Mormon Pioneer Myths Debunked

The traditional depiction of life on the Mormon Pioneer Trail is a dismal one of tragedy and suffering — almost like one long funeral procession.
But Melvin L. Bashore, a senior librarian in the history library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also promotes "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Utah: Laughable Incidences on the Mormon Trail."
He says even if some of these happenings weren't funny to the pioneers, they seem to be today.
For example, one his favorite stories concerns a very old Danish man who had completely lost his sense of smell and was part of an 1857 pioneer group headed for Utah. After some men killed buffalo and other major game for the group's food, he thought he should make a contribution, too.
He came back to camp with a skunk to cook for soup.
"This made the rest of us leave," C.C.A. Christensen, a member of that Danish company, wrote in a diary. "He had killed it with his cane and knew nothing about its peculiar means of defense."
Some other stories involve mosquitoes, which seemed to particularly like attending Mormon meetings on the Plains.
An 1861 diary records: "In the evening a meeting was held in camp, but the mosquitoes were there first and stay there they would. They sang at the opening song during service, at the closing and finally sung all night. Tried to sleep, but they pulled me out of bed."
An 1853 diary reported: "I saw Indians by the hundreds, buffalo by the thousands and mosquitoes by the billions."
In still another tale, a young pioneer man had to separate from his fiancee and travel with a separate wagon group because he didn't have enough money so they could travel together. His diary on the first night of separation states:
"My mind was rambling over many things, especially as to when I should meet my dear girl again. After a while we began to turn in. I had occasion to go to my bag for some clothes and in taking out what I expected to be white duck sailor overalls and holding them up an examining them they turned out to be some sort of ladies' unmentionables trimmed and adorned with lace. The eyes of the crowd caught onto it. I had made a mistake and got my sweetheart's bag instead of my own."
In his research, Bashore found the vast majority of the pioneers didn't die along the way but safely made the journey to the Salt Lake Valley.
Bashore said that although hardships did occur on the trail, Utahns today falsely often skew our perception and understanding of the entire history of what happened on the Mormon Trail by dwelling on the sufferings of a few.
• Bashore's overview of the Mormon trail experience is available online at: overlandtrails.lib.byu.edu.
(Adapted from a July 24, 2004 story in the Deseret News by Lynn Arave.)
--- The Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Despite the fact this is one of the most epic events in regional history, there are a lot of myths and fallacies circulating regarding the pioneers and their trek and arrival in the valley.
For example, the travel of the pioneers to Utah — excepting the handcart companies — was likely not as difficult as many perceive it to have been.
"Contrary to myth and popular belief, this 1847 trek of approximately 1,032 miles and 111 days was not one long and unending trail of tears or a trial by fire," The National Park Service's "Mormon Pioneer: Historic Resource Study"(www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/mopi/hrs5.htm) states.
"It was actually a great adventure," the NPS report continued. "Over the decades, Mormons have emphasized the tragedies of the trail, and tragedies there were, but generally after 1847. Between 1847 and the building of the railroad in 1869, at least 6,000 died along the trail from exhaustion, exposure, disease and lack of food. Few were killed by Indians. To the vast majority, however, the experience was positive — a difficult and rewarding struggle. Nobody knows how many Mormons migrated west during those years, but 70,000 people in 10,000 vehicles is a close estimate.
"To the 143 men, three women and two children who left Winter Quarters, the 111-day pioneer trek of 1847 was mostly a great adventure, with a dramatic ending."
Also, a second myth is that handcart travel was both common and typical for numerous pioneers. Given all the attention LDS stakes have given their own personal mock handcart adventures in Wyoming, this exaggerated belief is logical, but incorrect.
Using the most commonly accepted estimate of 70,000 total pioneers coming to Utah between 1847 and the coming of the railroad in 1869, plus the handcart estimate total of 2,962 people, the total percentage of pioneers who were in handcart companies is only 4.23 percent.
Bashore said handcart companies have evolved to be the "iconic symbol of pioneer Mormonism."
"We're focused on what a lesser number of people did," he said.
(That is why I don't personally care for handcart "treks" by stakes and wards. Accurate history is rarely taught on them and their entire focus is just a sliver of pioneer travel.)

--Following are some other pioneer myths:
• Death was a common occurrence on all pioneer treks. Not true, as most who started for Utah arrived. For example, no one died in the original 1847 pioneer company to Salt Lake.
The average death rate in all Mormon companies was less than 3 percent; a third of the companies (more than 80) did not have any deaths at all; only 18 of the more than 250 companies experienced more than 20 deaths en route (so only 7 percent of the total companies accounted for 43 percent of the total deaths); and at least seven people were bitten by rattlesnakes, none of whom died.
• Pioneers all traveled basically the same route. False. For example, variants in trails were established in southern Iowa, or via Mitchell Pass in Nebraska or in not crossing the Platte River at Fort Laramie in Wyoming.
Also, many pioneers from 1850 on used the "Golden Pass Road" (Parleys Canyon) to enter the Salt Lake Valley instead of Emigration Canyon, making some 42 miles of trail different at the end of the trek.
The John G. Smith pioneer company of 1851 was counseled by Elder Orson Hyde to head for the Elk Horn River in Nebraska before reaching the usually traveled road. That meant several hundred miles of different route.
There were many other variations too, especially on the later treks. Some came from California, others from Texas.
"We tend to think all trail travel started in the Midwest," Bashore said.
• The pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Not quite accurate. The lead company and the main company of pioneers actually entered the valley on July 22 and camped there that night. Meanwhile, Brigham Young and the rear company had not yet climbed Big Mountain, and it didn't enter the valley until July 24 — the celebrated day.
In addition, two advance scouts, Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, had even entered the Salt Lake Valley a day earlier on July 21.
• Brigham Young declared "This is the place." Not a complete statement. "It is enough. This is the right place, drive on" is the full declaration President Young may have made. However, there is still doubt.
Jeffrey Carlstrom and Cynthia Furse, in their book "A History of Emigration Canyon," note there is "considerable room for doubt that Young ever made this famous pronouncement." That's because no firsthand accounts of it exist.
Wilford Woodruff is credited with recounting what President Young said, but that was in 1880, 33 years after it happened and about three years after President Young had died.
• This Is the Place Monument is located exactly where Brigham Young made his famous statement. Unfortunately, history didn't leave us with an exact location. However, when the original monument on the site was dedicated on July 25, 1921, Elder B.H. Roberts, a member of the Seventy and a church historian, cited a journal of President Woodruff that "proved conclusively that there can be doubt that the spot now marked by this concrete monument is very near to the actual place."
• There was a "lone tree" in the barren Salt Lake Valley when the Pioneers arrived in 1847. It is simply pioneer legend that paints such a grim picture of the Salt Lake Valley — barren, harsh and a desert, save a lone cedar tree. In reality, say historians, the valley was well-watered, with tall grasses and trees along the many stream banks.
"One of the greatest myths of the church is that the valley was total desolation," said the late Dr. Stanley Kimball, a Utah historian. No pioneer diary accounts he ever found supported the desolate valley idea.
Most of the paintings depicting the valley when the Mormon pioneers arrived look more like the west desert area than the Wasatch Front.
Richard Jackson, professor of geography at Brigham Young University, did extensive research in the 1970s on what the Salt Lake Valley was really like when the pioneers arrived.
"Briefly, there was not a lot of timber in the valley according to pioneer diarists, but there was clearly some, especially along the creeks," he said.
But regardless, the pioneers did not have an easy time in Utah, and some people still feel the desert of Salt Lake did "blossom like a rose."
"Settling the Utah area in the 1840s and '50s was a challenge," Glen Leonard, director of the LDS Museum of Church History and Art, states on the church Web site, lds.org.
"They had left a lush farm area and came to an arid region. The soil was good, but the water was scarce. The seasons were short. So, Brigham Young wisely scattered the people out into small communities so that they had the natural resources — the water and the soil — and the community resources, the well-organized communities with different skills and talents, and then he just challenged them to make the desert blossom like a rose. And they did."
• Other handcart myths. Chad M. Orton, an archivist with the LDS Church's family history department, has researched various handcart pioneer legends. A recent newspaper obituary that made reference to one of the deceased's ancestors as deceased ancestor's as having been a handcart pioneer in 1847 best illustrates the wide misconceptions about of handcart pioneers. There were none in 1847.
• Missionaries at Martin's Cove in Wyoming occasionally mention to visitors that several tree stumps in the C cove offer evidence to prove the handcart pioneers were situated there. Neither Both Orton nor and Bashore has found have found no historical evidence to support that belief.
• Sometimes it is said that none of the survivors of the Willie and Martin handcart companies ever left the church. Orton said that's false because there were some who apostatized.
• There's also no evidence that handcart wheels were made out of green wood.
• Handcarts didn't carry everything these pioneers had. All handcart companies traveled with supply wagons that carried tents, extra food and other provisions too, according to Orton. One wagon was allocated for about every 100 members of a handcart company.
•The Mormon Pioneers universally were unique in one other way — no pioneer parties hired guides to take them west. Mormon Pioneers did all the advance research they could and then relied in the church leaders with them for guidance.

(Adapted from a July 24, 2008 story in the Deseret News, by Lynn Arave.)

"Great Stone Face": Obscure Utah Treasure For Mormons

By Lynn Arave

 Does a likeness of Joseph Smith Jr., first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, exist in the vast Millard County deseret, southwest of Delta?

Some believe so.

On a remote hillside in Utah's Sevier Desert, about four miles southwest of Deseret and some 17 miles southwest of Delta, rises a craggy volcanic outcrop. For almost seven decades, area residents and visitors have been attracted to the formation.

In it, they can discern the outlines of a man's features: head, brow, nose, mouth and even perhaps a high collar.

Welcome to the "Great Stone Face," or the "Guardian of Deseret," or "Keeper of the Desert." From a certain angle, notes the book "A History of Millard County," a 1999 entry in the Utah Centennial County History Series, "some see a resemblance to LDS Church founder Joseph Smith."

This remains a still seldom visited outdoor treasure for Mormons.
The Great Stone Face was originally called "Guardian of the Deseret" by Millard County newspapers during the 1920s, the era when it first claimed local fame as a tourist destination.
(Part of that reference is for the nearby town of Deseret.)

"Many Mormons see an uncanny resemblance of this naturally carved formation to profile pictures of church founder Joseph Smith," Millard County's official tourism site www.millardcounty.com reads.

Whether or not it is partly the power of suggestion, there definitely is a face to be spotted here in the rocks, though some may argue whose face.

Visitors have to decide that for themselves at the site, about 150 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

The rock pillar sits some 150 feet above the Sevier Desert floor amid a field of lava rock and sagebrush, with a view to Notch Peak to the west.

A steep scramble along a 400-yard-long trail takes hikers to the base of the monument over loose rock. A rugged path, outlined by lava rocks, marks the way.

Indian petroglyphs dating back about 1,000 years are found in the general area just north of the Great Stone Face. These markings are now highlighted by a new sign.

--To reach this natural wonder, travel to Delta and then go southwest on U.S. 6/50 about five miles and turn south on state Route 257.

Then travel about six miles south on S.R. 257 to a signed turnoff to the west (right).

Go west on the gravel road and travel for almost six miles to the north edge of the black lava beds. The gravel road — passable by cars in dry weather, though there are washboard ruts in the road in places and three cattleguards to cross — loops around the west side of the hill and ends at a small parking area. There is no admission fee. 

The petroglyphs are located just a few hundred yards before the parking lot and feature their own sign.
These inscriptions were jokingly called the first edition of the Deseret News back in the 1920s and 1930s by Millard County newspapers.

Hike south up the hillside, looking for the dominant rock. Those who can't or don't want to hike can still see the Great Stone Face from a distance, best viewed with binoculars.

This is a moderately strenuous hike up the hill side.

(The accompanying photos show the Great Stone Face, as well as the petyroglyphs sign.)

For more information on the Great Stone Face, go to:

http://www.millardcounty.com/places-to-see/great-stone-face.html

(Modified, but originally presented in the Deseret News,  May 13, 2010, by Lynn Arave.)

Last Visit To The Utah Noodle Parlor in Ogden: Closed for Years Now

I made my last visit to Ogden's Utah Noodle Parlor on Sept. 27, 2012.
The restaurant, 3019 Washington Blvd., closed its doors for good Saturday, Sept. 29, 2012.
It was a 60-plus-year-run for the Chinese restaurant and it was the last of about four historic Chinese eateries that were in downtown Ogden starting in the 1950s. Utah Noodle was the last of the four to shut down.
(Star, Bamboo and China Nite were the other three similar Ogden restaurants.)
Utah Noodle opened just after World War II on Grant Avenue, probably in late 1945, meaning it has been around for about 67 years (despite the sign in the restaurant saying just 60 years). It moved to its Washington Blvd. location in the 1960s.
 According to one of the workers, Utah Noodle is being closed because no one in the family would take over its operations. All of its management are in their 80s now. Two nephews who were interested in keeping it going, couldn't, because of health reasons. The original family owners died in the 1990s.
During my last visit, my wife and I both thought our food was as good as always, though the place had went somewhat downhill in recent years and had sported a for sale sign for about a month.
 Surprisingly, at 4 p.m. on Sept. 27, it was crowded. Only a few tables were open and about 55 patrons were eating there at the time. It was a long, 40-minute wait, for our food, probably because there was so many takeout orders going out the door.

As one man was overheard to say to waitress near my table, "I've been coming here since before you were born."
After the Ogden Standard-Examiner runs a story on Utah Noodle closing, later this week, I'd hate to be in line to go there on Friday or Saturday.
I'd say Utah Noodle had its peak in the 1990s.
I also believe the restaurant was indeed inconsistent during the past decade. It also didn't promote itself and many of its most loyal of customers died, or ended up in rest homes and were not replaced by a new generation.
In fact, the west seating area of the restaurant was never used in its final years, for lack of business.
The place was always closed on Monday and infamous in my family for closing during several weeks of the year, with little regularity and usually when my family was planning on eating there.
One thing Utah Noodle had in common with my family was that its paneling inside is identical to what's on the wall in my basement family room and hall. My wife's family also went there a lot in the 1980s and the 1990s for extended family meals.

UPDATE: May 2020: Almost 8 years after closing down, the old building that housed Utah Noodle is still vacant ...

Media Fallacy: Climbing is Not Hiking

Some things never change.
Often on mountain rescues, the media -- TV, radio and newspapers -- interchange hiking and climbing as if they are exactly the same thing.
This often leads to misleading representation about where a rescue was located.
Example: September of 2012. Several climbers require a very difficult rescue on what the media identifies as Willard Peak, north of Ogden
For several days after, I ponder how Willard Peak, as craggy as it is, could require such a technical rescue effort.
Finally, it is revealed in the media that the rescue actually took place on the London spire, a technical climbing area well below the actual summit of Willard Peak.
So, these 2 men were not really hikers, they were climbers and ill prepared at that.
Hiking is a sport that uses trails and does not require the use of ropes, cables or anything technical. You walk to hike.
Scrambling is kind of in between hiking and climbing, but still requires no special equipment.
Climbing is a technical sport that uses ropes, handholds, etc. to traverse a very steep area.
You might have to hike a ways to begin a climb, but the two are not the same, or interchangable.
The photo below shows the final climb up Mt. Olympus, east of Salt Lake City. It is not a pure hike, since the last few hundred yards are a scramble up a steep rock face, relying on crevices and foot holes in the rock.

The Utah Town That Isn't In Utah!

Many times jokes are made about Park City and/or Moab not really being Utah towns, based on their social and religious differences with most other municipalities in the Beehive State.
However, the one single town in Utah that truly isn't in Utah is Navajo Mountain.
Although this town's trading post, schools, Navajo Tribal office and U.S. Post Office are all at least three to five miles inside the Utah border, that's all there is to Utah about it.
The vast majority of vehicles you will spot in Navajo Mountain sport Arizona license plates.
The area code there is 928, Arizona based.
Also, the U.S. Post Office there states Arizona, instead of Utah.
Navajo Mountain is in southeastern Utah, with Page, Arizona, as the nearest town of significant size.
To reach this community, you have to travel deep into Arizona by way of Page or Monument Valley. Then, between the small Navajo towns of Kaibito and Shonto, just off highway 98, you go north into Utah.
So, the only access to this town is from Arizona. Hence, likely why Arizona dominates this Utah community.
Sitting on the southeast corner of Navajo Mountain, a free-standing, huge, whale looking kind of mountain that rises to 10,388 feet above sea level.
The photos below show: 1. a doctored sign near the community of Navajo Mountain; 2. what it looks like on the top of Navajo Mountain, looking north to Lake Powell; and 3. how rough and rugged the jeep road is up Navajo Mountain.

"Navajos consider Navajo Mountain as a sacred area, and ascending it is forbidden," as stated on the official Navajo Tribe recreation Web site,
http://www.navajonationparks.org/permits.htm
Notwithstanding, myself and several friends did officially aquire outdoor permits from the Navajo Mountain Tribal Office and visited its summit in 2005.
Although I had verbal permission days earlier from the area's tribal president to visit Navajo Mountain's summit, it took the explanation of a bet I had with my two buddies that you could see Rainbow Bridge with your naked eye from the top and north side of the Navajo Mountain Summit, to get them to issue us permits.
I did win the bet, as you can easily spot Rainbow Bridge from on top.
A rugged, narrow, winding jeep road accesses the summit of the mountain.
There are some cell towers on top of Navajo Mountain, so it could be argued it is not as sacred to the Native Americans as it used to be.
In fact, boating or camping on the south end of Lake Powell, you likely wont' have any cell phone service unless you can see Navajo Mountain -- a line of sight kind of thing.
Navajo Mountain was originally known as Paiute Mountain until about 1933.
It remains a mysterious place, full of solitude and solace.
The mountain domninates the area landscape and I'm very thanful I was lucky enough to visit it and enjoy its spectacular landscape.

Where's the Lost Rhoads Mine?

The Rhoads Mine is more than a Utah pioneer legend or fanciful story.
I believe it truly exists.
But, like Bigfoot, the Three Nephites, or the Lost Ten Tribes, it might be next to impossible to find.
If you are not up to speed on what the mine is, click on the link below, as it accesses a site that reprints one of the best single articles ever written on the Rhoads mine, a story by one of my friends and past colleagues, Twila Van Leer.
Most people up to speed on the Rhoads Mine seem to believe it exists somewhere in the Uinta Mountains.
I'm now leaning to a different location, further south.
I'm suspecting it may reside within the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
The place is off limits to just about anyone, except some Native Americans.
It is rugged territory and seems the perfect place to hide such a feature.
With the Book Cliffs and the Green River on its western boundary, it is a secretive and forbidding place.
There have been some reported Bigfoot sightings inside the reservation too, but none can enter to check them out either.
I've had imaginative dreams of finding the Rhoads Mine in the High Uintas, but my dreams need to change to this reservation, because if you go by odds that's where I'm betting  it is.
Many states have legends of Spanish gold, or mines. However, in Utah's case,the gold for the Angel Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple came from somewhere and that's the Rhoads Mine.
-And, there may be 8 or more total lost gold mines in the Uintas, or the surrounding area!



http://www.utahgold.org/Ugpcjan2008.htm

Mormons Before the 1950s: Crosses OK?

I found many old vintage photographs that I had never seen before in my mother's endless amount of stuff.
One picture in particular (and reproduced here) was dated 1946 and showed her entire family -- the Ray and Lida Rigby Family from Grace, Idaho.
What caught my eye the most was that my future Aunt Maurine, in the lower right of the picture, is wearing a large cross.
This confirms what I had already suspected: Mormons wearing crosses before the 1950s was OK and not frowned upon.
It was the 1950s when apparently both wearing crosses and having facial hair began to be shunned in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
(We're talking church policy here, not necessarily doctrine, in both practices.)
Wearing a cross in the LDS Church today is practically viewed as evil. Church leaders, and in some stakes even just an ordinary church member, having facial hair today is frowned on.
However, realize that it wasn't always that way for both practices.
Realize that a cross symbol is NOT evil. It is mentioned a lot in the Bible as a symbol of the Saints.
Now, it wouldn't be my symbol of choice. If I could create it, I'd personally choose to wear an empty sepulchre (tomb), instead of a cross, to celebrate the resurrection and an empty grave, instead of just the death of Jesus Christ.
I doubt Joseph Smith ever saw a cross on a church in his day, as Protestant churches didn't adopt the cross as a symbol until the decades after his death. Initially, Protestant churches viewed the cross as purely Catholic, something they wanted to stay away from.

-President Joseph Fielding Smith discussed crosses and LDS Church members in the March 1961 Improvement Era (forerunner to today's Ensign Magazine).
"Because our Savior died on the cross, the wearing of crosses is to most Latter-day Saints in very poor taste and inconsistent to our worship," President Smith wrote.
Later in the article he stated: "We may be definitely sure that if our Lord had been killed with a dagger or with a sword, it would have been very strange indeed if religious people of this day would have graced such a weapon by wearing it and adorning it because it was by such a means that our Lord was put to death."
President Smith stressed having a humble, contrite spirit and a sincere prayer of gratitude is a far better means of worship for our Savior's sacrifice and atonement that to adorn the cross.
He also said Church member do not question the sincerity of other religions who wear crosses, but it is simply a custom that does not appeal to LDS Church members.
-That's especially true because LDS Doctrine teaches that by far the most suffering of Christ took place in the Garden of Gethsemane and NOT on the cross, since the Garden is where the Savior took upon himself the sins of the world.

Grand Canyon: Tonto Trail Loop -- Some Solitude!

Above: Some of the dazzling scenery down the South Kaibab Trail en route to the Tonto Trail.

It's a "grunt," as one hiker I met on the Tonto trail exclaimed, but it is a challenging day hike in the Grand Canyon to take the South Kaibab trail down (4.6 miles), then the Tonto Trail West (4.6) miles across to the Bright Angel Trail and then that trail up and out of the canyon (4.9 miles).
All total it covers 14.1 miles and descends and climbs about 3,600 vertical feet.
It took me about 8 hours to hike the loop.
This is not an easy hike, it is very strenuous and I recommend only doing it in the spring, fall or winter.
And, whenever you do it, get an eary start in the morning.
For me and my son, Taylor, on May 20, 2012, we parked near the Bright Angel Lodge and then took the hiker express bus to the Kaibab trailhead.
So, when we finished, there was our car about 170 yards away.
You've got to carry ample water on this trip. In fact, of two mistakes we made on our hike, one was in not dumping our extra water over us to cool us down as we were halfway across the Tonto trail segment, where temperatures were into the mid 80s.
Our other mistake was that we failed to walk an extra hundred or so yards to look over the cliff and enjoy the view at the Tipoff. (So, we missed seeing Phantom Ranch and the suspension bridge.)
That second mistake was caused in part by our hurry to get away from a way too large hiking group of some 40 people together, who were making oodles of noise and disrupting our pleasant hiking experience. Fortunately, they on the Kaibab Trail only.
(There ought to be a law in National Park statute, that no groups of 12 or more people are allowed on such a trail! Sadly, there is such a directive in Zion National Park, but not the Grand Canyon.)
DO NOT hike the inner Grand Canyon on a weekend or holiday, unless you want to deal with bigger crowds of hikers.
Anyway, the pleasure of the Tonto trail is that it is wilderness. No signs, very narrow and super quiet. We only saw or met some 6 people on our two hour jaunt across that path. (Compare that to the hundreds of people we met on the other Grand Canyon trails.)
There are two water sources along the Tonto trail, if you purify the water. Otherwise, it is a very hot, pure desert kind of experience, with lots of cactus.
This segment of the Tonto trail is amazingly level and only has occassional ups and downs of any significance.
The Tonto trail is so long, because it has to go around the one big drainage that looms northwest from Cedar Ridge and O'Neill Butte.
I also recommend extra safety and caution along the Tonto Trail, because if you get into trouble there, a rescue could take hours longer than it would along the much more well traveled Kaibab and Bright Angel paths.
So, if you want a challenge and something different in the Grand Canyon, this might be it.
For me, after having done the inner canyon hikes on the south rim twice and once partially, plus the north rim to Ribbon Falls and back once, this was indeed a much different kind of hiking experience.

Also, with traffic on the Bright Angel and Kaibab trails now making them busy hiking freeways,the Tonto trail may offer the kind of solitude and true peace you are going to find in the inner Grand Canyon these days.
--It is one of those hikes I would probably never do again, but then that's because it is a grunt.
Also, it is kind of humorous to recall this one experience now, but as we crested a small ridge, we weren't sure where we were and we were tired and very hot. We spotted a sign that we thought said Indian Gardens 3 miles and intitally failed to spot the point on the .3 miles on the sign.
--I also have to complement the National Park Service. Somehow in recent years, they are covering or taking off a lot of the mule poop off the Bright Angel Trail regularly. This is a great improvement over my previous hikes there in 1984 and 1994.

Yosemite Fog Danger

IN addition to the gross lack of emergency communications with the public that Yosemite National Park (and likely what most NPs have), there is a key, lesser-talked about hazard in Yosemite -- thick fog along roads -- especially in spring time.
As I was driving down at dusk from Glacier Point in Yosemite on April 24, 2012, several large and thick patches of fog drifted a long the narrow roadway.
I simply could not belive how I could only see about 5-10 feet in front of the car. Without barely being able to see the yellow line in the middle of the road and white line on roadside, I was completely blind.
When i t gets dark in mountaineous Yosemite, where there is little light poillution and when there is no moon, it is cave dartk, pitch black, and fog and compound the problem.
Luckily the 2 patches of fog only lasted about 45 seconds each and the roadway cleared, but if some areas of Yosemite are ever completely fogged in, good luck!
Snow is one thing, but fog can be worse.

The accompanying photos show fog in Yosemite Valley on the morning of April 22, 2012. However, it is at night when such thick fog can be crippling to motorisits.

Trapped in Yosemite National Park!

OK, Yosemite National Park in central California is a pure paradise, a Garden of Eden, a  Shangri-La.

However, myself and three family members were trapped there overnight on April 22, 2012 and it was not a pleasant experience, not being prepared for an overnight stay, or having a bed or any bedding.

A huge sulphur spill just outside the south gate to Yosemite closed Highway 41 completely for some 36 hours and created a problem for hundreds of visitors.

We missed booking the last room in the historic Wawona Hotel, on south side of Yosemite, and had to crash in the lobby there  overnight. (The alternative was driving some four hours on winding canyon roads in the dark -- on  moonless night -- to get back to Bass Lake, where we were staying.)

Several dozen other guests were in the same boat, as the 40 vacant rooms in the Wawona had went quickly.

But a good night’s sleep you did not get and my mother with Alzheimer’s was particularly a problem. (But I guess we stayed free and saved the $165-plus hotel cost.)

Wawona is only 7 miles from the Yosemite Park gate and the spill just outside that gate at 5 p.m. on April 22 started several small fires and the cleanup kept the road closed until the morning of April 24.

No one ever explained why such hazardous materials were being transported through a national park and on such a winding, narrow road.

Also, this experience again shows that America’s National Parks are simply not prepared for any kind of disaster. All national parks appear to lack any kind of emergency communication systems.

For example, this  sulphur spill happened at 5 p.m. and when I left Yosemite Valley after 8:30 p.m., there was no ranger, no system in place to tell anyone the road was closed one hour’s drive away!

Drivers had to fend for themselves and discover the road closure on their own. I guess I expect more in this high-tech world of communications.

Wawona Hotel employees said in at least a decade, even snowstorms had not closed Highway 41 before so completely and so long term.

Wawona employees did the best they could, but even this hotel appeared to have no official emergency plan in place to deal with the situation.

Couldn’t Yosemite have placed a park ranger with a flasher at the south tunnel leaving Yosemite along Highway 41 to tell motorists of what was an hour ahead? It could have, but it didn’t.

Now I could have had some emergency things along in the car, but who would expect such a closure?

I counted at least 40 cars that turned around and headed back to Yosemite and exited a different gate late that evening. They all drove some 2 hours out of their way just to exit the park. Most had to be headed for Oakhurst or beyond and so they had a longer drive ahead after leaving the park.

I felt such a drive when it was such a dark, moonless night and I was so tired was simply not a wise choice. And, the chance of animals on the road was a possibility too.

The others, like me and my group, stayed at Wawona, probably another 40-plus vehicles. And, they all had to depart Yosemite the next day a different direction, with the south entrance still closed.

Ironically this road closure happened during the annual free admission to national parks weekend.

If there was a much larger disaster in Yosemite, the park’s communications are sorely  lacking.

Ideally, if Yosemite had 4 or so electronic message signs placed around the park, these could quickly alert drivers at any one of the four exits to the park of any problems ahead.

This was the SECOND time in 22 months that I’ve seen big gaps in National Park communications.

In mid-June of 2010, I entered the north gate of Yellowstone National Park one morning and  headed  an hour-plus drive  away for Tower Junction. When I reached Tower, the road southward was blocked.

An ice storm overnight had iced the road and so it was closed until mid-afternoon, when the sun had  melted the ice.

The park ranger at the north gate was not told anything about this closure  and once again, visitors had to fend for themselves.

I lost hours in unnecessary travel time that day.

The director of the National Parks System needs to realize how both Yosemite and Yellowstone have no emergency communications plans in place. They are some of the most popular and largest in all the parks system and so if they are lacking, likely every other national park is too.

UPDATE: My mother came down with bacterial pneumonia a week and a half after her trapped in Yosemite experience. She'll survive and I can't be sure that one bad night weakened her, but it certainly didn't help her.
SECOND UPDATE: The park superintendent finally responded to my plight, but stressed that rangers are too busy saving lives of climbers/hikers and the like in Yosemite to worry at all about road closures.

Why N. Utah's 'East Winds' Aren't Always From the East

Northern Utah's "canyon winds," or "east winds" are legendary. 
The last such wind event struck  April 30, 2016 to May 1, 2016  -- and before that, on April 9, 2013.
Residents will also not soon forget the much worse winds -- Dec. 1, 2011, when hurricane force winds hammered Davis and Weber counties in particular, causing a massive cleanup and millions of dollars in property damage.
(The damage from these winds was mostly so extreme, because it had been more than a decade since the Wasatch Front had any such wind events and so the damage came all at once, mostly from overgrown trees.)
Although the Dec. 1 winds were then the first in 12 years to hit, the winds were NOT always eastern winds and they scoured the Salt Lake Valley.
The key question is "why?"
Although I built my cedar fence strongest on the east side, that was pointless, since strong east winds have never hit my house.
In fact, the Dec. 1, 2011 winds that struck my property were straight from the north. (And they broke 4 posts along my fence's northern side.)
I asked  Dan Pope, a well-known TV meteorologist, to address the question on wind direction and why "east winds" aren't always east winds.
His explanation is intriguing and worth repeating, especially since no TV weathercaster has enough air time to provide this much detail.
Dan Pope's answer:
These ... winds were "mountain wave" induced. But, the topography does force the winds to veer with distance; and due to local hills, canyons and location they can change as they move away from the mountains. They also come in rolling as they slam the ground (spinning counter clockwise).
In North Salt Lake, I have always noticed a veering to the north, because the hills by and to the north of Eaglewood Golf Course, that force the eastward track around them to flow southward. These hills are also are northeast-southeast oriented, and with City Creek Canyon on the other side, the winds likely skip over the flat area above Meridian Peak and are pushed away from the hills, protecting some of the upper Bench of North Salt Lake from the worst gusts, while Bountiful, Centerville, Farmington and areas northward are directly in line with the Wasatch Mountains, and the "wave" effect.
When we have these kinds of winds, there is usually a low pressure spinning to our south. The upper level winds come from the east or preferably the Northeast. And, at the surface, the pressure is much higher in Wyoming and lower in Utah. In a low pressure like this, sometimes a little warmer air is wrapped in above the mountain tops. This creates an inversion at 12,000 or 13,000 feet, and keeps any wind from rising--and creates a Venturi effect. Plus, the Uinta Mountains line up directly east of Bountiful and Davis County, so all wind get pushed eastward towards the Wasatch mountains from extreme Northern Salt Lake County and Davis County northward.
Rule of thumb is that winds will be 2 to 4 times higher than at mountain top as they "roller coaster" down the slopes; and they will hit beyond the base of the mountains 1/2 to 3 or 4 miles out towards the Great Salt Lake. Then they fan out, and can go in multiple directions. To the south of Davis County, they fan to the south (a north wind) and northward the can even come in from the SE if a person lives more than 3 or 4 miles from the base of the Wasatch. But, more often than not, these winds veer to the south away from the Wasatch, because the surface pressure is lower to the south.
There are certain locations near the canyons and at the base of the Wasatch in Davis, and counties northward, where these winds can be severe right at the base. Bountiful, Centerville and Farmington, as well as NE Ogden, Brigham City and even Logan fall into this category.