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Rock Art of the San Juan River

New Years Weekend | Saturday – Monday, December 31 – January 2, 2023

This year for the extended New Years Weekend Diane and I had hoped to do some hiking and exploring along the Comb Ridge and San Juan River, but thanks to the ‘atmospheric river’ that was impacting the weather across the western United States, those plans had to change since the Butler Wash Road was a muddy mess from all access points and I decided to avoid it. That meant we’d be skipping the Comb Ridge this time and instead would be spending our holiday weekend searching for rock art closer to the San Juan River. Luckily, we were also able to avoid most of the rain and snow on Saturday and Sunday and only encountered a couple light sprinkles while we were out hiking. While I had seen many of these sites before, this was Diane’s first time seeing most of them and we found plenty of new stuff along the way, too! Below are photos of just some of the many petroglyphs we saw this weekend.

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Thanksgiving Weekend Below the Bears Ears

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 8 | Thursday – Saturday, November 24-26, 2022

This year during the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend Diane was able to get away from her clinical rotations for a little while and join me on our annual trip into the Bears Ears region. Our friend Jared was also able to meet us down there, so we all went out hiking in the canyons together. Although I had originally planned to spend all four days in the area, our cat Tellico (Rico) is having some health issues and we didn’t want to leave her home for that long, so we decided to cut the trip short by a day and come home on Saturday afternoon instead. The weather was great for hiking and we had a nice time exploring new parts of canyons we had been in before, plus we were able to revisit some other favorite places. Here are a couple photos from the weekend!

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Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 7

Veterans Day Weekend | Thursday – Sunday, November 10-13, 2022

This year for the extended Veterans Day Weekend I was feeling the pull of the ancients to return to the canyons of Cedar Mesa. Even though I seem to have been neglecting this area for a while now, I decided it was time to follow. As usual, I left from work on Thursday afternoon, drove through Moab and then headed south across Dry Valley to Monticello and Blanding. From there, I made my way west through the Comb Ridge and then up onto Cedar Mesa where I found a spot to camp along the old Emigrant Trail. After a good night of sleep I spent the rest of the weekend exploring a couple of canyons on Cedar Mesa and even made a foray into Lower White Canyon, too.

Canaan Mountain: Water Canyon to the White Domes

Southern Utah Wanderings | Tuesday & Wednesday, October 4-5, 2022

After leaving Escalante on Monday evening, making our way over the Paunsaugunt Plateau, and driving past the Coral Pink Sand Dunes in the dark to the Block Mesas, we then started heading north on sandy Jeep roads past Elephant Butte so we could hike into the East Fork of the Virgin River on Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, we ended up running into a number of very washed out sections of the roads that stopped our progress and since it was starting to get late we decided to backtrack a bit and find a campsite for the night. Now we would switch our plans around and hike up Water Canyon onto Canaan Mountain on Tuesday morning instead, and then we would see if we wanted try to find another route to The Barracks afterwards.

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Stillwater Canyon: The Green River in Canyonlands

Floating from Mineral Bottom to The Confluence | Average CFS: 2,590
Friday – Wednesday, September 16-21, 2022

The time had finally come! It was time for me to float the Green River through Stillwater Canyon in Canyonlands National Park and I couldn’t have been more excited! I’ve wanted to float this stretch of the river for many years now but have always put it off for other trips because I was a little concerned about making it to The Confluence in time for the Jetboat shuttle. Our float down Meander Canyon was actually kind of a test to see how easy it would be for us to make that kind of distance in our inflatable kayaks at this time of the year, and we ended up coming up short by about eleven miles on that trip. Still, I made it one of my goals to finally get into Stillwater Canyon this year and booked the Jetboat shuttle back in February. This time I added an extra day to the trip just to make sure we would have enough time to make it to The Confluence. As usual, my friends Jackson and Chris were supposed to join me on this trip, but unfortunately Chris had to back out the week before, so this time it would just be me and Jackson.

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Tag: anasazi

Rock Art of the San Juan River

Thanksgiving Weekend Below the Bears Ears

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 7

Canaan Mountain: Water Canyon to the White Domes

Stillwater Canyon: The Green River in Canyonlands