house, hike and hops

Big day on Saturday, 11/7/09, my last unemployed Saturday. First we met with a real estate broker to help us buy our new SLC-area house. We’re focusing on the Cottonwood Heights/northeast Sandy/Holladay areas and not fifteen minutes after we met with Matt he had sent us an emailed report with 144 possibles. We then spent Sunday driving by many of these possibles and have winnowed that list down to, like, three that we’d want to see the inside of. Hmm. That’s okay – we’re just starting the process and I refuse to get discouraged at the outset.


After the meeting with the broker, we drove up Little Cottonwood Canyon to the White Pine/Red Pine trailhead, just before Snowbird resort. We hiked up to the Red Pine Lakes, Lower (elevation gain from trailhead of 1940 feet; actual elev. 9640 ft.) and Upper (actual elev. 10,000 ft.). We crossed streams several times, walking on a well-maintained tho' quite icy (in spots) trail, which went around the end of a ridge before entering the Red Pine Canyon drainage. Here we had great views down Little Cottonwood Canyon … and then it started gaining some serious up. High above us the rock walls were jagged and dramatic; we saw lots of moose sign –tracks and poops – but no actual moose; and we passed an old mine dump and missed having Captain Mike’s informative historical commentary … but were impressed with ourselves for recognizing it for what it was, at least.


We had water and snacks at the Lower Lake before pressing on to the Upper, about 400 vertical feet above us. It was really steep, with the snowy footpath having been packed into slick ice for most of the way, and for some reason I was really sucking wind, feeling like I was climbing Everest and having to stop every 25 feet or so to breathe. This was where the trail went from being "easy," per our book, to "intermediate." The spectacular scenery up at our goal made it worthwhile, however, and we made pretty good time on the decent, despite the treacherous footing. Couldn’t dillydally, you see, we had places to be.


The U of U football game vs. New Mexico (NM was 0-8 going into the U game) had a 4:00 p.m. start. We didn’t get tickets this time, instead setting our sights on Lumpy’s (formerly a “Social Club” but now just a sports bar at 3000 So. Highland Drive, SLC). Our fabulous guidebook told us that it is “an institution among sports fans. On big-game night hundreds of U of U boosters don their red clothes and head for Lumpy’s to root on the running Utes. They even run busses to and from games at the U.” Well, we missed the crowds, getting there around 5 p.m., but managed to score a couple of seats at the bar. There are two bars, actually, upstairs for the older crowd and their bottled Bud and downstairs for the young upstarts with their fancy draft microbrews. We sat upstairs and thus made the poor (giant and gruff) bartender go down to the other bar for our Full Suspension drafts - by the way, what sort of establishment only has taps in one of the two bars? that's weird, right? - but he warmed up to us when he read the back of H’s 420 IPA/Sunday River Brewing Company t-shirt and realized we were from Maine: his sister lives in Newcastle and he himself is a transplant from Massachusetts (“Came here for a year in 1992 …”).

We were starved after the hike and since our book recommended Lumpy’s food, H got a loaded pizza (11 inches with pepperoni, sausage, onion, olives and mushrooms for $8.00) and I got a chicken pot pie ($7.00: basically tasty chicken soup with a buttery puff pastry crust which, when broken up and pushed down into the pie/soup, was softly delectable, filling and soooooooo tasty). Now, I don’t want to endanger my Loyal Customer status but between the yummy and cheap food and the GIANT mugs of beer for only $4.00, Lumpy’s is in the running for new favorite place.

Oh: the Utes beat the Lobos 45-14. Next weekend: away game at #4 TCU … Lumpy’s is going to be a madhouse!