butler wash // ADVENTR.co

Backbone of the Earth: Comb Ridge

New Years Weekend | Friday – Sunday, January 1-3, 2021

After spending Christmas Weekend around Moab I really didn’t have any solid plans set for the New Year holiday weekend. Diane definitely wanted us to get outside over the first weekend of the New Year since she is going to be starting Physician Assistant school on Monday and her free time will most likely be pretty limited over the next two years, so she probably won’t be able to join me on as many trips as she usually does. After following the weather forecast during the week and weighing our options we made a last-minute decision to spend the long holiday weekend hiking and exploring Comb Ridge in southern Utah for our first trip of 2021. Although we had made it to Cedar Mesa a couple of times last year, we never spent any time on The Comb, so we were looking forward to getting back there. As a matter of fact, I think it’s been quite a while since I dedicated a whole trip just to exploring Comb Ridge, so we were long overdue! Enjoy my photos from the weekend and my first Trip Report of 2021!

2 Comments

River Flowing from the Sunrise: The San Juan River

Friday – Monday, May 10-13, 2019

Over the years I have floated the San Juan River between Sand Island and Mexican Hat a couple of times with a small group of friends and we almost always have had a great time on this stretch of the river. I say ‘almost always‘ because the temperature was way too hot out during our last trip in 2017 and the water was moving very fast which turned out to be a bad combination for us. We ended up cutting that trip a day short and heading home early. After taking last year off for a Labyrinth Canyon trip, we decided to get a permit for the San Juan again this year to make up for that last trip. This year I was hoping for much better weather since we were going in May again, but I was still a little worried when we drove down to Bluff on Friday afternoon through rain storms and cold temperatures even though the forecast for the rest of the weekend was looking good. I certainly had my fingers crossed and hoped that the rainbow I saw as we drove over White Mesa was a good sign! And for anyone wondering, River Flowing from the Sunrise is a translation of the Ute name for the San Juan River, and I think it’s a pretty fitting one.

4 Comments

Thanksgiving Under the Bears Ears

Thanksgiving Weekend | Thursday – Sunday, November 22-25, 2018

This year Diane and I kept our annual tradition of spending the long Thanksgiving weekend searching for ruins and rock art on Cedar Mesa alive. (Not counting that one year we went to New Mexico instead, of course.) Although the mountains of Colorado got a lot of much-needed snow over the holiday weekend, the precipitation mostly missed the Four Corners region and we had very pleasant hiking weather just about every day. The higher elevations of Cedar Mesa and Elk Ridge did receive a little snow on Thursday evening, but it had pretty much all melted off by Friday afternoon. As usual, we found some new sites and revisited some of our favorites, too. It wasn’t planned, but we ended up visiting three different kivas that were all pretty well-preserved and had a great weekend exploring one of my favorite areas in the southwest! Check out all the photos from our Thanksgiving adventure below!

A Weekend in the Bears Ears

Friday – Sunday, October 26-28, 2018

This weekend I headed down to Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument after work on Friday where I met up with my friend Alan so we could go on one hike Saturday morning before he had to drive back up to Salt Lake City to catch a plane back to France. He had spent the last two weeks in the southwest and this was his last hike before heading back home. After we parted ways I spent the rest of the weekend hiking and searching for ruins and rock art on my own. The weather was pretty nice for hiking but there was a little more humidity than I would have preferred. I guess I should also mention that this is my 900th trip report here on ADVENTR.co! Enjoy these photos I took over the weekend!

1 Comment

Gallivanting Through The Grabens

Southern Utah Wanderings | Friday – Saturday, October 5-6, 2018

After spending the previous two nights at the Horsehoof Campsite in Canyonlands National Park it was time for us to move on. When we got our permit for Horsehoof on Wednesday morning we also picked up a backpacking permit for the Red Lake / Grabens At-Large Backpacking Zone for tonight, so we still had one more night left in the Needles District. Aside from driving through Devils Lane a bunch of times and hiking down the Lower Red Lake Canyon Trail earlier this year, I had never really explored this remote area of the park and was looking forward to it. I really don’t think very many people venture out this way.

Tag: butler wash

Backbone of the Earth: Comb Ridge

River Flowing from the Sunrise: The San Juan River

Thanksgiving Under the Bears Ears

A Weekend in the Bears Ears

Gallivanting Through The Grabens