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Tag: flash flood

Rock Art of the Book Cliffs VII

Sunday, August 25, 2024

After spending Saturday morning on the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon, I left home early on Sunday so I could meet up with a friend in Green River later in the afternoon. Since I had plenty of time before we were supposed to meet I thought it would be a good idea to spend the morning searching for new rock art sites in the Book Cliffs as I slowly made my way to Green River. Unfortunately, the weather would not cooperate with those plans today thanks to the stormy weather we’ve been experiencing lately and just as soon as I neared the edge of the Book Cliffs it started to rain pretty hard which made the roads I wanted to drive slick and muddy, so I had to turn around and find some better roads. I did my best to get around in the wet conditions, but I ended up spending most of the day just revisiting sites I haven’t been to in a while. I guess I’ll have to come back to search out the new sites when it’s a bit drier out.

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Fruita Frontcountry: Flash Flood in Devils Canyon

After Work Adventures | Friday, August 23, 2024

Since I was actually home on a Friday evening, I made a last-minute decision to go on a local hike in the Devils Canyon section of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area near Fruita. Although I had finished hiking all the trails in this section of the frontcountry back in 2016, I had recently looked at an updated map and noticed a new trail called Devils Ridge (D7) that wasn’t there back then, so I thought I’d go check it out as part of a short loop hike. Even though the weather has been quite wet and stormy recently, it looked like the storms in the area were going to miss us this afternoon, so I headed over to the trailhead after work. Of course, just as I reached the trailhead it started to rain pretty hard, so I waited in my Jeep for the storm to pass and then started my hike as soon as the rain mostly stopped.

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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.

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Flash Floods & Fall Colors

Southern Utah Wanderings 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015

After a night filled with thunderstorms, I woke up shortly after sunrise on Monday morning to more rain! While I stayed in my tent waiting for a break in the rain, I realized that the rainfly on my tent cot was no longer waterproof. Water had leaked in on both sides of the tent and got a few things wet inside. It looks like I’m going to have to do something about that before using this tent in the rain again. Laying in my tent I was able to hear the sound of rushing water coming from the nearby wash and I could tell that it was flash flooding. As soon as Jared was out of his tent we hopped into my Jeep and went to check out the flash flooding nearby. While many of the drainages around us were flowing, the wash that flows through Horse Canyon was flooding pretty good.

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The Lower San Juan River

Mexican Hat to Clay Hills Crossing
Tuesday – Saturday, May 12-16, 2015

For the past two years a few friends and I have floated the upper section of the San Juan River from Sand Island to Mexican Hat during the month of May. It’s a very nice section of river, but this year we wanted to do something different, so we attempted to get a permit for the lower section of the San Juan River from Mexican Hat to Clay Hills Crossing. My friend Jackson was lucky in the permit lottery and we received our first choice of dates on the river, plus we were even able to secure our preferred reserved campsite, too. For once our plans came together nicely and easily!

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