I love the mountains, but one drawback in the Salt Lake Valley is the occasional temperature inversion when cold air settles in the valley, covered by a layer of warm air. The air temperature is inverted from the normal pattern where air cools with increasing altitude. The result is a lack of convection (rising air) that traps particulates, emissions, and vapor producing a murky smog. The mountains act like a basin keeping the cold air from escaping. The inversion can last for days or weeks until a storm clears out the cold air.

View of Salt Lake Valley and Oquirrh Mountains, taken by my son this afternoon --->

The New York Times has a piece on southern Utah, specifically the Escalante area. The writer takes a few risks to bring back an account of the fearsome Peek-a-Boo slot canyon:

I had lost sight of the first stone cairns almost immediately, as I stumbled down to the dry river wash at the bottom of the ravine. (“Water is scarce,” the printout helpfully noted.) After a few false leads, I made it to Peek-a-Boo Canyon, whose hard-to-spot entrance was surrounded by what looked like a shallow pool: I took a step in and sank straight up to my thighs in thick mud. As the sun continued to climb in the sky, I wished for my own Ute guide — or at least a GPS tracking system.

Hugging the canyon wall for shade, I pressed on heroically and found Spooky Canyon, named for its otherworldly atmosphere. It was only an 18-inch-wide crack in the rock, but to me it yawned like the gateway to Shangri-La.

As I squeezed inside, the air was immediately cool and fragrant. The sky appeared to be an electric blue sliver far above, and the reflected light made the golden sandstone seem to glow from within. I remained utterly still, in a lizardlike state, knowing that I couldn’t hide in there forever.

Finally, I drank the last of my water and staggered across the rock like a sun-struck character out of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” I was parched, scratched, encrusted with mud — but triumphant.

Well, the esteemed proprietor of Anatreptic.com, Mick Stockinger, and I and my brother-in-law strolled down to Peek-a-Boo Canyon and Spooky Gulch a while ago. It's great but we missed the dramatics. It really is tempting to scoff at the Manhattan pantywaist, but the truth is that the difference between a stroll in the park and a scary adventure is very little. A wrong turn, a twisted ankle, disorientation, demoralisation, dark - and that's just Central Park let alone the wildest part of the contiguous USA.

Another difference tho is experience. There's a discreet gap between hiking and mountaineering apart from technique. Mountaineering is much tougher physically and calls for judgement under stress as well as a likelihood of spending nights in a bivouac. So on a trek, however tough, a mountaineer tends to be confident that he has something in hand. That can lead to comic mistakes of course. "Hey I thought you brought the compass."

There's an obvious political moral here, but I'll let that lie.

Mark shows us the view from his window, meanwhile, back West, the host city for the 2002 Olympic Curling event, Ogden, has to haul snow in for Winterfest. I took this photo with my I-phone this morning, in front of my office.

The Obama family is on vacation in Acadia, an island of Maine which is also a US National Park. Yesterday they ascended Mount Cadillac, 1530 feet, the high point of the island.

I visited Acadia in January 2001. In 4 days on the icy, rocky trails I saw 4 other hikers.
Here's a ditty I left in the visitors' book of the b and b to record the names of all the Acadian hills I hiked:

Acadia, Mansell, Bernard, Beech,
Sauveur, Penobscot, Valley Peak,
Pemetic, Sargent, Dorr, North Bubble,
Gorham, Champlain, Connor Nubble:
I banged my head on icy tracks
All for the sake of Cadillac.
Imagine my concussive shock-
We could have driven to the top.
Goddamn!

'Goddamn!' could as well read 'D'oh!' except that it echoes this parody by Ezra Pound:

Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,
Goddamm.
So 'gainst the winter's balm
Sing Goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm
Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,
DAMM.