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Tag: 2016

Owl & Fish Creek Canyons

Friday – Sunday, April 29 – May 1, 2016

This weekend Diane and I had taken Friday off work so we could head down to Cedar Mesa on a three-day backpacking trip into Fish Creek Canyon and Owl Creek Canyon. We had originally planned on driving down Thursday evening after work, but with rainy weather in the forecast we decided to stay home Thursday night and left very early on Friday morning. We passed through Moab just in time to stop for breakfast at the Moab Diner and then continued on to the Kane Gulch Ranger Station to pick up our permits. After watching the video and grabbing our permits we finished the short drive to the trailhead and got ready to start the hike.

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Grand Gulch: Pollys Canyon to Collins Canyon

Wednesday – Saturday, April 13-16, 2016

Spending a few days backpacking in southern Utah seems to have become an annual tradition for Dave, Jared and myself. A few months ago we started planning our trip to visit another section of Grand Gulch between Pollys Canyon and Collins Canyon that we had not been through before and Dave secured the backpacking permits for our small group. Our plan for Wednesday was to drive down and meet up at a campsite along the road to the Collins Canyon Trailhead. Dave and Jared would be leaving early in the afternoon from Salt Lake City and I’d be leaving after work from Grand Junction. I stopped for a quick dinner in Moab and made it to the campsite just after the sun set for the day. They had arrived about an hour before me. I quickly got my tentcot setup just after dark and we all went to bed early on this beautiful evening.

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Devil’s Canyon

Sunday, April 10, 2016

A hike into Devil’s Canyon is always a good way to spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. Since it rained for much of the weekend and I was able to get some work done on my Jeep on Saturday, Diane and I decided to go hiking in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area late on Sunday morning since it looked like the rain was done for a while. We hiked to the old cabin in Devil’s Canyon on the D3 Trail and then completed the loop back to the trailhead. As we started the hike, the creek in Devil’s Canyon was flowing from all the recent rain and it was also pretty humid out.

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Easter Weekend Around the Paria Plateau

Easter Weekend | Saturday & Sunday, March 26-27, 2016

After spending Friday wandering around Coyote Buttes North, I returned to my camp near the Utah-Arizona state line in Coyote Valley to spend another night there. I slept in a little later on Saturday morning and didn’t crawl out of my tent until the sun came up. I would be spending the rest of the weekend circumnavigating the Paria Plateau and exploring some new areas along the way. After packing up camp, I returned north to the Buckskin Gulch Trailhead and hiked down the wash to explore the edge of the West Clark Bench (The Dive). Diane and I had explored part of this area on a hike from Wire Pass at the end of 2014 and I wanted to check out some more of the area this morning.

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Coyote Buttes North 2016

Friday, March 25, 2016

Earlier this year I realized that it had been a while since the last time I visited Coyote Buttes North, so I tried to get another permit for this spring and managed to obtain one for today. Little did I know at the time that I would be buying a new Jeep the weekend before this trip and it would make for a nice first road trip in the new vehicle. Besides getting to spend the long weekend thoroughly testing out my new Jeep on the highway and offroad, I would spend much of the day revisiting my favorite places in Coyote Buttes North, plus I’d spend some time exploring a few of the areas I had not been to before. By the end of the day I had hiked about 15 miles total and enjoyed every second of it!

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