It's the loneliest place in Davis County.
Solitude here is usually measured in days. A man on this mountaintop can be the only human around for at least a five-mile radius and for 22-hour periods. Only the howling wind, all-too-close thunder and airplanes crack the vast mountain silence.Lightning strikes frequently here and despite safety rods, sizzles fist-sized holes in the radar domes and sends a shock of electricity throughout the facility.
If you work here, there are six or more days a year when you won't make it to work at all. The mountain is a magnet for snow. High winds, 24-foot-high snow banks, whiteouts and blizzards sometimes make this road impassible in winter.
Still, thousands of pilots and even more air travelers rely on Francis Peak for their very lives in avoiding air collisions and for a relay of vital weather information.
In winter, you won't bother to open your two western doors here. That's because a 15-foot-high wall of snow - some 60 feet thick - blocks those entrances.
Weather is a fierce phenomenon at Francis Peak. The facility gave up on having weather instruments because they were either blown away by the high winds - estimated to have exceeded 140 mph - or else smashed by falling ice blocks. Indeed, the first garage up here blew off the mountain.
When your sewer system clogs up or freezes - as it did this winter - it's a long way to beg Roto-Rooter to go.
Welcome to Francis Peak, the last true outpost in the county. It's 13 miles by a rugged, winding dirt road to the nearest paved road and another mile or so to the closest town, Farmington. Located east of Fruit Heights at an elevation of 9,515 feet above sea level, the twin white, geodesic-shaped domes tower almost a vertical mile above the valley below. At night, they're illuminated, and only a full moon is brighter.
The futuristic domes are an important component of the Federal Aviation Administration's long-range aircraft control radar system. They provide a 200-mile radar radius for the Salt Lake International Airport and have 500 million watts of power.
The airport itself has a 60-mile approach radar, but the Francis Peak station - like several other Intermountain domes on mountains - keeps planes from colliding.
Directly east of the Kaysville I-15 exit, Francis Peak was once Davis County's most craggy mountain summit. However, some 22,000 cubic yards of material and 32 feet of the peak's height were removed to level the site for the radar domes.
Now the peak is taller than ever, topped by the Federal Aviation Administration and Air National Guard's joint facilities.
A routine check of the 200-mile radius one March afternoon here showed 284 different aircraft within range.
There were numerous nests of rattlesnakes uncovered in the building process - despite the site's almost 2-mile-high elevation.
In total, workers claimed to have killed 92 rattlers and there were even reports of three "copperhead" snakes there.
FAA technicians believe these snake stories are true. They say they see far more rattlers at 9,000-plus elevation than they do down lower.
Cougars and bobcats are spotted periodically around the site, though the stories of a regular bear visiting here in the 1960s is apparently legend. Also, the many squirrels in the area have all but disappeared in the past several years.
The electronic equipment at Francis Peak has backups and is so sensitive it can even spot cars on I-15 or I-80, though as radar waves are reflected across the Great Salt Lake they bend, and a tricky science is required to compensate.
There's also more than just two noticeable domes here. There is an underground house - several bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, living room, library and an office - located underneath the domes since they are manned 24 hours a day by technicians.
The north dome is operated by the FAA, while the Air National Guard has the south dome, though it doesn't man it full-time. Still, the Guard has its own separate living facilities if needed.
The FAA kitchen has a refrigerator, oven and microwave. The living room boasts a fax machine, copier and TV. There are enough telephones (using a microwave link) scattered throughout the facility's several dozen rooms to make even US WEST jealous.
Heat is from electricity, though because the electric cable isn't fully buried through Shepard Canyon, outages do happen. There is a backup diesel generator that can run everything for up to 13 days.
Clyde Hostetler of Sandy is the veteran technician at the domes with 37 years of experience. He said he'll retire this June so he can play more golf. He's also concerned with recent FAA cutbacks in personnel and is glad to be calling it quits soon.
He's made almost 8,000 trips to the radar domes since 1961 and knows the tricky road and its dangers well.
If there's one thing he dislikes most about working there, it's all the snowmobiles the area attracts. He said in recent years it has become tougher to get up Farmington Canyon to the domes because of all the trailers/trucks partially blocking the dirt road.
In the winter, the gate at the top of Farmington Canyon that leads to the domes is locked to keep snowmobilers away from hazardous snow removal equipment.
During the warms months of the year, the FAA gate to the north fork of the Farmington Canyon road is open, and that means the domes have a lot of visitors. At times, the technicians have treated injured hikers or bikers.
Until two years ago, the remote facility was plagued by vandalism. However, the living quarters were upgraded from wood to cinderblock, and that took care of most of those problems. The facility was also reinforced against severe cold and wind.
Hang gliders also like to launch from near the radar domes, since it is the highest point in the nation where a car can be driven and a glider can take off.
Ken Hansen of Pleasant View is the working supervisor for the technicians. Robert Hill of Centerville, Curtis Clark of Layton and Joseph Cisneros of West Valley City comprise the rest of the rotating crew.
Hansen said they all rotate 28-hour shifts at the radar domes, with a several hour crossover in shifts. They all do maintenance to ensure the equipment works properly. If anything breaks, they fix it.
Someday, GPS - satellite location technology - may phase out some of the importance of facilities like Francis Peak. However, Hostetler said such radar sites will still likely be needed for their primary radar and backup equipment. Also, GPS doesn't give weather information to pilots.
Hansen said the FAA's goal is to eventually create a situation where the Francis Peak site can be unmanned most of the time.
"Access is a problem," he said.
The FAA maintains the entire road to the site year-round with a giant rotary snowblower, grader and two Cats. In winter, that's great for snowmobilers and winter campers. Otherwise, the public would likely be unable to travel up the canyon because of snow blockage - unless the Forest Service did the expensive maintenance work.
The snowdrifts here don't fully melt until early August in most years. In early 1975, a slide created one drift over the road that was more than 70 feet deep.
You can't enter the FAA's radar dome because of RF radiation danger.
"It'll make you sterile," technicians joke.
However, a trip inside the Air Guard's fiberglass dome is safe, though the deafening echo there makes conversation almost impossible.