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Over the weekend my friend Derek and I did a short backpacking trip into Maybird Gulch, a minor sub-drainage of Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City. Amazingly, on a Friday night our only company was a pack of coyotes (or perhaps this isn’t so amazing—most of Maybird is very steep and/or rocky terrain).

There’s a nameless peak on the ridge dividing Maybird from Hogum Fork that I’ve long been interested in climbing. We traversed along its knife-edged south ridge but turned around when we started doubting our ability to cling to the rocks in the 40+ MPH wind gusts. Down at our campsite the winds were lower but it was still a pretty noisy night. Unlike most years in mid-June, the snow was almost gone; we were lucky to find enough to cool down the beer.