There is less than a week until the end of the year, so I think now is a good time to look back and choose my ten favorite trip reports from 2018. As usual, we went on a lot of great trips this year so it was difficult to choose only a few, but these ten trip reports below really stood out the most from all the rest. Click on the title to see the full trip report and enjoy!
If you are interested in checking out my favorite trip reports from previous years, you can find those here: [2017] [2016] [2015] [2014] [2013] [2012] [2011]
Even though these are two separate trip reports, they are both from an amazing weekend spent on the Paria Plateau so I am counting them as one on this list. Not only did I get to photograph some colorful sandstone and geology, but I also made one of my most exciting discoveries!
After spending the past few Memorial Day weekends in The Maze, we decided to push this years trip up to the beginning of April since it’s been getting pretty warm by the end of May. We invited our friend Marty along and had a great time in the Land of Standing Rocks!
This backpacking trip allowed me to hike the only remaining section of Grand Gulch between UT 95 and the San Juan River that I had not been though yet. It was an amazing trip with plenty of rock art and ruins to see along the way!
While photography wasn’t really my main goal for much of the year, this weekend was an exception and I had a great time photographing the badlands of Utah in the country surrounding the Muddy Creek.
Inhaling thick smoke from the 416 Fire with ash raining down on us probably wasn’t the best for our lungs during this overnight backpacking trip, but the sunset from in the Weminuche Wilderness was pretty spectacular! Although, our tent and gear smelled like smoke for much of the rest of the year after this trip.
Spending a night near Blue Lake in the Raggeds Wilderness has been on my list for a number of years and I was happy to finally make it there this summer. It was a nice overnight trip and I even manged to climb a peak while we were there!
This summer we wanted to go on our first backpacking trip into the High Uintas Wilderness of northern Utah, and we figured that we might as well climb Utah’s highest mountain while we were there!
A river trip through Labyrinth Canyon has been on my to-do list for a long time, so when I was finally able to make it happen this summer I couldn’t have been more excited! The weather was great, there were lots of interesting things to see and I had an amazing time!
This was a great day in Canyonlands. Not only did we find some cool stuff while exploring a remote section of the park, but we also got to watch an amazing sunrise and sunset, too!
When I noticed the road into Horse Canyon was actually open again, I just had to plan a last-minute weekend trip there. It turned out to be a great weekend spent with good friends in Canyonlands National Park. What else could you ask for?
Below are four runners-up that just didn’t quite make the top ten list.