Badass to Dumbass in Four Seconds - My King's Peak Adventure

The line between badass and dumbass is not only fine, it is a grey, wavy line, and in a different place for each individual. It’s hard to recognise, easy to miss, and painfully clear when overstepped. It’s the concept of pushing hard and not giving up, balanced against blind ambition and getting in too deep. Basically, when you start to get really scared, you are probably approaching your line.

-Leo Holding

I’ve got to start another blog with a confession – I was born and raised in Utah but it took me 30 years to finally go hiking in the Uinta Mountains.  I’ve done field work in some of the wetlands in the range and I’ve hiked a whole lot of other places in Utah, but I’ve never visited this range just for recreating.  And that’s unacceptable.  Fortunately I fixed that whole situation by visiting for a few days during my solitary-post-field-work-internal-battery-recharging-end-of-summer adventure.  The plan was to hike King’s Peak in a day and spend the next day fishing the head waters of the Bear, Weber, and Provo Rivers. 

Sunrise at Henry’s Fork 

The Uintas are a unique mountain range, being the longest east-west running mountain range in the United States, and critical to Utah, being the source of 90% of the water in the state.  The highest point in Utah, King’s Peak – elevation 13,528 ft, prominence 6,358 ft – is located in the High Uintas Wilderness.  Especially interesting to me, the Uintas are the source of the three rivers that provide most of the water to the Great Salt Lake and associated wetlands.  The Bear River begins on the North Slope of the Uintas and flows north through Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho before it ends in the GSL.  The Weber River begins in the western end of the range and flows along through some dang scenic Utah towns like Kamas before following Interstates 80 and 84 into the Ogden area.  Finally, the Provo River starts in the southwestern end of the mountains, is impounded in a series of Central Utah Project reservoirs before flowing on down to Utah Lake; the Jordan River flows out of Utah Lake into the Great Salt Lake. 

There are thousands of lakes nestled in the Uintas

The shortest trail to King’s Peak is 32 miles long, beginning at the Henry’s Fork Trailhead at 9,430 ft, then climbing 4,100 feet up to the peak through the Henry’s Fork Valley to Gunsight Pass, then Anderson Pass, finally up a boulder-y ridgeline to the peak.  Most people backpack it because there are some delightful places to set up camp in the valley and 32 miles in one day is a bit silly.  But I’m not a strong backpacker (backpacks make my shoulders feel pinchy) and the weather report I read suggested temps would hover between 30º and 50º, which is just too cold for me and my lightweight sleeping bag (its rated to 20º or so but I couldn’t imagine sleeping comfortably), so my plan was to spend the night at lower elevation (where it might get as warm as 60º) and do the whole out and back trail in one day.

The double-sleeping bag oven I could put together car camping

I figured my hiking pace averages two miles per hour, faster in flatter areas, slower in the steep places, so I’d need 16 hours to do the whole thing.  In order to get to the peak before the regularly scheduled afternoon thunderstorms I started at 4:00 a.m. 

4 a.m. Game face

I actually meant to start at 3:00 a.m., but I slept a little better than anticipated and don’t know how to work the alarm on my watch.  I went to bed pretty nervous as I listened to the rumble of thunderstorms to the north and south, but woke feeling badass and got a pretty strong start hiking in the dark.  I could hear the Henry’s Fork River below me and imagined it was beautiful.  The sun was rising as I entered the valley and was greeted with a view of the socked in King’s Peak

I misunderstood which of the peaks was actually King’s, it’s on the left side of the picture and it looked like this (cloudy) for most of the hike up. 

I hiked for four hours before I met anyone else on the trail, a group from Montana that passed me while I stopped to finish my coffee at the top of the valley.  We chatted a bit while they waited for their last hiker to catch up and they made me feel so cool.  I told them I was hiking the whole thing in a day and they told me how intense that was and they complimented my choice of morning coffee spots.  As they hiked away I felt like a pretty serious badass, I’d gotten up before everyone else and I was going to get down before them too. 

No regrets here, just enjoying the coffee and view

As I approached Gunsight Pass, the divide between Henry’s Fork and Painter Basin – elevation 11,888 feet – I passed my new Montana friends and gained some spectacular views as well as my first sighting of the weather I’d be dealing with at this higher elevation. 

Yes, it did snow that night.

I tore out a few pages from my hiking guide book and read them before heading up Gunsight.  I remembered the author said to follow the trail into Painter Basin, which takes away a few hundred feet of elevation, because it wasn’t worthwhile to scramble along the talus slope, but I got distracted by the site of some ptarmigans (yeah! a new bird) and misinterpreted “The trail does not continue through the low notch as easily as it may appear from below, however.  There are thickets and boulders here, and the trail switches back up the west slope to the pass…” as “…follow the boulders up to the pass.”  It wasn't that hard.  I’m just that hard core. 

See, White-tailed ptarmigans.  

I’m loving Gunsight Pass

As I dropped into Painter Basin I was deliriously happy to see a whole bunch of beautiful wetlands.  I’ve been toying with the idea of shifting to studying high elevation wetlands when I finish this PhD journey (another one of those endeavors that fluctuates between badass and dumbass), seeing them there in the Uintas while I was ruminating about my future definitely made me decide that it’s a worthwhile (nay, badass) idea.  I did manage to look away from the wetlands briefly to glance at the trail ahead of me, just in time to see what looked like a black bear barreling through the bushes toward me.  I can’t ever remember what it is you’re supposed to do when you run into wildlife (other than don’t pet them), so I always just stand still while trying to make myself look as large as possible.  Lucky for me, I was wearing three layers of clothing that day so I looked huge.  Even luckier for me, it wasn’t actually a black bear; it was a hiker wearing a black balaclava and fleece jacket.  I told him he looked like a black bear when we crossed paths, but he seemed unmoved by the observation.

How great would it be to spend the summer looking at these wetlands?  Great.

Then the trail started to gain some serious vertical ground as it went up to Anderson Pass.  When I hit spots like this I imagine down-shifting just like a car so I can climb slowly but efficiently.  I felt alright about it until I looked behind me to see a couple trail runners were gaining on me.  I’d felt so proud that I dressed properly for my climb up past 13,000 feet (I’d really underestimated the weather at high elevations when I tried to climb the Grand Teton), then I saw these guys coming up the mountain in shorts, windbreakers and weird mittens.  Then they told me they’d started three hours after me.  But they were nice enough to chat with me about what they were doing and the speed they were going at, which left a pretty good impression on me.  One of the things I like about running is that it is so easy to rescale the effort based on personal levels of fitness and goals.  For me it’s enough to maintain 10-minute miles for the course of a marathon, I don’t need the same 4,100 foot elevation gain those runners did.  Chewing on the things that are great about running and hiking got me through the next 1.5 miles or so, until I realized I needed to start munching on something with real calories because I kept losing the trail.  But really the trail had just petered out into rocks and tundra plants. 

Tundra plus marmot

As I got within a mile of Anderson Pass I started running into hikers going downhill so I asked them if they went for the peak to get an idea of the safety.  No one had, some had no intention of it and others didn’t like the look of the storm.  As I sat eating my pepperoni and string cheese, feeling the sting of a little snow, I dug into the bravery reserves I keep inside and decided the clouds weren’t nearly formidable enough to stop me and committed to going up.  Plus I could see the trail runners ahead of me and they looked epic scrambling along the ridge line. 

Socked-in weather before I headed up

The last mile to King’s Peak was a combination of feeling pretty cool and pretty lost.  I’m not a strong path finder and there’s not actually a path up to the top.  Instead, you just kind of head over boulders up and to the south until you find a flag at the top (but not a USGS summit marker, which is over on South King’s Peak).  I tried to channel my inner mountain goat to make a speedy ascent, continually looking around at the clouds and adding up the amount of time I’d spend unprotected from potential lightening.  A mountain goat wouldn’t be scared of lightening.  A mountain goat wouldn’t be so gassy.  A mountain goat is a badass and my spirit animal.  (Fun fact – I just googled "burping at high altitude" and found out that "high altitude flatus expulsion (HAFE)" is a real thing.  As air pressure decreases with altitude, the internal pressure created by intestinal gasses increases and makes hikers burp and fart as they get out of their comfort zone.  The first result of my google was a list of terrifying symptoms of HAPE and HACE, pretty scary high altitude diseases.) 

Isn’t that a beautiful hike

It took me an hour to mountain goat my way to the summit.  It was pretty fun to think about how deep the giant pile of boulders I was jumping on was, but also unsettling when a boulder shifted.  I had several minutes to myself at the peak, a time I got to enjoy the sun, update the summit register, bring out the racing tights, and do a little mountain yoga. 

Mountain warrior

The group from Montana caught up with me shortly after that and helped me take a great jumping-at-the-summit picture and just made me feel like a badass.  I felt cool because I’d made the summit in a day, had my kick ass tights on, was willing to jump near the ‘edge’ of a 2,000 foot cliff (it wasn’t that close, I was totally safe), and I did it all by myself. 

I really enjoyed being able to chat with the folks from Helena, I think it’s cool how being on the mountain can make everyone a kindred spirit.  But they also helped pump my ego up until it was almost ready to burst (I don’t think the low air pressure around helped at all either).  I was elated on the way down.  The views were so amazing…

The arêtes and headwalls of this range are still being shaped by ice and frost, which reaches into cracks in the rocks and fractures it (“splits it asunder”), leaving sharp, angular faces that will eventually be buried in their own rubble.

The signs of life, while short in stature, were very cool.  A few months ago I learned that lichens can grow in space, so it seemed especially cool so see them up on the talus slopes I’d seen referred to as a moonscape. 

The Uinta Mountains were created by two tectonic events.  The first was a north-south compression that buckled the crust and exposed the sedimentary rocks that make up the mountains 60-65 million years ago (they’re actually meta-sedimentary, sedimentary rocks like sandstone and limestone that have been under compression long enough to begin changing into metamorphic rocks like quartzite and slate).  The Uintas reached their current 13,000 feet elevations about 15 million years ago as tectonic forces lifted the range along an anticline. 

Parting shot of the King’s Peak cliff face, ice is still eating away at the rock while gravity is helping build the large talus slopes at the bottom 

Evidence of glaciers at lower elevations

"Felsenmeer" – the ‘block top’ peaks between 10,000 and 12,000 feet that haven’t been touched by glaciers, composed of rubble that has accumulated in place due to “sustained severe climate”, above the U-shaped glacier carved valleys of the Painter and  Uinta River Basins.

All of this pre-historic uplift and erosion made for a long hike down.  I started to think of the tundra moonscape more like a hell-scape that I wouldn’t ever get out of.  The little tundra plants that I’d thought were so cool before just bothered me now because they didn’t yield to compaction, making it difficult to find the trail.  After chewing over the term ‘hell-scape’ for a few miles and realizing that I was cold and hungry again, I decided to have lunch on a big rock over looking Painter Basin.  I reached “Peak Badass” on this rock eating a cheese and humus burrito.  Along came a hiker named Corey who was doing the really badass High Line Trail (73.4 miles, 9 major peaks, “nonstop views and rampant wildlife” according to Backpacker) over the course of several days.  Despite his clearly more intense badass-ery, Corey was nice enough to pump my ego up a little more, as it was clear I was the only solo female hiker on the mountain that day, and it seemed the only one doing the peak in a single day.  This was especially nice of him as the effects of HACE may have been settling in and I was having some trouble following basic conversions (i.e., “My name is Corey, it was nice to meet you.”  “My name is Becka, what is your name?”).  In the 10 minutes I’d been sitting on the rock the weather had changed dramatically, as it is known to do in the Uintas, so Corey left noting “The gnar is coming in.” and I started to pack up my stuff and add a layer of clothing.  I felt very hardcore.    

The gnar coming in

The snow hit with a vengeance.  It was beautiful, but made for slippery hiking.  I passed Corey as he was getting out rain gear and asked if he was ready for snow while I pulled out my own rain coat.  I’d been pondering whether lightning can actually accompany a snow storm when something shocked my ear.  KERRRACH BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!  Lightning struck close enough to shock me and shake the ground!  My ego popped, all signs of badass-ness fell away.  I yelled out something to the effect of “I’m going to cry” and started running down the trail, single mindedly focused on getting to tree line or shelter of some sort.  I looked like a dumbass.  Arms out, feet kicking, slipping and sliding, literally landing on my ass several times.  I felt ridiculous too.  It seems like a childish strategy to run away from things that are scary as fast as possible, but that was my strategy in that moment.  Tree line was still about 2,000 vertical feet and 8 miles away.  There were some nice shrubs down in the basin 0.5 miles away, but the storm had cleared by the time I got there. 

Not just snow - thundersnow!

Ten minutes later, once the storm and my head had cleared I stopped to sit and think about what a dumbass I was, and shake my legs out enough to stop slipping and falling.  Of course lightning can strike during a snow storm, precipitation all comes out of clouds, which are the source of lightning too.  More research on my part has indicated that there is a thing called “Thundersnow” and that it is relatively infrequent and localized and terrifying (that same research showed that other people have pondered the same thing as me, just not during a snow storm, so I was only half a dumbass).  Nothing in my research indicated being a fast-moving target was an effective strategy for avoiding lightning strikes (though I did read the opposite advice “Better late in this world than early to the next”).  I waited for a minute or so, trying to catch of glimpse of my fellow hiker and feeling like an ass.  I'd just been thinking it was so great that everyone on the mountain takes care of one another and I then literally run past another hiker like a scared little girl.  I did eventually see Corey hike on through the basin after our trails had departed, so I could still feel like a dumbass, but at least I knew he was safe. 

Crossing Henry's Fork

The rest of the hike was relatively uneventful, but very long.  I did a bit of wild flower gathering and noticed the similarities between the few genus’s of plants you find in wetlands and at high elevations, because there are only a few groups of plants that seem to be able to deal with such extreme water stresses (drought/hypersaline water vs. ice).  I ran into my friends from Montana again, somehow already back at camp and looking very comfortable.  I tried to revisit the bottom half of the trail with new eyes, since I hadn’t really seen what it looked like when I was hiking it in the dark.  Most of my energy went into trying to rid my head of awfully annoying songs (there’s something popular right now that says “I don’t care, wo-oo-oo-oh, I really don’t care” over and over again and I hate it) and working to avoid calculating my hourly pace.  There were some dark times. 

I wandered back to camp site 15 hours and 20 minutes after I started, which was 40 minutes earlier than I had originally estimated, so I patted myself on the back for finally beating my habit of sandbagging time estimates.  I patted myself on the back again as I cooked up the steak I’d had marinating for the past day, it was a great reward, even if I had to eat it under the hatch door of my car because of another rainstorm. 

The peak really cleared up that evening, it's that beautiful peak in the center.  

King’s Peak was probably one of the best solo adventures I’ve been on, in part because of those large swings in confidence than any long and tall hike should bring with it.  It’s also just an amazing and beautiful hike.  I’d like to do the High Line Trail now that I’ve learned a lot more about the geology of the region so I can understand what I’m seeing, plus I’d have a year to build up my bravery stocks. 

Update to “Be Excellent to Each Other”

Thank you so much to those of you who talked with me or commented about my post “Be Excellent to Each Other.” It was really scary to write up and put out there, but those of you who have talked to me about it have been so sweet and really helped my faith in humanity and in members of the faith. Even if I cried at you, they were happy tears. I'm glad I could hear the differing views of so many of my lady friends in such a friendly way. Thanks for taking the time to read and say kind things.

Let the River Run

Start by listening to this song.  Do it.  

In the middle of May Karina and I set off on another semi-planned adventure to ride the length of the Logan River from the headwaters to its confluence with the Bear River.  I hatched this scheme as a way to get to know the watershed we live in and I think it was pretty successful.  

I’m currently a student in the department of Watershed Sciences at USU.  The goal of the department is to “…bring science to the management of watershed ecosystems in Utah and the world.”  For the graduate students, the department works to combine research and courses in aquatic ecology, hydrology, geomorphology and climate sciences into an interdisciplinary program (go ahead and take a look at how that works at http://www.cnr.usu.edu/wats/).  It’s a pretty diverse department with research going on in many different scientific fields, but with a focus on how each discipline functions within a watershed.  For my part, I wanted to see how the things I’ve picked up as a graduate student in the last two years inform my view of a watershed. In addition to that, it was a great reason to break out the bikes and adventure with Karina.  

The Logan River Semi-Planned Adventure - the blue line is our route, the pins indicate stops and what we talked about.  

I’m going to be using the term watershed a whole lot, so I had better provide a definition.  The EPA says “A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place.”  In the case of Logan, where I live, everything upstream flows into the Logan River, so we are part of the Logan River watershed.  The Logan River itself flows into the larger Bear River, so we are also part of the Bear River watershed (and if you ever want to talk about the Bear River with me some day I would love that, it’s one of my favorite rivers). 

My home watersheds

Water is everything; it shapes the landscape and determines where people can live.  Whether in the form of a solid (ice), liquid (water) or gas (water vapor), water is amazing.  The water cycle is another important concept to consider here.  Water changes between three forms regularly as it turns from liquid in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs to vapor through the process of evapo-transpiration, then to rain or snow through precipitation, and finally back to flowing water through discharge. 

The three phases of the water cycle - precipitation (rain or snow), discharge (rivers, lakes and aquifers), and evapotranspiration (clouds over the evaporating Great Salt Lake)

Here in the Intermountain West most of our precipitation comes during the winter time as snow.  This is where we’ll begin our discussion of the water cycle – precipitation.  Precipitation in the form of rain or snow is what fills the lakes and rivers around us.  In the mountains the air stays cold for a longer part of the year than lower areas, so the snow accumulates over the course of several months (this winter there was 8 feet of snow at Beaver Mountain).  The accumulated snow represents most of the water that will be used during the year to supply homes and irrigate crops. 

The beginning of our ride up at Beaver Mountain Ski Resort.  Note the shrinking snow pack, we were just at the beginning of Spring Runoff.  

During the spring the snow begins melting and flowing through the ground and over the ground into the Logan River and its tributaries, making the rivers run much higher than during the rest of the year.  We call this Spring Runoff and it represents the second part of the water cycle – discharge.  Some of the water percolates through the soil and into underground aquifers, but a lot of it makes its way to the rivers.  Rivers are part of larger networks of tributaries that deliver water kind of like an upside-down tree – small streams (like Beaver Creek pictured below) flow into larger streams (like the Logan or Bear Rivers), which also flow into larger streams, eventually collecting enough water to be as large as the Bear River.  At this point it is completely appropriate hum “Give Said the Little Stream.”

Beaver Creek

Lower Logan River

The next part of the water cycle is evaporation and transpiration - evapo-transpiration.  Evaporation happens when heat turns liquid water into vapor.  Our area is really hot during the summer and we don’t get much precipitation during the non-winter part of the year, so rates of evaporation are higher than rates of precipitation – and that’s the definition of a desert.  Transpiration happens when a plant brings water up through its roots and then releases it to the atmosphere as vapor (after making sugar and other plant materials).  Water vapor moved to the atmosphere by evapo-transpiration will eventually condense and come back down as precipitation, starting the water cycle all over again. 

The plant part of the water cycle that is responsible for transpiration, particularly the wetland plant part at the bottom of the watershed, is what I study.  In addition to driving part of the water cycle, plants also provide food for herbivorous animals and they stabilize the banks of rivers with their roots (which in turn also provides habitat for fishes).  Willows and cottonwoods are the primary trees growing along the Logan River.  They’re both pretty and functional, as depicted below. 

Willows are neat, stabilizing the river bank here with its roots and providing shelter for small fishes from the heat and predators.  

Willows are great, adding organic matter to the river as leaves fall off and are decomposed.  

Higher up in elevation trees are continuing to transpire water, but they’re also changing the soils they grow in and the shape of the land beneath.  Some plants, like trees, live for many years or decades but still lose some roots and lots of leaves every year.  This dead plant material is then decomposed by bugs, bacteria and fungi in the soil, which leave behind carbon and nitrogen and other important elements that make the soil richer and able to support more plants. Some hardier plants, like my personal favorite – mountain mahogany – can actually start making their own soil as they decompose rocks they’re growing on.  Trees are the coolest. 

Every fall aspens drop leaves onto the soil that are quickly decomposed by soil microbes, leaving little evidence of litter behind once the snow melts.  

Pine trees drop needles that are full of tannins, a compound that makes them resistant to decay, so there are deep layers of litter (or duff) below pine trees.  

Being with the snow, aspens and pine trees has clearly overwhelmed Karina.  I get it.  

Then we recovered and celebrated the beauty of the world we live in.  

Trees can also shape the larger landscape.  The extensive root systems of some plants can hold the soil together and prevent landslides.  In some places the roots systems of plants hold sediment back as water moves through, slowly filling in river channels and ponds with mud and debris (like the way beaver dams change rivers into wetlands into uplands).  And sometimes these plants are just fuel for fires, and once they are burned the area will be prone to landslides and lose all of its sediments to other places.  Plants are the coolest. 

The road to Tony Grove

See how the vegetation higher up on the mountain is different than the lower elevations?

See how the slope is different in the areas with pine trees and the ares with aspen and sage brush?
See how fast we were riding?

Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape them, and it is often focused on rivers because they shape and are shaped by the landscape.  One of the best parts of our ride was to see how the shape and power of the river changed based on the slope of the land and how confined the river is.  If you look at the sediment on the bottom of the river you can get an idea of how powerful the river is at that location because those rocks or that mud were likely deposited there during a runoff event and anything smaller continued to be carried downstream.  Up in the top part of the river where the slope is pretty steep but the channel isn't confined much by the canyon walls the bottom of the river is made up of cobbles that are a few inches long.  The water is moving pretty fast but some of that energy dissipates as the river spreads out. 

Middle Logan River

As the river drops into Logan Canyon the cliffs and Highway 89 constrain how far the river can move and the gradient is still quite steep, so the bed of the river is composed of boulders than can be more than a foot wide.  All the energy in the water is responsible for shaping the landscape that continues to shape the river, the Logan River itself is responsible the formation of the canyon in the first place.  As the river flows over and through the canyon it carries away rocks and dirt (erosion), deepening the canyon as it goes, this has been happening for thousands of years.  Through the slow process of erosion and tectonic forces bending and folding the Great Basin, a deep canyon was eventually formed and continues to change. 

Curvy part of the canyon with lots of blind curves

Seriously powerful part of the river, as manifested by the loud and fast flow and the giant boulders in the water.  

Even where it could carry you away, it's peaceful to sit next to water, especially compared to furious pedaling around blind curves.  

In addition to driving the river, the extra gravity helped our bike ride go pretty smoothly, we hardly had to pedal at all until we decided to take a quick ride as far up the road to Tony Grove as we could.  Even in the middle of May there is so much snow in the mountains the road to the top is closed until summer time, so we had it all to ourselves.  We explored the trees and enjoyed the snow.  And then rode down the steep road completely disregarding the speed limit – we got going 40 mph at one point!

Pretty happy to be riding bikes and checking out the Logan River

Going so fast

Such a fun road!

In the lowest parts of the river, free of the canyon, the river meanders in large oxbows and the bed of the river is composed mainly of silt and sand because the river is flowing slow enough that these small sediments fall out of the water column.  Here in these flat lands is where wetlands form most often as water slows in ponds, sloughs and lakes.

Cutler Marsh and Reservoir with the Bear River Range in the background, the Logan River is coming in from the right side of the image.  

Sometimes rivers are slowed and impounded by man-made dams that create reservoirs.  This is definitely the case in Logan Canyon where three dams are located within 4 miles of the mouth of the canyon.  Dams are built for a number of reasons, including flood control, irrigation, and generation of hydropower.  The dams on the Logan River provide all three of these benefits, they can capture water when the river is running high before it reaches the lowest parts of the river where houses are located, two of the dams back up water to the inlets of canals that distribute water throughout the eastern side of Cache Valley, and they were originally built by Utah Power and Light to generate power for Logan City.  Because Mother Nature usually wins despite our best efforts, the dams on the Logan River are slowly losing their capacity and functionality because they’re filling up with silt, the result of slowing down silt-laden rivers enough for all the sediments to fall out. 

3rd Dam in May 2014 spilling a lot of water.  Now (August) it's hardly letting any water out.  

It’s pretty easy to find your way down the Logan River, as Highway 89 runs alongside it.  But sometimes the flow of water is not so clear, as is the case with Rick’s Spring.  Turns outs Rick’s Spring is not actually a spring, it’s a fault in the hill side where water that has seeped into the soil uphill comes seeping out (rather than from coming from an underground aquifer, which is the case for a spring).  This fun fact wasn't discovered until the 1950’s, when hydrologists noticed the ‘spring’ followed the same patterns of high and low water as the Logan River (plus a lot of people who drank the water from the spring got sick from Giardia, which doesn't happen if the water comes from an aquifer). 

Rick's Spring.  If you ever pull over for a visit, look inside to see the crack in the rock at the fault line.  

Water flowing away from Rick's Spring.  And hand-to-big-toe pose to illustrate the tricky balance water managers on the Logan River face, as they almost always have too much water or not enough water, depending on the state of the winter snowpack.  

There are several places along the Logan River where water comes up from the ground like at Rick’s Spring, this is due to the geology of the mountains – they’re composed primarily of sedimentary rock called limestone, which is more easily dissolved by weakly acidic water (which includes rain) than other rocks.  Limestone is composed mainly of different forms of calcium carbonate, the same stuff snail shells and corals are made from, and many limestone formations are actually layer upon layer of animal shells.  The world’s largest cave systems are found in limestone because it can be eroded by groundwater and there are a few cave systems near the Logan River.  On the surface, water in the form of precipitation and river discharge eroding the limestone has made for a plethora of climbing opportunities in Logan Canyon that are one of the highlights of living in Logan.  Calcium carbonates from the rocks are also responsible for the awesome turquoise color of Bear Lake. 

Limestone at China Cave, which isn't actually a cave but an overhanging rock wall carved by the Logan River.  Note the cool texture of the rock created by dripping water.  It's also a nice place to have lunch.  

After 30 miles of pretty easy downhill riding (alternating between taking our time cruising downhill and pedaling furiously around blind curves) we made our way into Cache Valley.  Due to some road work at the mouth of the canyon, our entry into the valley required a heart breaking pedal uphill toward the University.  However, once we got out of the canyon, we got to see where the river was doing most of its modern day work.  Logan Canyon and the benches of Cache Valley were carved over thousands of years through the erosional power of the Logan River and Lake Bonneville.  In modern times the sediments left over from Lake Bonneville have created some pretty fertile soils that can still only produce crops with the addition of water from the Logan River.  As I mentioned before, Utah is a desert, so crops can only grow with the help of irrigation.  Before white settlers came into the valley, living off the landscape required sticking close to the rivers, where water is usually available year round, or travelling from place to place to find food.  In order to support a permanent agricultural population, white settlers dug a series of ditches to take water from the rivers (starting with the Logan River) and deliver it to their fields to grow grains, alfalfa and vegetables.  Through this system of canals and the reservoirs I talked about earlier, farmers are able to stretch out their use of Logan River water throughout the year, rather than during Spring Runoff alone.  Irrigation is a pretty huge undertaking that requires a lot of cooperation.  In an interesting bit of history, early Mormon settler’s were sometimes called the Lord’s Beavers because the communal nature of the church structure enabled members to build really large diversion works together that weren't possible for individual families. 

North Logan-Hyde Park-Smithfield Canal, which gets its water just above 2nd Dam and diverts it along the eastern side of the Valley

Alfalfa on the Logan Bench irrigated by Logan River water

Different types of irrigated crops in the Cache Valley

We ended our ride at Cutler Reservoir, where the Logan River meets the Bear River before flowing on to Box Elder County.  Cutler Marsh is the lowest point in Cache Valley (but we had to ride uphill to get there because of a glitch in my semi-finished plan), there are extensive wetlands because it’s very flat and very wet.  Thousands of White-faced ibis stay here every year, supported by the bugs in the wetlands and in the nearby irrigated fields.  From this vantage point we could see the tops of the Bear River Mountains 5,000 feet above us, still covered in snow that would eventually make its way to this reservoir or the fields we had just passed through.  We also saw the beautiful Wellsville Mountains, so steep because there are no perennial rivers like the Logan to erode them. 

Finishing victoriously at Cutler Reservoir.  Sometime I'll have to tell you about our adventures in and around the Wellsville Mountains, which you can see in the background.  

My conclusions at the end of the journey were similar to John Wesley Powell’s words about watersheds – 

"[Watersheds,] that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."

Water connects all its users and I think it also connects scientists beyond the artificial disciplinary boundaries we surround ourselves in.  It’s impossible for me to look too closely at one spot in the river without my mind wandering to where that water is going and who else will be using it.