I was in Utah over the weekend, primarily for a meeting of my vacation spot's HOA finance committee, but also to get out into the mountains, hike, maybe mountain bike a bit, and generally enjoy the outdoors. There was a lot of good, interesting information exchanged at the meeting that has wider implications and about which I will comment tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I chose to leave the nice camera home and took the little pocket one. Figured I would rather hike unimpeded than hike with a bunch of camera stuff on my back. I also generally prefer not to have lots of carry-on baggage with me when I forget to check-in early and end up in the Southwest "C" boarding group.

Leaving the good camera was a bad choice. It was a great weekend for photography and a much worse one for hiking. These conditions don't lend themselves to navigating across the terrain unless you also have snowshoes, a rope, preferably a partner, and a variety of other safety gear:

American Fork Twins

In fact, there were still a few guys skiing out there, coming off the top of the Snowbird tram which runs year-round. I thought about it chucking everything and taking a run or two, but decided that the beginning of June was not the best time to start skiing after four months, especially with the bottom 1/2 of the mountain mostly mud and rocks.

Probably could have driven to a lower elevation and found something nice, but driving would have defeated the whole purpose of being there.

So I contented myself with time in the pool with a few glasses of wine and as much photography I could do with my little "toy" digital. My friend Leo has recently been experimenting with freeware stitching software to make panoramas from multiple images, and I found the top of the Snowbird Tram to be a good place to play with the possibilities. I will post my attempts as soon as I have them put together.

And of course I dined at my usually spot, hoping for a Larry appearance. As is his habit in the summers, he was off in the trees somewhere, presumably eating pine nuts and not needing any helpings of bread. So, here's a photo of him or one of his friends, taken in January:

Larry loves bread

-btc