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La Sal Mountains: Horse Mountain & Grand View

La Sal Mountains Peak Bagging | Friday & Saturday, July 9-10, 2021

This weekend I was finally going to my first concert in over a year on Saturday evening so I needed to stay close to home, but I still hoped to squeeze in a hike to the summit of a peak or two on Saturday morning. Since the Pack Creek Fire near Moab was finally contained and the La Sal Mountains were opening back up, I thought this would be a good time for me to head that direction for a quick overnight trip. When I left from work on Friday afternoon it was a blistering 106 degrees out and I would later find out that Grand Junction had set the all-time high temperature record of 107 degrees while I was driving into Utah. The thermometer on my Jeep registered 112 degrees as I passed by the Fisher Towers– it’s certainly been a hot week on the Colorado Plateau! After driving through Castle Valley to the La Sal Mountains Loop Road I followed the narrow and bumpy road up into Miners Basin and spent the rest of the evening around the small lake near the trailhead. It was still a bit warm up in Miners Basin when I arrived, but it cooled off nicely as the sun went down for the night.

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The Paradise Slot & Grosvenor Arch

Southern Utah Wanderings | Tuesday & Wednesday, October 6-7, 2020

After leaving Lick Wash in the midafternoon on Tuesday, we drove back to Tropic to grab some dinner and then headed out through Cannonville and down the Cottonwood Road into the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument so we could check out a remote and little-known slot canyon known as the Paradise Slot on Wednesday morning. This short slot canyon is kind of out of the way, so we figured we probably wouldn’t run into any other people out in this area, and it turns out that we would be right about that! We stopped to visit Grosvenor Arch along the way since we were driving right by it. I think the last time I was here was in 2009, so this was a good opportunity for me to get a better photo in the late afternoon.

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The Highest Point in Grand County: Mount Waas

La Sal Mountains Peak Bagging | Pilot Mountain, Green Mountain & Mineral Mountain
Friday – Saturday, July 5-6, 2019

After spending the last month on the river it was finally time for me to start getting back into the mountains again! Like last year around this same time, I decided that this would be a good weekend to continue my peak-bagging pursuit in the La Sal Mountains near Moab. Since I’d already climbed the San Juan County High Point a couple years ago, I thought it was about time that I finally got to the summit of the Grand County High Point. Originally, Diane was supposed to come with me on this trip and we were going to spend the full weekend in the area, but at the last minute she decided to take a shift at work on Saturday, so I ended up going by myself. I’m not going to lie, I was very worried about this hike. Since I’ve been on the river every weekend for the last month I felt that I was quite a bit out of shape since I haven’t been hiking much lately. It feels like I haven’t put on my hiking boots in forever; not to mention that I haven’t been up in the high country since late September of last year! I was really concerned that I wasn’t going to make it to the summit this time, but still, I knew that I needed to try…

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Heart of the Salt Creek Archeological District

Five Years Later | Return to Salt Creek Canyon
Wednesday – Sunday, April 10-14, 2019

After spending the past couple of years searching for rock art and ancient ruins in Grand Gulch during our annual spring backpacking trip together, this year Dave, Jared and I were really looking forward to getting back into upper Salt Creek Canyon in Canyonlands National Park to see what we had missed on our first visit almost five years ago. I made sure to secure our camping permits earlier this year so we could spend four days exploring the heart of the Salt Creek Archeological District.

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Corcoran Peak in the Little Book Cliffs

Friday & Sunday, September 15 & 17, 2017

After hiking to the summit of Corcoran Point from the Tellerico Trail in the Book Cliffs two years ago, I got a nice view of Corcoran Peak (8,076) and thought it would be a good peak close to home to try climbing another time. Since we were staying around home this weekend to go to a concert on Saturday, I thought it would be a good idea to head out to the Little Book Cliffs after work on Friday, catch the sunset, spend the night and then climb Corcoran Peak on Saturday morning before going to the concert. The plan was going well until after sunset when it started to rain pretty heavily. This is not an area you want to be in when the roads get wet, so I ended up heading home instead of camping and then returning late Sunday morning to try the climb again.

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Tag: horse mountain

La Sal Mountains: Horse Mountain & Grand View

The Paradise Slot & Grosvenor Arch

The Highest Point in Grand County: Mount Waas

Heart of the Salt Creek Archeological District

Corcoran Peak in the Little Book Cliffs