Neff Creek Canyon

Voici, des images de Neff Canyon.

Neff Creek is a canyon near my folk's house. I usually take the main trail up the canyon. For this photo session, I decided to take a quick walk up the south fork. If you are will to do some exposed scrabling (a rope and the company of an experienced mountain climber advised), you can get to the top of Mount Olympus from the south fork of Neffs.

I took these pictures in early October. I keep finding faults with the migration of Protophoto.com to its new server. This is delaying me from adding new pics.

Back to the canyon. I first visited Neff's Canyon when we moved into Salt Lake. In the 70s, I recall the south fork being filled with this beautiful loamy loose soil. There were abundant flowers in the soil. Unfortunately, just visiting the area was causing great harm to the fragile eco system. As much as I loved the south fork area, I stopped visiting it because I did not want to be part of the problem. Anyway, during the last several decades, most of the soil has been washed away. There still a magical forest in the rock soil, but few new trees. This, my friends, is called desertification. The little Alpine areas just outside Salt Lake Valley are systematically becoming part of the Great Salt Lake Desert. Ferguson Canyon is currently undergoing the last stages of degradation. When the last of the nature is gone, it will be a good place for a condo.

BTW, Neff houses the deepest cave in the US. I understand that the cave is shut off to spelunkers. While making the Neff Gallery, I was thinking that an effort should be made for a robotic exploration of the Cave. The old caving reports said the cave had crappy unstable sides, a robot attached to a long Cat 5 wire just might be able to do a charting of the cave with only a minimal disruption of the soil.