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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.

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Blue Mountain Shadows: Beef Basin to Cedar Mesa

Southern Utah Wanderings | Friday – Friday, October 1-8, 2021

This year for our annual week-long trek into Southern Utah, Jared and I started out in the Beef Basin area and then we explored our way over to Cedar Mesa. It has been a while since either of us had spent much time around Beef Basin and I was also really hoping that we would be able to spend some quality time around the Dark Canyon Plateau and Elk Ridge areas along the way. The trip started out great and we found plenty of new rock art and ruin sites, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate with us on the second half of this trip and we had to change our plans multiple times because of storms and slick muddy roads. At one point we even stopped to help winch a truck back onto the road that was sliding off. One of the unexpected benefits of the poor weather was that it chased us closer to the Abajo Mountains than we were originally planning to go, and they were in peak falls colors at the time! At the end of the week we found out that President Biden was restoring the original boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument, which was fitting since we were sitting in camp within the newly restored boundary. I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of this trip, so please enjoy plenty of photos from our journey below.

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Grand Gulch: Kane Gulch to Bullet Canyon

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 4
Wednesday – Sunday, March 31 – April 4, 2021

Last spring Jared, Dave and I had made plans and obtained a permit to backpack on the Navajo Nation for the first time, but because the pandemic shut a lot of things down at the time, we were forced to cancel those plans. Since the Navajo Nation was still closed to visitors this spring we had to find something else to do for our annual spring backpacking trip this year. After discussing a number of different options over the winter, we finally settled on backpacking the popular loop through Grand Gulch from Kane Gulch to Bullet Canyon. Dave and I have both hiked this stretch of the canyon before, but Jared had not, and it was the last section of Grand Gulch he had not been through yet, so we wanted to make sure he got a chance to see it before it got even busier and harder to get permits. Besides, even though Diane and I had hiked this loop back in 2015, I was sure we missed quite a bit and was looking forward to getting back and spending a little more time in this section!

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Cedar Mesa Ruins

Friday – Sunday, June 9-11, 2017

Typically I avoid visiting Cedar Mesa in June because of the hotter temperatures and especially because of the annoying cedar gnats (no-see-ums) that are usually prevalent at this time of the year. However, I made an exception this year since my friend Alan and his father would be visiting the area this weekend and invited me to join them. Our friend Jerry, who I met last year on a backpacking trip on the Arizona Strip was going to be there and my old friend John Mumaw, who I hadn’t seen in a few years, was also going to be stopping by.

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Searching for The Ancients on Veteran’s Day Weekend

Friday – Sunday, November 11-13, 2016

Typically, Diane and I like to spend the long Thanksgiving weekend exploring Cedar Mesa and other parts of southeastern Utah, but this year we have made alternate plans for the Thanksgiving weekened down in New Mexico, so that was not going to happen. We decided to make up for that annual trip by heading down that way over the Veteran’s Day weekend instead. We left home early on Friday morning and spent a few days searching for ruins and rock art in southeast Utah. The weather was great for hiking with temperatures in the 60’s during the day and clear blue skies.

Tag: grand gulch wilderness study area

The Grandest of Gulches: Back Into Lower Grand Gulch

Blue Mountain Shadows: Beef Basin to Cedar Mesa

Grand Gulch: Kane Gulch to Bullet Canyon

Cedar Mesa Ruins

Searching for The Ancients on Veteran’s Day Weekend