City Creek Part1 : What a Difference a Month Makes

OK- I’m going to do 3 posts out of this one helmet-cam video. Today is mainly just teaser, but has a great before/after. Tomorrow I’ll have a Spring-catch-up, including a new wildflower*. And Wednesday** I’ll have a geo-post- all from the same video. How cool is that?***

*Not just any wildflower- a new monocot wildflower. Yes, that’s right- a new lily, blooming right now, in the foothills just above town.

**Well, hopefully Wednesday. Maybe Thursday. Or maybe next week- hey, I don’t know; it’s not like I get paid to do this, you know…

***Pretty F-ing Cool. That’s how.

As longtime readers know, I’ve been slacking this Spring. The previous 2 Springs I meticulously detailed each and every little bloom, leaf and weed. This year I’ve been goofing off with posts about everything from Race Camp to Vegas-Boondoggles to bribing Mexican cops to desert geology, totally blowing off Spring along the Wasatch Front. And that’s a shame, because we are having a glorious Spring. So I’m going to do a bit of quick catch-up, with the help of the helmet-cam.

Back in February, I did a post entitled “Bonk”, where I threw in a little snippet of this descent as helmet-cam video-filler:

On April 18, I filmed the same- but this time entire- descent, down into City Creek Canyon:

Side Note: BTW, the way these videos embed by default, they’re in low-def. You can watch them in high-def if you prefer. If it’s a YouTube* video, click on the lower right where it says “360p” and switch to “720p”. In Vimeo, click on the button on the upper right that says “HD is off” while the clip is playing and your mouse is over the video-screen. You’ll get an option to play the video in high-def.

*I use YouTube for shorter clips, Vimeo for longer ones. BTW, if there’s an obvious way to embed clips directly in high-def, please speak up.

Yesterday, May 16- 28 days later- I filmed the exact same descent* again:

*BTW, from about 4:04 to 5:16 is a stretch I blogged about 2 years ago in a post entitled “The Green Tunnel.” It still hasn’t leafed in all the way, but you start to get the tunnel effect in parts…

What a difference a month makes. I lose over 1,000 feet in this descent; notice the difference in the scrub oak leafing out from top to bottom. Also check out 2:36 on the left and 4:10 on the right, both of which I plan to blog about this week. Oh man, this’ll be fun.