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Dirty Devil River: Lower Sand Slide to Angel Cove

Dirty Devil Daily | Buck Canyon, Pasture Canyon & Beaver Canyon
Friday – Sunday, April 14-16, 2023 | Average CFS: 210

This weekend I had been hoping to go on a short packrafting loop with Jared on a stretch of the Dirty Devil River so I could get a little taste and feel for that particular river before committing to a longer trip in the future, but during the preceding week I was getting a little disappointed to see the water levels drop below 100cfs, which was my absolute minimum level for attempting this trip. On Thursday afternoon when the water levels still had not come up, I figured that the packrafting trip was not going to happen this weekend and we started making alternate plans for an overnight backpacking trip into another canyon of the Escalante River. To my surprise, later on Thursday evening the Dirty Devil jumped up to over 200cfs, so we put those backpacking plans on hold and kept an eye on the water levels all day Friday hoping they would hold. When I left work on Friday afternoon the level was still staying up, so Jared and I planned to meet at a campsite near Hanksville and we would make a final decision on Saturday morning dependent upon what the river did overnight. We brought our backpacking gear along with us just in case we had to change plans again.

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The Sculptured Earth: End of Trails in The Maze

Lost in The Maze III | Friday – Monday, March 31 – April 3, 2023

After spending the past couple years working to hike all of the trails in Canyonlands National Park and completing the ones in The Needles and Island in the Sky districts in 2018 and 2019, I turned my attention to my remaining trails in The Maze, but it’s taken me a bit longer to hike them all since it’s not quite as easy to get over there for a quick weekend trip. Last spring I had hiked most of the remaining trails from the Land of Standing Rocks with my friends Dave and Jared, but we did not have the time to make it down into lower Horse Canyon on that trip, which was now my only trail left on this official map that I’ve been using to keep track, and also my final trail left in all of Canyonlands! After that trip I made it my goal to hike into lower Horse Canyon this spring, so I booked a backpacking permit back in November and invited my friend Jackson to come along.

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Rainbow Bridge: Circumnavigation of Navajo Mountain

The Canyons of Navajo Mountain & Rainbow Bridge National Monument
Wednesday – Monday, March 15-20, 2023

This year for our annual spring backpacking trip, Jared, Dave and I were planning to spend an easy four days and three nights hiking down Paria Canyon from the White House Trailhead to Lees Ferry. It’s a trip we have all wanted to do for a long time and were looking forward to, but back in December when I reserved the permit we had no idea what the atmospheric river would have in store for us this winter! A couple of days before our trip was set to begin there was a large flash flood in Buckskin Gulch and the Paria River that unfortunately killed two hikers and resulted in the rescue of about a dozen more. With reports of deep cold water crossings and continued precipitation and cold air temperatures in the forecast, we decided that this was probably not the right time for this hike and started considering different options. Since I try to be prepared, I already had a backup plan to hike around Navajo Mountain to Rainbow Bridge ready to go in case the weather did not cooperate with us on this Paria Canyon hike, so we decided to try that one instead.

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Valley of Shining Water: Along the Pahranagat Trail

Rock Art of the Pahranagat Valley: In Search of the Pahranagat Man
Thursday – Sunday, January 12-15, 2023

This holiday weekend I took an extra day off from work on Friday so I could spend four days hiking, camping and searching for petroglyphs in the warmer temperatures of the Pahranagat Valley in Nevada, which straddles the transition zone between the Mojave and Great Basin Deserts. But just like during my recent New Years weekend, the weather would have other plans for me this weekend. I left from work on Thursday afternoon and made my way down to St. George where I grabbed a late dinner and then found a spot to camp just over the state line in Arizona. Jared also drove down that evening after work and joined up with me at my campsite after I had already fallen asleep. In the morning we both got up just before sunrise and headed further southwest to the Moapa Valley where we followed the Muddy River to the mouth of Pahranagat Wash and went on our first hike into the narrows of Arrow Canyon.

Stillwater Canyon: The Green River in Canyonlands

Floating from Mineral Bottom to The Confluence | Average CFS: 2,590
Friday – Wednesday, September 16-21, 2022

The time had finally come! It was time for me to float the Green River through Stillwater Canyon in Canyonlands National Park and I couldn’t have been more excited! I’ve wanted to float this stretch of the river for many years now but have always put it off for other trips because I was a little concerned about making it to The Confluence in time for the Jetboat shuttle. Our float down Meander Canyon was actually kind of a test to see how easy it would be for us to make that kind of distance in our inflatable kayaks at this time of the year, and we ended up coming up short by about eleven miles on that trip. Still, I made it one of my goals to finally get into Stillwater Canyon this year and booked the Jetboat shuttle back in February. This time I added an extra day to the trip just to make sure we would have enough time to make it to The Confluence. As usual, my friends Jackson and Chris were supposed to join me on this trip, but unfortunately Chris had to back out the week before, so this time it would just be me and Jackson.

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Tag: historic inscriptions

Dirty Devil River: Lower Sand Slide to Angel Cove

The Sculptured Earth: End of Trails in The Maze

Rainbow Bridge: Circumnavigation of Navajo Mountain

Valley of Shining Water: Along the Pahranagat Trail

Stillwater Canyon: The Green River in Canyonlands