Paul Bunyan's Woodpile

You remember Paul Bunyan, right?  He had a blue Ox named Babe? Paul was a giant lumberjack...   Well, during his travels, the story goes  he visited Utah and was cutting down pine and spruce trees to keep for the winter, and he got called back to Washington (where he lived), and he never came back to get his log stash. The logs have since been petrified and are still there.  We decided to go see them!

I've had this hike on my "list" for over a year now and today was the day.  It wasn't super close, it's about an hour and 15 mins away..heading south.  It's very close the Sand Dunes, which we've never been mainly because we don't have 4-wheelers to play on.  We went through the super small town of Eureka, which in 1869 was the headquarters of the Tintic Mining District where silver and gold were mined.  It was one of the top producing mines in Utah during this time and home to the "Big 4" mines which were the largest mines at the time.  Eureka was even home to the second ever JC Penney!  

We Woodpile sits about 3 miles down a non-descript dirt road in the middle of nowhere.  The hike was short and even though all the trees were dead from a fire sometime ago, the vegetation was green and it was beautiful.

Once we got up to the actual Woodpile, it was much larger and way more interesting than we had thought, and more than pics are able to describe.  It was amazing how much it really looked like real stacks of wood!

Read this - it tells about how the "wood" formed

Our first look at the pile 

View about half way up into the large valley below, and sand dunes in the distance

Jacob was the first to explore on top

Marissa & Matt came along too!

There were smaller piles all over the place

This was a large wall of nothing but the lava rock

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There is even a small arch!

With the Woodpile explored, it was time for part 2.  I also had the "Tintic Standard Reduction Mill" on my "list" to visit and it was on the way home.  The Mill is near Goshen, Utah and was started by another mine company in the area.  They didn't want to send their ore to another smelter farther away, so they build their own smelter, and use the natural slope of the mountain to use gravity to help with the process. They connected the two locations - the mine and smelter, with a railroad, of which the rails are still visible.   

The mill was used to smelt, sift and refine ore which included silver, copper, lead and gold.  There are natural hot springs at the bottom of the mountain, and they used this water the help with the process.

The mill was built in 1919 and was only used for 5 years before being abandoned.  The reduction process they were using at the time to smelt the ore was out of date even then they started to build the mill. It was the only mill in the country to use this outdated "technology". Once the mill opened, they found out they could only process about half of the ore they were bringing to the mill, (400 ton a day) and finally decided after 5 years, the mill couldn't keep up with all the ore they were mining.  They then switched to using another mill farther away, but more efficient and left this mill idle.

It's a short 1/2 mile hike to the mill. It's all grafittied up of course, but it offers very interesting exploring!

This is a pic of the mill in operation!

And if you are so inclined, here is a 5 minute video explaining how the process works.

Timp Falls & some snow

The weather's been really nice lately, and we decided to go on a short hike to a waterfall up near Aspen Grove, above Sundance Ski Resort.

We tried to hike to Timp Falls, which is a lesser known hike - most people hike to Stuart Falls.  Timp Falls however, is half the distance and the views are amazing.  It's only about 1 mile each way.

The hike starts above Aspen Grove, which is about 7000 feet elevation, so it's pretty high up.  We started to see snow on the mountains, but weren't too worried - it was like 60 degrees outside.

This hike is the same trail that people use to hike to the top of Timp which sits at about 12,000 feet elevation - the 2nd tallest mountain along the Wasatch Mountain Front.  The trail is just about 8 miles long to the top and takes about 6 hours.  Many people start at 3 and 4am.  Not us....we would start at about never o'clock for that hike. 

We started our hike, and before long, the trail turned into a small paved trail.....then the small paved trail turned into a huge paved river.  

Seems the melting runoff used the trail as a streambed and we were forced to walk in the 1-2" water bed or go off the trail.  Eventually, the trail turned back into dry......

Then we hit the snow.  We could see the falls just ahead, but there was no way to get to them.  It was very obvious this area was prone to avalanches - all the trees, some of them big trees, were all broken, bent, and in some cases, snapped in half from avalanches during the winter.  

Then we were blocked by a smooth valley where the snow had slid down and it just wasn't melting.  We walked across it, as we saw the trail on the other side, but that lasted about 100 feet and then it was total snow all the way to the falls.

So, we didn't quite make it.  But the views were amazing and it was a beautiful hike.  We'll be back - maybe in a month or so when the snow has melted.

Nice enough looking day..yeah..there's some snow up there in the mountains..but we'll be fine!

Beautiful - aspens and snow capped mountains

Here is one of the slide areas....Of course Jacob had to go out on the snow..can you see him?

Look at all the trees snapped in half....this was the trail - it was an obstacle course!

I love this photo - spring on the left, winter on the right

Can you see the falls up there?  Hmmm...wonder if we can  make it?

This is obviously where a slide occurred.  This was the end of our hike.

We walked across the snow, we could see the trail on the other side, but it only went for about 100' and then it was snow the entire way

Time to head back

Jacob found a snapped tree not quite snapped in half, that provided a bit of jumping fun...

This was a big pine tree- snapped in half.  There were no pine trees even close to this area - all the pine trees were about 500' UP the mountain - so this came  down with the winter avalanches