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Tag: boulder

Surprise Canyon & Headquarters Canyon

Canyons of the Waterpocket Fold | Southern Utah Wanderings
Friday & Saturday, October 9-10, 2020

While Jared and I had an early dinner in Tropic on Friday evening after hiking through Lower Hackberry Canyon earlier in the day, we discussed our plans for the remainder of the evening and for Saturday. We already knew that Saturday was going to be our last day of the trip since we both needed to get home to get ready for the upcoming week and the following weekend, but we really had no other plans at this point. I suggested that we should head over to the Burr Trail to find a campsite for the night and then we could spend a few hours hiking in Capitol Reef National Park on Saturday morning before heading back home. We decided this sounded like a good plan since it would help cut down some of our drive time back home on Saturday, so after we were done eating we headed in that direction. I guess we would be finishing our week-long trip into Southern Utah at Capitol Reef again, just like last year!

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The Boulder Mail Trail

Canyons of the Escalante | Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Tuesday, October 1, 2019

The Old Boulder Mail Trail is a 15 mile trail that was originally established in 1902 as a mail route that linked the isolated towns of Escalante and Boulder Town and was traversed by pack mules twice-weekly to carry mail, medicine and occasional travelers. In 1911 a telephone line was strung between trees, rocks and poles along the route by the Forest Service to connect the ranger stations in both towns. The ranger in Boulder even let the townspeople tie in with their own lines. Some of the glass insulators can still be seen in the treetops along the trail today. The line was used until 1955 when a microwave system replaced it. When Utah Highway 12 was completed in 1940 the Boulder Mail Trail fell into disuse.

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The Upper Escalante River & Lower Death Hollow

Canyons of the Escalante | Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Sunday & Monday, September 29-30, 2019

After spending Saturday hiking through Phipps Wash and Deer Canyon, we were ready to begin our overnight backpacking trip through the Escalante River Gorge on Sunday morning. The previous night we had found a campsite on Big Spencer Flats and had done our best to prepare for the high winds and storms that were forecasted overnight. It did stay pretty windy out for much of the night and there was a little on and off rain, but not enough that anything was still wet in the morning. It was still pretty windy out when we got up shortly before sunrise, but there were plenty of nice clouds in the sky and the sunrise was looking good, so we grabbed our cameras and took a few photos around camp.

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Canyons of the Escalante: Phipps Wash & Deer Canyon

Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Friday & Saturday, September 27-28, 2019

Back in early October of 2010, Jared and I started our annual tradition of going on a week-long trip to different parts of the Colorado Plateau together. That first trip started out along the Hole-In-The-Rock Road in the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument, so we decided to return to where it all began this year and planned to spend an entire week hiking around the Canyons of the Escalante. I was really looking forward to our trip this year since it seems like I’ve been neglecting the Escalante area for a couple of years and I felt that I was overdue to return! This year we planned to hike a few of the more popular routes in the area that we have skipped over the years and I wanted to try to stay away from the Hole-In-The-Rock Road. We were also going to try to take advantage of having both our vehicles there by doing hikes that we could shuttle ourselves.

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Flash Floods & Fall Colors

Southern Utah Wanderings 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015

After a night filled with thunderstorms, I woke up shortly after sunrise on Monday morning to more rain! While I stayed in my tent waiting for a break in the rain, I realized that the rainfly on my tent cot was no longer waterproof. Water had leaked in on both sides of the tent and got a few things wet inside. It looks like I’m going to have to do something about that before using this tent in the rain again. Laying in my tent I was able to hear the sound of rushing water coming from the nearby wash and I could tell that it was flash flooding. As soon as Jared was out of his tent we hopped into my Jeep and went to check out the flash flooding nearby. While many of the drainages around us were flowing, the wash that flows through Horse Canyon was flooding pretty good.

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