Great Salt Lake: More than meets the nose

SALT LAKE CITY — Famed Western writer Wallace Stegner called it "a desert of water in a desert of salt and mud and rock" — an apt description for Utah's dead sea.

Only brine shrimp, which are less than a half-inch long, some bacteria and algae can survive in its waters, which are three to five times saltier than the ocean. But everyone gets a whiff when stiff winds blow the lake's peculiar odor — known affectionately as "lake stink" — into the Salt Lake Valley.

For adventurers who can look past their nose, this desert of water — much like the desert playa it spreads across — is desolately beautiful. It spreads across 1,200 square miles and is home to hundreds of bird species, three state parks and a piece of modern art, Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty."

On a bright fall day near the lake's northernmost tip, a field of salt stretched out from what was formerly a rocky shoreline. Amid the icelike field were old pilings covered in crystalline salt, like open-air stalagmites. The Spiral Jetty juts out. Entirely exposed, the black basalt boulders once outlining the jetty have, like everything else, been overtaken by a thick crust of white. Sunglasses are a must.

Smithson created the "earthwork" in 1970 using black rocks from eons-old volcanic activity and sand. The jetty is 15 feet wide and stretches out 1,500 feet counterclockwise from the shore. Coral-pink water — turned that color by salt-loving bacteria — once covered the jetty, leaving it visible only from the air. But the region's five-year drought, which has dramatically dropped water levels, has left the jetty bone dry, said Wally Gwynn, a saline geologist for the Utah Geological Survey.

Small white signs with black lettering direct the curious to Smithson's work, which typifies his experimentation with environmental art and crude materials.

For those familiar only with the lake's postcard scenes of turquoise waters against an alpine backdrop, the jetty is but one of several hidden gems.

About 25 miles as the crow flies southeast of the Spiral Jetty is the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, a 74,000-acre sanctuary and home to more than 220 different bird species throughout its 75-year history.

A recent drive in the refuge's 12-mile tour route revealed a few solitary great blue herons standing majestically in the reeds, along with flocks of ducks, geese, soaring pelicans and chattering California gulls. The gulls are Utah's state bird, so designated after they devoured crickets that were destroying Utah's crops in 1848.