Stay Salty | Dispatch from a Different Great Lake
This past weekend I took a truly fantastic trip to Salt Lake City. My best friend from college called me a few months ago after listening to a piece on NPR about the Great Salt Lake and the fact that, at current rates, the lake will essentially dry up in the next five to ten years. We have to see it before it’s gone, she said.
And so we did.
The Great Salt Lake has always challenged a conventional definition of what a lake is; it has never been a lake resembling the freshwater Great Lakes. For hundreds of thousands of years it has been like a giant organism breathing in and breathing out. It does not have distinct boundaries and shorelines. Instead over long cycles, the water expands outward over the marshland and desert and then contracts inward, leaving wide berths of mud and dry land.
This is due to the fact that the Great Salt Lake does not have the same intake and outtake footprint of most lakes. Most lakes have rivers and smaller water channels that bring water in and out, keeping the lake at a somewhat steady level. The Great Salt Lake does not have these conventional rivers carrying water out (there is some limited river water bringing water in), and so the water level is mostly dictated by temperature and rain. When it is cooler and wetter, the lake rises and expands. When it is hotter and drier, the lake contracts due to evaporation.
The sustained drought and generally warmer temperatures of the western US, along with water diversion for agricultural and residential growth have merged to create the conditions drying out the Great Salt Lake. There has been some reprieve over 2023 and 2024 with rainfall in California that makes its way down to the lake, but it’s not enough to reverse the current trend.
Current conditions are also making the Great Salt Lake even saltier. Its salt content is mostly a geologic phenomenon of the specific place, with tons of salt accumulated over time. Without the aforementioned outflow of water, salt and other minerals build up in the lakebed. This condition has created a unique ecologic place. There are few plants and animals that can survive in the waters. Some of the wetland plants have evolved in wildly unique ways to avoid the toxicity of the salt. At the Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve, a Nature Conservancy property, we read about Greasewood, which sheds leaves when they have become too salty, and Shadscale, which traps salt in glands on its leaves. The glands then explode when full of salt, resulting in leaves covered with what look like tiny crystals.
Three full days in SLC was perfection. We spent one day on and around the lake, one day in the city, and one day in the mountains. We stayed in The Avenues, a charming neighborhood to the west of the University of Utah campus. We saw and learned about the lake at Antelope Island State Park and the Shorelands Preserve.
Our day in the city was a full one:
- Tracy Aviary at Liberty Park: A real treasure. Even non-birders will fall in love with the residents at this place.
- Visit to the Maven District: A new commercial area of locally-owned shops and cafes.
- Red Butte Garden and Arboretum: It was a beautiful time of year to see the wide range of native and non-native plants nestled in the hills here.
- Hike to Ensign Peak at sunset overlooking the city: This is the place where Brigham Young and men stood and decided that the valley would be where the early Mormons would settle.
On our final day we headed up into the Wasatch Mountains and Big Cottonwood Canyon for two hikes – Willow Lake and Donut Falls. There was snow on the ground! But it was really temperate outside (low 50s) with brilliant sun.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have been able to take this trip with a loved friend. At this specific moment. A strikingly different physical place offered the space and breathing room to pause, reflect, and reset.
Sometimes we all need a reset.
