion by wind, rain, snow, hail and avalanches have sculpted the rock, stripped it away and worn it down to dirt.

But the big work was done when the Wasatch Fault’s movement cut through the moraines, slicing through them and lifting them up into the steep, jagged cliffs that give us a view of the interior history of the Earth. You can see the Jurassic Period in the reddish rocks up Parley’s Canyon. Near the mouth of the canyon, Suicide Rock is a relic of the earlier Triassic age. Lower portions of Big Cottonwood Canyon have billion-year-old Precambrian rock. The exposed portion of Timpanogos is limestone and dolomite from the Pennsylvanian period, about 300 million years old. Little Cottonwood Canyon has relatively newer rock: A molten igneous mass bubbled up near the surface a mere 32 million years ago. This is the granite that was used to build the Salt Lake City Temple which came to be called “Temple stone.”

And our Fault is what caused the stair stepping Benches, defining the value of Valley’s real estate. The higher your house, the higher the price. 

We’ve known about the Wasatch Fault in theory since the 1890s, but that hasn’t stopped us from building steadily on it and around with little heed to the whole earthquake thing. We all feel them occasionally, little shivers that cause the pictures on our walls to go crooked, harbingers of the big one to come.

The most exclusive wedding event of the season, Utah Bride & Groom magazine hosts an evening filled with the hottest trends, cuisine, décor and entertainment options in the state.

May 16, 2019, Snowpine Lodge, Alta, Utah, Photos by Pepper Nix.

Last week Park City played host to a meeting of the minds from ski communities around the country at the Mountain Towns 2030 Conference. Community and business leaders from Park City, Breckenridge, Crested Butte, Vail Resorts, Alterra Mountain Company, Powdr Corp and more addressed the uncomfortable reality that the lifestyles many of us lead in mountain towns are contributing to climate change and threatening the future of those very communities.

During the Conference, Park City Mayor Andy Beerman described the town’s efforts to reach net-zero carbon emissions from the town’s municipal operations by 2022 and a similar community-wide goal by 2030. Representatives from crested Butte detailed efforts by the town to electrify 100% of their municipal transportation fleet and reduce municipal building emissions by 50% by 2023 during the conference’s anonymous comment period. People from Frisco, Durango, Deer Valley and Steamboat echoed similar sentiments. The conference at the Jim Santy Auditorium was a refreshing moment of unity wherein rival mountain communities outlined tangible plans to combat the biggest existential crisis the ski industry faces.

What can you do to join in the effort? Choose products that emphasize sustainability. With temperatures dropping, many of us are frothing for some powder skiing and fueling that fire by buying ski gear for the upcoming season. Like it or not, many of the plastics, synthetic fibers, epoxies and more in our ski gear have a rough environmental impact. You can mitigate most of your impact by squeezing another season out of your functioning gear, but considering these eco-friendly ski gear options when upgrading is a step in the right direction.

Mountain Flow Eco Wax

Most ski waxes are made from petroleum, which ought to be concerning as the wax on the bottom of our skis and snowboards eventually ends up in our local streams, rivers and drinking water. Most ski waxes also contain fluorocarbons, which are carcinogenic chemicals that don’t biodegrade in nature. That’s bad. Mountain Flow Eco Wax is made entirely from plants, so it’s non-toxic, and after years of testing and refining it performs just as well to traditional high-end ski waxes. That’s good.

Pick up Mountain Flow Eco Wax locally at Skimo Co and Sports Den, or online from backcountry.com, REI or EVO.

Soul Poles

Soul Poles are produced right here in the Beehive State from sustainably-sourced bamboo and 100% recyclable materials. Bamboo produces three times more material per harvested acre than lumber, doesn’t have the negative environmental mining and processing impact of carbon fiber and it’s far more durable than traditional aluminum ski poles. Plus, they look cool and a bunch of people on the lift will ask you questions about them.

Order your custom-engraved, responsibly-produced, guilt-free Soul Poles from their website.

Scarpa Ski Boots

Scarpa is a renowned Italian brand known for producing high-quality ski boots and mountaineering footwear. For the past decade they’ve embarked on a planet-friendly initiative to produce their ski boots in a more environmentally conscious manner. One result of their effort is Pebax Rnew, a plastic used in their ski boot shells that’s made from plant-based castor oil, instead of petroleum like most other boot shell materials.

Some boots, like their telemark-specific TX Pro are made entirely from Pebax, while others like their award-winning Maestrale RS use Pebax for some aspects of construction. Whatever flavor you choose, you can feel good knowing there’s less non-renewable petroleum in your new boots than in your friend’s.

You can purchase Scarpa products locally at Skimo Co or Freeheel Life, or online from retailers like backcountry.com.

Niche Snowboards

Based right here in Salt Lake City, Niche Snowboards specializes in high-performance snowboards produced with as little environmental impact as possible. 98% of their materials are locally sourced—including sustainable poplar, paulownia and bamboo cores as well as recycled base, edge and sidewall materials—before being put to use in their 100% hydro-powered Austrian factory on the river Gail.

Pick up Niche Snowboards online from a retailer like EVO or backcountry.com.

 

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An Annual Fundraiser For The Animals Of Utah’s Hogle Zoo, the Zoo Rendezvous was held September 5, 2019.

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Park City is gearing up for the annual Live PC Give PC event on Friday, November 8, 2019. The 24-hour fundraising smorgasbord supports more than 100 local nonprofits in Summit County. Last year’s Live PC Give PC raised in excess of $2.4 million through donations from thousands of Utahns in support of issues important to them.

Live PC Give PC 2019 aims to mobilize at least 5,000 unique donors to give whatever they can to help strengthen their community through charitable acts. 2018’s average gift size was $231, but individual donations ranged from just a few dollars to impressively sizable sums. Katie Wright, Executive Director of the Park City Community Foundation stresses it’s the spirit of involvement and community giving that’s important. “It’s about participating, giving what you can—no matter what amount—and seeking opportunities to help spread awareness about causes you feel passionate about supporting,” she says.

That call to action should resonate in Park City, where people are rarely shy about issues they hold near and dear. Support affordable housing efforts by giving to Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, adaptive sports initiatives through the National Ability Center, open lands protection with the Summit Land Conservancy or animal welfare along with Nuzzles & Co. Head to the Live PC Give PC website to see a full list of participating organizations.

To participate Live PC Give PC, visit livepcgivepc.org and choose the cause important to you. You can donate any time during the actual 24-hour giving marathon between 12:00 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. on November 8 or any time in advance of the event that’s convenient.

Since 2011, Live PC Give PC has raised $10.3 million to support the community. That’s a cause for celebration, so you should do exactly that. The public party honoring this year’s  donors will be hosted by High West Distillery and Saloon. It starts at 8:00 p.m. and features live music along with High West’s famous food and drinks until midnight. Help build the community you want to live in. Support your favorite causes, share in the efforts with your friends and celebrate as the donations are tallied.

High West: 703 Park Ave, livepcgivepc.org

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This two-day food & drink event allows participants to sample and sip from a large assortment of SLC’s best restaurants and bars. A portion of proceeds goes to support Utah Foster Care.

June 13-14, 2019, The Gateway, Photos by Talyn Sherer (talynsherer.com) courtesy SLUG magazine.

In its fifth year, attendees enjoy sampling from many area restaurants, wineries, small batch distillers and craft brewers. All proceeds benefitted local non-profits, such as Comunidades Unidas, Race Swami, Tracy Aviary and SB Dance.

July 10, 2019, Tracy Aviary—Liberty Park, SLC, Photos by Austen Diamond.

 

As your sons and daughters begin the school year it’s a good time to express your expectations of their behavior and the consequences of their failure to do so. I vividly remember the edict my Dad laid down to me as a teenager. In no uncertain terms he quietly said, “If you ever drink and drive the family car you will not enjoy that privilege for a year. Simple, straightforward, no strings. That was Dad. He always left you with uncomplicated thoughts. In this case his operative words “drink and drive” and “enjoy that privilege.” I’ve never forgotten them.

I took my dad up on his declaration shortly after my seventeenth birthday. When I snuck in the kitchen door at 1 am on a steamy, Cincinnati summer evening in my sweaty, dirty baseball uniform my worst nightmare confronted me. It was my father, ruffled hair and in his pajamas, who immediately engaged me in conversation. He asked, “How did you do tonight?” I told him we won the championship.

I recall the forbidding expression on his face when he tersely asked, “Have you been drinking?”

My knees buckled as I knew my fate before I answered. We were face to face, boxed into small quarters in our kitchen. It was impossible for him not to smell my breath. Like a policeman who sticks his head inside your car to get a whiff of the rarefied air before you’re asked the question, “Had anything to drink tonight?”

I was trapped. Most of all my numbed brain came alive at the thought of his admonition. Remembering the operative words, “drinking and driving,” I knew my world was crashing. There wasn’t one thing I could do. Simply, there was no way out. Yes, I said, with the guys after the big win. My father had quickly discerned this as in those days the Binaca blast wasn’t available to camouflage exotic odors and my slurred words weren’t the product of a brain cramp.

More importantly, both of us knew the consequences; what this breach of his prior edict meant. I quickly figured out that he was testing me. Would I tell the truth or conjure up some cockamamie story to save my butt? I realized that by not telling the truth, trying to BS him, would not only anger him but increase the pain awaiting me.

My father was not a lecturer. His directives were simple. He used a stiletto, not a hammer. His expectations were not unreasonable. So at breakfast the next morning I was not surprised by his clinical approach to our early morning encounter some six hours earlier. “No use of the family car for one year,” was the verdict.

This meant taking the bus and streetcars. It meant hitch hiking to my home which was in a rural suburb about two miles from any public transportation. It represented a significant loss of personal freedom. The bottom line was that it produced for me an early lesson in accountability—owning up to a mistake and facing the consequences.