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Month: February 2015

Devils Garden Primitive Loop

Saturday, February 21, 2015

This weekend Diane and I went on another day trip to Arches National Park so we could hike the Devils Garden Primitive Loop. It has been a number of years since I last hiked the loop so I was looking forward to getting back, and this would be Diane’s first time hiking beyond Landscape Arch. We left bright and early on Saturday morning and made it to the Devils Garden trailhead shortly after the sun had come up. Good thing we weren’t planning on photographing the sunrise this morning since it was still pretty overcast when we started the hike.

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President’s Day Weekend on Cedar Mesa

Saturday – Monday, February 14-16, 2015

Diane and I spent Valentine’s Day and the long President’s Day weekend on Cedar Mesa for our very first camping trip of the year. We setup our base-camp at the Natural Bridges National Monument campground and enjoyed the beautiful spring-like weather all weekend. The temperature never dropped below freezing at night and was a very comfortable mid-sixties during the day. It was nice hiking weather in the middle of February and a great time to get outside to explore the Colorado Plateau! We spent the weekend revisiting a few ruins and searching remote canyons for new ones. Here are plenty of photos from our weekend adventure!

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Gunnison Gorge: Ute Trail to the Gunnison River

Sunday, February 8, 2015

After spending yesterday in Utah I decided to try hiking some new trails closer to home today. While I have been to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park a number of times, I realized that I have completely neglected the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area just downstream. That sounded like a nice place to hike today, especially since I have been talking to my friend Jackson about running that stretch of the Gunnison River in the future. My original plan for the day was to start out by hiking down the Chukar Trail. This is a short one mile trail that descends 560 feet to the main boat put-in to run this stretch of the river. If you plan to run this section by boat, you either need to carry your gear down this trail or you can hire a company to have it packed down by mule.

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Return to the Unexpected

San Rafael Swell Rock Art XI | Saturday, February 7, 2015

Yes, I am aware that the title of this trip report doesn’t make much sense, but that’s OK since I liked the sound of it. Way back in June of 2011 I was hiking with my friend Philippe at the edge of the San Rafael Swell when we came across a Barrier Canyon Style pictograph panel that no one seemed to have seen before. When I wrote up the trip report for that day I decided to call it the Unexpected Panel since we were looking for something else and the find was very unexpected. That name seems to have stuck a bit, but I have also seen it referred to as the New Panel. Whatever you want to call it, I have wanted to get back and visit this amazing pictograph panel again, but sadly had not been back since our initial visit. Diane has also been interested in seeing this panel after seeing my photos of it and I had promised a while ago to take my friend Marty here sometime, so a trip was in the planning for sometime this spring. With the warm temperatures we’ve been having lately I decided to move the trip up and visit it this weekend. We couldn’t have had better weather for this hike. The temperature was in the mid-sixties and there were some nice clouds moving through the sky all day. It sure felt more like March or April than the beginning of February.

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Nine Mile Canyon Tour

Saturday & Sunday, January 31 – February 1, 2015

After spending Friday in Salt Lake City so we could see Nothing More (one of our favorite bands) in concert, we spent the rest of the weekend in Price so we could visit plenty of rock art sites in Nine Mile Canyon. Diane had never been to Nine Mile Canyon before, so we spent a lot of time visiting many of the well-known locations that I have been to before, but we also visited a few new sites.

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