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Tag: capitol reef

Waterpocket Fold: Lower Muley Twist Canyon

Friday – Sunday, March 27-29, 2020

This weekend Diane and I headed over to Capitol Reef National Park so we could get in one last backpacking trip before Colorado and Utah were both completely shut down and only open to local residents due to the current COVID-19 pandemic. At this point in time it was still OK to visit and camp within Wayne and Garfield Counties in Utah, plus Capitol Reef National Park was still open, so the trip was a go! We knew that this was probably going to be our last backpacking trip into Utah for a while, so we decided to visit Lower Muley Twist Canyon since it’s a canyon I’ve wanted to explore for a long time and I thought it would be a great place to practice social distancing. It turned out to be a great choice since we would only briefly see one other person the entire weekend, plus the scenery was spectacular!

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A Pleasant Morning in Capitol Reef

Pleasant Creek | Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Friday & Saturday, October 4-5, 2019

After finishing up our hike through the Little Death Hollow Loop late in the morning we headed back to Boulder for lunch so we could figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the day and on Saturday. Originally, I had planned for one more overnight backpacking trip off of the Wolverine Loop Road, but we both decided that we wanted to head back home on Saturday afternoon so we would have Sunday to relax before going back to work on Monday, so we needed to find a day hike for Saturday morning instead. After discussing our options we figured that something in Capitol Reef National Park would be good since it wasn’t too far away and was on our way home anyways, so we set our sights on Pleasant Creek. We have both hiked parts of Pleasant Creek in the past, but had missed some things that we wanted to check out this time. Since we still had the rest of the afternoon and evening free we headed up to Capitol Reef and visited a couple rock art sites before finding a campsite just outside of Torrey for the night.

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Another Birthday in Capitol Reef

Saturday & Sunday, February 9-10, 2019

I don’t spend as much time in Capitol Reef National Park as I would like, but for some reason it seems like I frequently end up here around my birthday in February. Two years ago Diane and I spent the weekend closest to my birthday in Capitol Reef (I did that in 2010, too), and I decided earlier this year that I wanted to go back and do it again! We left home early on Saturday morning and spent the rest of the weekend hiking trails around the Fruita Historic District that are typically pretty busy during the rest of the year and we saw almost no one else all weekend. We found some new rock art and took plenty of photos along the way.

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Petroglyphs of the Waterpocket Fold

Southern Utah Wanderings | Backcountry Petroglyphs of Capitol Reef
Monday – Tuesday, October 1-2, 2018

After spending Sunday evening and Monday morning in Salt Lake City it was finally time to start my annual October trip to southern Utah. I planned on starting off the week by searching for some remote and little-known petroglyphs hidden in the backcountry of Capitol Reef National Park with my friend Jared. On our drive back from Salt Lake City, Diane and I stopped at Dennis‘ house in Price to pick up my Jeep. I had left my Jeep there on Saturday morning so we wouldn’t have to drive both of our vehicles all the way to Salt Lake City and I wouldn’t have to go all the way back home to Grand Junction to get it afterwards. From Price Diane headed back home and I made my way over to Torrey where I would be meeting up with Jared who had already been hiking in Capitol Reef all weekend. One nice thing about driving from Price to Torrey was that it finally gave me an opportunity to drive Highway 72 from I-70 to Loa through the eastern edge of Fishlake National Forest.

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Sulphur Creek & Pleasant Creek

Saturday & Sunday, May 13-14, 2017

Sulphur Creek is a canyon in Capitol Reef National Park that I have wanted to hike for way too long, and since I’m making an effort this year to go to places that have been on my to-do list for a long time it was finally time to give it a shot. Diane and I left home very early on Saturday morning and drove west through Green River and Hanksville on our way to Fruita in Capitol Reef. We made a brief stop at the Visitor Center to drop off my bike and then continued down the road a few more miles to the Chimney Rock Trailhead.

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