grand gulch // ADVENTR.co

Below the Bears Ears: Thanksgiving Weekend 2024

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 13 | Thursday – Sunday, November 28 – December 1, 2024

This year for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend Diane and I returned to the landscape surrounding the Bears Ears and spent all four days wandering a selection of canyons and rims carved into Cedar Mesa and beyond. Our time was split between searching for new sites and revisiting sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade but were mostly new to Diane. We saw quite a bit more rock art this time around with only a few ruins scattered throughout our hikes. In the end we had another great weekend exploring one of our favorite places together and look forward to returning again and again. These are some photos of what we saw.

1 Comment

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 12

Friday – Sunday, May 10-12 & 17-19, 2024

After leaving the UGIC Conference on Friday afternoon I was originally planning to spend the rest of the weekend exploring the nearby Book Cliffs and Tavaputs Plateau, but with all the rain and snow the area had received this week, and with even more predicted over the next couple of days, I figured that was probably not a great place to be right now. Although I did have backup plans for the San Rafael Swell in case of bad weather, after saying goodbye to Moab on Thursday I was feeling the need to get out into a landscape that I have a more personal connection with and feel at home in so I could grieve alone, so I decided to head down to Cedar Mesa, even if it meant a longer drive out of the way. Since I was leaving from Price, this meant I could avoid the traffic in Moab and drive to Cedar Mesa through Hanksville, which is a route I don’t drive very often since it usually doesn’t make much sense for me to go that way. After stopping for an early dinner in Hanksville, I followed North Wash and White Canyon to Cedar Mesa and went straight to the Todie Canyon Trailhead so I could walk the rim at sunset.

6 Comments

The Grandest of Gulches: Back Into Lower Grand Gulch

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 11 | Thursday – Sunday, March 21-24, 2024

This week Diane and I took Thursday and Friday off from work so we could meet up with our friend Jared and spend a couple of days backpacking into lower Grand Gulch within the Bears Ears National Monument. While this would be Diane’s first time hiking into this part of Grand Gulch, Jared and I had hiked here about nine years ago and I was really looking forward to the return visit. From the very start of the hike we could tell there was a lot of water in the canyon from recent storms and that it might have even flash flooded recently, but all that water also created a lot of quicksand and mud in the wash that significantly slowed down our progress and forced us to follow brushy deer trails across the benches in many places. The weather during the first three days of our hike was great and the nights even stayed pretty warm, we only encountered wet weather during our final night in the canyon and during the hike back out of Collins Canyon. Here are some photos taken during our four days in Grand Gulch.

2 Comments

Lost in the Fold: Halls Creek Narrows

Canyons of the Waterpocket Fold: The Other Grand Gulch
Friday – Monday, March 18-21, 2022

This weekend I finally had the opportunity to hike into the Halls Creek Narrows which are located at the very southern tip of Capitol Reef National Park, as I continue to work my way through the many interesting Canyons of the Waterpocket Fold. This hike has been long overdue for me as I’ve tentatively planned to go here almost every year for at least the last five years, but it seems that something has always come up that made me cancel those plans- usually the weather forecast. Since Diane had a couple days off from school for a short spring break after this weekend she would also be able to join me on this three day backpacking trip. I left early from work on Friday afternoon and we made our way into Utah after Diane was finished taking her latest exam. I stopped to grab an early dinner from Stan’s in Hanksville and topped off my gas tank at $4.89 per gallon before we continued on past Trachyte Creek and Ticaboo to the Burr Trail Road where we found a great campsite overlooking Bullfrog Creek to the Henry Mountains. We set up our tent at the rim of the canyon and relaxed around camp for the remainder of the evening before going to bed early after photographing a pretty lackluster sunset.

2 Comments

Weekend Wandering Along the Waterpocket Fold II

Canyons of the Waterpocket Fold | Burro Wash, Upper Muley Twist & Lower Spring Canyon
President’s Day Weekend | Friday – Sunday, February 18-20, 2022

This weekend I headed out on my annual February trek into Capitol Reef National Park to explore a couple new canyons of the Waterpocket Fold, just like I had done last year. While I usually spend my birthday weekend in Capitol Reef, this year we went to Fremont Indian State Park instead, so I pushed this trip back one week later so that it was over President’s Day Weekend and invited my friend Jared along. As usual, I left right after work on Friday afternoon and made my way through Hanksville to the park. I turned off onto the Notom Road and found a place to camp for the night just after sunset and Jared joined up with me a couple hours later. Truth be told, while waiting for Jared to arrive I fell asleep and then woke up around midnight and saw that his vehicle parked nearby, so I knew he had found me. Then I went back to sleep!

5 Comments

Tag: grand gulch

Below the Bears Ears: Thanksgiving Weekend 2024

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 12

The Grandest of Gulches: Back Into Lower Grand Gulch

Lost in the Fold: Halls Creek Narrows

Weekend Wandering Along the Waterpocket Fold II