Proposed Title: Sundance Spirit
“It was so beautiful that I couldn’t pull myself away. The mountain, Timpanogos, was to me like Everest. It was Yosemite on a different scale. Spiritually, it was fascinating. When I left, I couldn’t shake it off. I lay in bed and thought about it. And when I had the chance to go back, I did.”
-Robert Redford, from his biography by Michael Feeney Callan
I first visited Robert Redford’s Sundance in January of 2000. I drove with a friend to Salt Lake City after work on a Friday night. I ended up cross country skiing and having a bite to eat at the Foundry Grille at Sundance the next day. It was to be a short trip for we drove back to Colorado the next day and were at work again on Monday morning. But like Redford or maybe because of him, I too was drawn to this place located about 45 minutes south of Park City, Utah.
My family and I recently vacationed in Park City and the lure of Sundance beckoned again. My wife and I actually visited two times, for the breakfasts at the Foundry Grille were to die for. But there was something else that lured us. We had heard there was a private trail for the guests of the Sundance Resort that led to what is known as the Stewart Cascades. We were told that it was an easy trail and it was not to be missed.
Missed is almost what we did in just trying to find the trailhead. If they want this trail to be hidden and hard to find, mission accomplished. I had to ask several people the trailhead’s location and then walked right by the stone marker that was concealed by overgrown grass.
Overgrown seemed to be the theme of this trail from the get go. The trail was very narrow, slanted, rolling, and looked more like a trek through the North Woods of Michigan rather than the mountains of Utah. We saw ferns and lush vegetation that encroached the trail at every opportunity. It was a wild trail for sure.
As we proceeded down the trail, we could hear and then see the roaring cascades known as Stewart Falls. When we arrived at the base of the falls, there was so much spray from the cascading water that a photograph of the falls put your camera at risk of getting seriously wet. I managed to take a quick shot from the side and then we headed back down the trail.
I wondered if this trail was left natural unpurpose or if they had had such a wet summer that it was just a little out of control. It did seem to fit in with the rest of the rustic surroundings though. This particular adventure was just another piece of the puzzle that is Sundance.
They shot the movie Jeremiah Johnson starring Robert Redford on and near this location. An old mountain man early in the movie sizes up Johnson and then proceeds to test him. He says, “Now boy, are you sure you can skin Griz?” Johnson cock sure replies, “Just as fast as you can fetch ‘em.”
Well in the movie, the old mountain man rustles up a Grizzly and has it chase him down into the cabin where Johnson is. Amongst the ensuing chaos, the old mountain man jumps out the back window of the cabin and yells to Johnson, “Skin ‘em pilgrim and I’ll fetch ya another!”
I saw a picture of that cabin hanging on the wall at Sundance with a caption that indicated that the photo was taken near Stewart Falls. Although our adventure did not include a close encounter with a grizzly bear, we now understood a little better the spirit of what it must have been like to walk in Redford’s shoes back in the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment