Finding my Dad's Arch, 45-years Later, July 28, 2020

Dad's Arch, on the North Canyon/City Creek Canyon divide. Not much to look at but I've been searching for it for 45 years. My Dad spotted it years ago (early 1970's) while hiking with me and my brother Mark when I was about 10 years old and Mark about 11. We were hiking up the North Canyon trail when my Dad saw this hole in the rock from a quarter mile away.  It is rarely visible given the distance and its size (4 feet wide, 2 feet high, 4 feet long), it.can be spotted from the North Canyon trail for just a few minutes each day when the sun is at a perfect angle for a beam of light to shine through. Dad was ecstatic to see an arch high on the ridge above, in Davis County no less which is not known for its geography. Without the sun angle just right, it looks like nothing more than a small depression in the cliff. Of course my Dad had to go see it, so we bush-whacked up the steep slope to the ridge. Once there, Dad took a bunch of photos of Mark and I crawling through. It was just big enough for a kid to crawl through one at a time. My parents are now gone and I can't find those photos, likely buried in the storage of one of my siblings. 

Moon above Dad's Arch, from the same spot where my Dad spotted it so long ago from the North Canyon trail. 

Horned Toads everywhere near Dude Peak. 

View SW from Dude Peak.

View south from Dude, and the Central Wasatch.

View east, with Bountiful Ridge and Rudy's Flat just beyond the rounded, sunny peak.  

No wonder I thought the arch had collapsed. From 100 feet below while hiking the Dude Peak Trail, it looks like nothing more than just shadow on the rock, but it's there. 

The arch is the dark spot in the rock, and I've walked past it too many times while searching for it, too lazy to walk up a few feet investigate. Today I got ambitious and hiked up for a closer look, and BAM! There's Dad's Arch!  

Rudy's Flat.

I wish! I've seen bootleg graves in several spot along the North Canyon trail.

Free at Last! Cast Off, July 23; Hiking Dude Peak July 24, 2020

10 days after surgery and the cast is getting hold . .  and stinky. I tried hiking a couple of times, but it was quickly drenched in sweat which never really dried out.  

July 23rd Doctor visit, surgery follow-up and the stinky cast is gone, but WOW, my arm looks like that of an 80-year old man who never lifted more than a can of Diet Coke. 

Pilot hole drilled through Radius, with a larger diameter hole drilled half-way through the Radius for insertion of the torn end of the tendon into the Radius, held in place on the far side with a suture and a Titanium button inserted through the bone vertically then toggled horizontally against the underside of the Radius. The other four white lines are caps inserted into arteries for blood management.  

New splint is to hold arm at a maximum of 30-degrees past 90-degrees. 

I can't just sit on my ass for eight weeks while this thing heals. Biking is forbidden because a crash could snap the drilled Radius which would increase the magnitude of repair by 100, requiring major surgery and over a year to regain full use. As it, I'm eight weeks from full use. That said, hiking may not be great either because a fall could also snap the bone, but I haven't face-planted while hiking for years. It's a risk I'm willing to take. 

All the way up Dude Peak, and half way down, I kept hearing a low, barely-audible humming, and I kept wondering if it was sirens responding to a distant disaster or F-35s out of Hill Air Force Base on a west-desert bombing run, but half-way down I saw it, a flock of gnats hovering one to two feet over my head. When I moved, they moved, but always just over my head. Not sure why they were dogging me, but they never lit or bit, so no harm in having hiking companions.

Central Wasatch. High points, left-right starting in the middle of the photo, Dromedary Peak (11,107 ft.), O'Sullivan Peak/Sunrise (11,275 ft.),  Jenson's Folly (11,129 ft.), Broads Fork Twins (East Pk. 11,330 ft. - West Pk. 11,328ft), Pfeiferhorn's west-neighboring-peak (11,137ft), North Thunder Mtn. (11,150ft), South Thunder Mtn. (11,154ft).  

Dude Peak USGS marker and my brace with my cycling sun-shield acting as a compression sleeve to hold down the swelling. Sweaty, but otherwise the splint is not too bad. 

Fire Ant? I've seen these my whole life and have never identified these furry little beasts.  

Peaks and Valleys, July 11, 12, 13, 2020

Life gives and life takes, and the year 2020 has been more of a taker, than a giver. . .

Saturday we went SUPing (stand-up-paddle-boarding) at East Canyon Reservoir, Sunday we went mountain biking on the "must do" Strawberry Narrows Trail (per utahmountainbiking.com) which is really on Soldier Creek Reservoir, not Strawberry, and Monday I had surgery to reattach my ruptured Distal Bicep Tendon, which I tore while BC skiing doing a kick turn in upper Mud Bowl of Farmington Canyon on May 17, 2020.


Saturday, July 11, 2020, SUPing at East Canyon Reservoir:

East Canyon Reservoir

 

Mt. Biking, Sunday, July 12, 2020, Strawberry Narrows Trail, Soldier Creek Reservoir:

Soldier Creek Réservoir

Strawberry Narrows Trail, named for the fjord-like water filled canyon that connect Strawberry and Soldier Creek. 

Fjords of Soldier Creek

The trail is quite narrow (not here) from overhanging grass and brush, a sign of lite use, which I'm all for, because it's all about 'dodging the herd.' 

Soldier Creek Reservoir peaking through the forest. It was a hot day (mid 90's) which made it tempting to jump in the lake, but we never did. 

The trail is rated "early intermediate" but it does have some short, loose, steep-ish ups and downs that we walked.   

Much of the trail is like this, a bit over-grown. 

This was as far as we rode, about 4.5 miles from the trailhead, due to Kara's front tire slowly going flat. To get this far we had already burned through three CO2 cartridges and we only had two more to get us back. As it was, two were not enough and we had to walk the last half mile because her tire was totally flat. Kara's mountain bike is tubeless and I did have an inner tube, but, by using C02, I hoped the Stan's would do its job and fill the leak, but it continued to leak. In fact, it seemed to get worse with every inflation. In hind site I just should've put in the inner tube because I hadn't added any Stan's since last fall, and it must been dry. I'm lazy at heart and didn't want to field dress the tire with a new inner tube - I was there to ride - and, with five C02 cartridges, I figured we had plenty to do the whole ride. So, instead of riding 24 miles we rode 8, and walked the last half mile.  

The crux of the trail (not pictured) was a very narrow, quarter-mile section that traverses a steep, open steep side-hill just above the water. When I say narrow, think of riding the top of the curb in front of your house. It's about an eight-inch wide single-track bordered by brush, and it trends downward due to the natural degradation of the overall slope. Any average rider can hold an eight-inch line, but when the consequences are serious an easy line can mess with your mind. A confident rider won't even hesitate and will ride it without a thought, but it was scary for one biker we passed who had dismounted and was walking that bit. In their defense, if your front tire happened to go off track you would probably yard-sale all the way down the steep slope to the water (think road-rash and trauma), all the way down to the water that drops off into inky-blackness, swallowing your expensive bike into the depths of Soldier Creek.  

Distal Bicep Tendon Reattachment, Monday, July 13, 2020:

I tore 99% of the Distal Bicep Tendon off the bone while doing a simple kick-turn. It happened while back country skiing in Farmington Canyon on Sunday, May 17, 2020. On a steep side-hill in upper Mud Bowl, due to brush blocking the way, I planted the left ski pole (downhill pole) behind me, twisting my upper body at the waste one-third the way around, set the right (uphill) ski as a platform, then attempted a kick-turn with the left (downhill) ski. When I kicked the lower ski around, the platform ski (right ski) suddenly slipped about six inches downhill as it wasn't set solidly (over confidence kills), that resulted in the left arm hyperextending behind me when my ski pole held firm in the wet, sticky snow. I've done this move thousands of times with no problems, so why this time? I'm sure it was the heavy, grabby, wet-concrete-snow that did not give. Colder, powder snow will always give way, even if just a bit.
When I slipped I heard an audible pop with immediate, intense pain. I thought I had broken the elbow, but later that day at the Urgent care, the X-rays confirmed no broken bones. Three weeks later I still had pain, and, while I could ride my bikes (road, mountain and gravel) and ski (two more powder days after the injury), I couldn't do simple things like pick up a gallon of milk, a basket of laundry or take out the garbage with my left arm. I went to a Sportmeds Doctor who ordered an MRI, which confirmed that most, but not all, of the Distal Bicep Tendon was torn off the bone. Almost two months after the injury I finally get it repaired, which will require eight weeks of rehab before I can return to normal activity. If it had broken, or torn 100%, the repair would have been easy to diagnose, and I'd likely be close to full recovery by now. Fence sitters never win.   

July 22 update: one more day and this thing comes off. Sweaty, itchy, and it's tough to type, put in my contacts, and among many other things. I need my left arm.

Dude Peak, via Hidden Lake Trail, June 16, 2020

I still love recess, it was the the only way I survived Valley View Elementary. I'm now 58 and approaching retirement, but the ideal still applies. The work day is much better when it's broken with a lunch run. I come back refreshed, energized and re-born. Today I went up Dude Peak above Bountiful. It's my new "Mt. Van Cott," which was a favorite lunch run when I worked near the University of Utah. I miss those Red Butte trails, Mt. Wire, Georges Hollow, Dry Creek, Cephalopod Gulch, Red Butte Peak, but I especially miss Mt. Van Cott. In less than an hour door to door, one could get the heart pounding and blow out the morning cobwebs of the debauched cubicle life. If anything, Dude Peak might be an improvement over Mt. Van Cott because it has much less traffic than the University of Utah/Bonneville Shoreline trails. I rarely see another runner when I'm on Dude Peak. Plus, I'm now working from home and the trailhead is just a short drive from away. It's almost as convenient as running the Mt. Van Cott of my previous corporate life.

Dude Peak via Hidden Lake is approximately 4.62 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 1,500 feet; high point 7,196 feet; low point (TH) 5,852. 

View south from Dude Peak toward the Central Wasatch. 

Zoomed on the Central Wasatch: Mt. Raymond (left side, just left of fog/clouds in middle of photo), Dromedary Peak (middle-left), Broads Fork Twins (middle right), Lone Peak (far right).

View west towards the GSL and Antelope Island. 

View North, Bountiful Peak and Francis Peak.

Sego Lily

Before . . . 

. . . after. . . mark trail junctions discreetly with small cairns, not Stonehenge. Understatement reveals confidence and a thoughtful mind.  

DUDE Peak, the rock outcrop, at 7,223 feet, the high point of the ridge dividing North Canyon and City Creek Canyon, about a mile west of Rudy's Flat.

I have no idea how DUDE Peak got its name, but there are USGS Markers on the rocky summit (two markers) stamped with "DUDE," which could be a bootleg name because no USGS maps, or Google Earth, or any guide or map that I own have a peak listed as DUDE Peak.  I wonder if someone took a metal stamp and a maul and hammered the name into the marker?

Dude Peak is the second-to-last high point (or third depending on one’s definition of high point) on the ridge about a mile above what I called "Stonehenge" Peak (see ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos above). Stonehenge Peak is also the trail junction where the old 4x4 from the Antennas (and Woodbriar trail) meet the Hidden Lake trail. "Stonehenge" elevation is 6,652 feet and DUDE Peak is at 7,223feet. A high point east of DUDE might be a few feet higher.