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Unknown Mountains: Return to the Henry Mountains

Laccoliths in the Desert | Friday – Saturday, June 21-22, 2024

The Henry Mountains are a laccolithic mountain range that stand high above a sea of sandstone cut by deep canyons on the Colorado Plateau and were one of the last-surveyed and last-named mountain ranges in the contiguous United States. In 1869 John Wesley Powell made note of the range during his initial voyage down the Colorado River and called them the Unknown Mountains at the time. Then in 1871 he returned to the area on his second trip down the Colorado and renamed them to the Henry Mountains after Joseph Henry, a close friend who was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Last year I was planning to head back up into the Henry Mountains after Jared and I had spent a nice weekend there in 2022, but other trips came up and I never made it. This year I was determined to get back early in the summer to hike a couple new peaks and highpoints and chose to go this weekend. I left from work on Friday afternoon and made my way to Hanksville, and even though there were a lot of storms throughout the area this afternoon, some which caused flash flooding around Moab and the San Juan River, I managed to miss them all- aside from the wind. It seems that it’s frequently very windy out when I stop in Hanksville, and today was no exception!

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Beyond The Swell: Last Chance to the South Desert

Friday – Sunday, April 12-14, 2024

A few months ago I finally did something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time when I signed up for a Swiftwater Rescue Training class that would be taking place on Monday and Tuesday along the Green River near Swaseys Beach at the mouth of Gray Canyon. Since I needed to be in Green River on Sunday night for the class, I figured this would be a good weekend to spend some quality time wandering around the fringes at the southwestern edge of the San Rafael Swell and into the adjacent Cathedral Valley District of Capitol Reef National Park. It feels like it’s been quite a while since I’ve spent much time out in this desolate area and I was looking forward to returning since there are plenty of new places I’ve wanted to explore with my Jeep and on foot, plus a few others that I’ve wanted to return to.

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The High Plateaus of Utah: Proper Edge of the Sky

The Plateau Provence: Peaks & Plateaus of the Colorado Plateau
Wednesday – Friday, August 30 – September 1, 2023

The High Plateaus of Utah are a group of elevated tablelands that form the boundary between the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin in Central Utah and are what Wallace Stegner once described as “those remarkable mountains that are not mountains at all but greatly elevated rolling plains.” Although I have driven around and between the High Plateaus many times over the years, I have not spent very much time up on top of any of them and I wanted to change that this summer so I could see what they were all about. And what better way is there to get to know a new place than by driving the backroads and visiting the highpoints along the way! I figured that I would start at the northern end of the Wasatch Plateau and then work my way south, looping back around to finish up on Thousand Lake Mountain, where I could hop back on I-70 and head back home after a nice introduction to the area. That was the plan, and I thought it was a pretty good one, but as you will see, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

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Dirty Devil River: Lower Sand Slide to Angel Cove

Dirty Devil Daily | Buck Canyon, Pasture Canyon & Beaver Canyon
Friday – Sunday, April 14-16, 2023 | Average CFS: 210

This weekend I had been hoping to go on a short packrafting loop with Jared on a stretch of the Dirty Devil River so I could get a little taste and feel for that particular river before committing to a longer trip in the future, but during the preceding week I was getting a little disappointed to see the water levels drop below 100cfs, which was my absolute minimum level for attempting this trip. On Thursday afternoon when the water levels still had not come up, I figured that the packrafting trip was not going to happen this weekend and we started making alternate plans for an overnight backpacking trip into another canyon of the Escalante River. To my surprise, later on Thursday evening the Dirty Devil jumped up to over 200cfs, so we put those backpacking plans on hold and kept an eye on the water levels all day Friday hoping they would hold. When I left work on Friday afternoon the level was still staying up, so Jared and I planned to meet at a campsite near Hanksville and we would make a final decision on Saturday morning dependent upon what the river did overnight. We brought our backpacking gear along with us just in case we had to change plans again.

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Canyons of the Escalante: The Box of Pine Creek

Southern Utah Wanderings | Monday, October 3, 2022

After staying up too late on Sunday evening for a concert that was delayed and cut short, I woke up early on Monday and made my way over to Escalante where I met up with Jared later in the morning. There was a very nice and colorful sunrise as I drove across the San Rafael Desert, but I didn’t stop for any photos this time. After getting gas in town we decided to start the week off with a warm-up hike through The Box this afternoon, so we dropped off my Jeep at the lower trailhead and then took Jared’s Jeep to the upper trailhead on the shoulder of Boulder Mountain where we started the 1,500 foot descent along Pine Creek.

Tag: boulder mountain

Unknown Mountains: Return to the Henry Mountains

Beyond The Swell: Last Chance to the South Desert

The High Plateaus of Utah: Proper Edge of the Sky

Dirty Devil River: Lower Sand Slide to Angel Cove

Canyons of the Escalante: The Box of Pine Creek