Deseret Peak - Sweet Views, Hot Fires, Awesome Plants

Day 3 of my Great Salt Lake Spectacular took me to Deseret Peak, and it was magnificent!  I took more than 200 pictures, but here I've narrowed it down to about 25 that help me illustrate the geology, history, and ecology of Deseret Peak.  

I woke up to this great view on Antelope Island, a fortuitous start.  

Deseret Peak is about 40 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.  I've been eyeing it all summer as it is visible from about half of my field work sites.  The Deseret Peak Wilderness, part of the Cache-Wasatch National Forest, was a late addition to the 1984 Utah Wilderness Act.   

Deseret Peak is part of the Stansbury Mountains, which are named after Captain Howard Stansbury (as is Stansbury Island), an early surveyor of the Great Salt Lake region.  

The Stansbury Mountains are in Tooele County, which is not pronounced the way it looks.  In maps put together in 1850, Captain Stansbury spelled the area "Tuilla", which makes a  lot more sense to me.  

Deseret Peak itself is 11,031 feet (3,362 meters) tall, and the trail to the peak rises 3,900 feet over about 4 miles.  

Desert Peak is the 4th most prominent peak in Utah, with over 5,800 feet of prominence.  There are only 57 peaks in the US with more than 5,000 feet of prominence.  The two couloirs on the left side of the ridge are popular for skiing.   

The term Deseret was first used as the name of the territory the future state of Utah was a part of.  The term comes from the Book of Mormon, where it describes a type of honey bee, a symbol of industriousness.  The honeybee also embodies the qualities of perseverance, thrift, stability, and self-reliance - important values for hiking "strenuous" trails.  Well, maybe not thrift.   

From the peak you can see the Wasatch Front, Mt. Nebo, and a lot of the West Desert (pictured here).  I really enjoyed seeing the the pivot irrigation circles and stunningly straight roads, they contrasted so strikingly with the haphazard fire patterns and rock slides of the surrounding mountains. 

The alpine mountain environment is pretty harsh and the organisms that occupy it have developed adaptations to this cold, water-stressed world.  As elevation changes so does the plant community.  The road to the trailhead climbs through deciduous forests and grasslands.  The trail then climbs through conifers, grass and short shrubs, and finally short cushion plants.  

These changes in community with elevation are due to changes in temperature and snowpack - for every 1,000 feet of elevation the air cools about 5 degrees Fahrenheit (or 3 degrees Celsius every 1000 meters) and snow remains for a longer portion of the year.  

Animals in alpine environments, like this chipmunk, have to deal with little water, lots of cold, and lots more UV radiation.  

Coniferous trees are well adapted to alpine environments because their needles shed snow easily and stick around all year, thus they are able to photosynthesize as soon as temperatures rise above freezing. 

The colder conditions at higher elevations head to very slow decomposition rates and very poor soils.  Combined with high winds, conditions are dry for plants and anything surviving there must be able to reproduce quickly, often have thick, succulent leaves, and grow close to the ground. 

At the highest parts of mountains, conditions are too harsh for trees, and low ground cover plants and lichens are the dominant community.  Lichens are a symbiosis between a fungus and an algae (occasionally a cyanobacteria) capable of living in the most extreme environments in the world, like the tops of mountains, very dry deserts, and toxic slag heaps.

While not a natural part of the environment, I found myself awfully fond of the backpack I bought for this trip.  It looks good with all sorts of rocks.  

As if plants aren't dealing with enough stress due to dry, cold conditions, fires are also a regular part of this environment.  On August 10, two weeks before I went out to Deseret Peak, the Patch Springs Fire was started by lightning.  The fire burned 30,000 acres before it was put out, including right up the western side of Deseret Peak.

Fires are a critical part of both grassland and forest ecological processes, but decades of fire suppression have lead to build up of fuels in many regions that make for more intense than natural fires.  Plants in these ecosystems have developed many adaptations to regular fire including requiring fires to break seed dormancy.  

Other species, especially shrubs and trees, are fire-tolerant (can regenerate quickly after a fire) or fire-resistant (suffering little damage during a fire).  

Historically, the Great Basin region had mixed-severity fires in 34 year cycles and stand replacement fires in 100 year cycles (according to Wikipedia).  

The remains of the Patch Springs were particularly intriguing to me.  I thought these clouds of ash were smoke from new fires for more than half of my hike.  I'm glad I didn't call anyone about it.

After three days of hiking and camping my legs were really sore, but the scenery and strain of the hike made me feel like celebrating fact that all four of my limbs and more than 300 pairs of muscles worked together to carry me up and down the mountain.  I could howl at the tops of cliffs and touch the remains of fire and it was all great!  

 I highly recommend everyone visit the Deseret Peak Wilderness.  The views are stunning and you can have them all to yourself, I only ran into one other person all day.  

Plus there is a lot of history and ecology to view.  So go, take advantage of wild, road-less places of the world!