In north Utah County, the mountains have a story to tell.

These days, though, the meaning of this pioneer folk wisdom is beginning to fade into history as fewer and fewer people can agree on just exactly what the old-timers said the stories of the mountains meant.

The most well-known feature is the so-called Sleigh Runner, a downward expanse of snow on the face of Box Elder Peak east of Alpine that is among the last to melt from the mountaintop each year.

"I look at it all the time. It is easy to look at from home," said Tim Chadwick, a long-time resident of American Fork. "If there is snow on Sleigh Runner on the sixth of June, you will have water all summer long."

This wisdom dates back to a time when there were only 3,000 people in American Fork, compared to nearly 30,000 now, he said.

Other Alpine residents place the date at July 24. Dorothy Loveridge, a long-time resident of Alpine, remembers yet another date.

"If there is still snow in Sleigh Runner at the first of August, you don't have to worry about water," she said. "Sometimes we get people moving in from California and they say it looks like a J-shape or something and we say no, it is a sleigh runner."

Rulon McDaniel, who at 76 years old is a fifth-generation Alpiner, says that for decades he has noted in his journal each year when the last snow melts from Sleigh Runner.

"I look at it with a telescope to make sure it really is the last snow," he said. "I also write down the first snow in the fall."

McDaniel's family has a long history with Sleigh Runner.

"The snow drifts up there in winter are 30 or 40 feet deep," he said. "I am acquainted with that area because my family always had a cabin up there until 1990 when it was destroyed by fire. It was built in 1931."

The legend around Sleigh Runner and what it may have meant to the pioneers is hogwash, he said.

"Some people say that when it melts it is an indication of the water we will have, but the old-timers never referred to it like that, that is the newcomers," he said. "I never much heard that until the last 25 or 30 years. It might be some kind of indicator, but there are no farmers left here to worry about it."

Paul Strong, who works for the American Fork Post Office, says there is another legend written briefly on the mountain each year -- the image of a turkey.

This image is a bit harder to find unless someone in the know can point it out to you. Strong says he was told, years ago, that the image of a turkey is formed for a week or two each year in the peaks south of Sleigh Runner. When the turkey appears, it means the high-water season has started, and when the turkey melts, it means the threat of high water has peaked.

"Last year the turkey melted in May," he said.

This year, the turkey is still visible but the beak has just begun to melt away in the past couple of days.

Chadwick, Loveridge and McDaniel said they have never heard of the image of a turkey in the snow.

"There is also supposed to be a woman laying along the top of the mountain but I never could figure that one out," McDaniel said. "I guess you have to have an imagination. I guess you could look at the mountain and see about anything. There is, on the face of one peak, the picture of an animal that appears above Mud Spring."

Many things have changed in the past few decades, he said. The waterfall above Alpine that is now commonly referred to as Horsetail Falls was never called by that moniker when McDaniel grew up in the town.

"Horsetail Falls used to never be called that," he said. "There is a much bigger falls above that and we used to just call them Upper and Lower Falls. I guess anyone can name anything anything they want. I've heard two or three names for Sleigh Runner -- the Fish Hook and the J. But it will always be the Sleigh Runner to those of us who are old-timers in town. But now we are the minority."