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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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Return To Silence: Delicate Arch

New Year’s Day | Tuesday, January 1, 2019

To be honest, I never thought I would be visiting Delicate Arch in Arches National Park ever again since it’s become a very busy place over the past few years. However, there was a perfect storm of events that allowed Diane and I to watch the first sunset of 2019 at Delicate Arch with our friend Jared and absolutely no one else around! When I saw that the road into Arches National Park was closed on Monday morning because of a snowstorm and there was no money to plow and maintain it because of the government shutdown, I knew instantly that I needed to try and get to Delicate Arch for sunset on New Year’s Day if it didn’t open back up before then!

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Behind The Rocks

Christmas Weekend | Saturday & Sunday, December 22-23, 2018

After going on a day hike into the backcountry of Arches National Park last Saturday by myself, Diane and I planned a last minute trip to spend this weekend together around Moab. We drove over to Moab on Saturday morning and then went out arch-hunting, hiking, four-wheeling and just generally exploring the Behind The Rocks area west of Spanish Valley for the entire weekend. On Saturday I wanted to revisit a few nice arches that I had not seen since I drove through Pritchett Canyon way back in 2006, plus I wanted to find a few new ones. On Sunday we hiked up Pritchett Canyon from the bottom so we could visit Halls Bridge Arch since we were not able to get down to it from above the day before. The weather on Saturday was very nice with clear blue skies, plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the lower 50’s, while Sunday morning was mostly overcast during most of our hike and a bit colder, too.

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Burro Pass Peaks

La Sal Mountains Peak Bagging | Manns Peak, Mount Tomasaki & Haystack Mountain
Independence Day | Wednesday, July 4, 2018

This year the Fourth of July fell right in the middle of the week and since Diane had to work one holiday this year she chose this one since we wouldn’t be able to plan a big weekend trip around it. I had the day off from work, so I decided to spend the holiday continuing my quest to climb all of the main peaks in the La Sal Mountains near Moab. Not only is the mountain range pretty close to home, but I was also hoping it wouldn’t be as busy as the mountains of Colorado can be during a holiday. I actually started my quest to hike all of the major peaks in the La Sal Mountains two years ago on the Fourth of July weekend with Mount Tukuhnikivatz. Then I continued with Mount Peale (12,721) later that same year. I guess I never made it back last year, so it was definitely time to return again! This time I was planning on hiking a few of the summits in the middle portion of the range near the headwaters of Mill Creek, starting with Manns Peak (12,272) and Mount Tomasaki (12,239) and then going from there depending on how I was feeling afterwards.

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Flat Pass Exploring

Moab Area Rock Art XXVIII | Saturday, February 4, 2017

On Saturday I was up early to meet Marty in Moab so we could spend the day exploring the area surrounding Flat Pass along Mill Creek and the Steelbender Trail. I was hoping to access a large petroglyph panel high on the wall of Mill Creek Canyon from above. I managed to time my drive to Moab perfectly so that I was driving through the Richardson Amphitheater near Castle Valley as the sun came up for the day. Of course, I stopped and took a few photos of the nice sunrise.

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