// Adventures and Photography from the Colorado Plateau, Rocky Mountains & Beyond
Thanksgiving Weekend | Thursday – Sunday, November 23-26, 2017
Except for last year, it has been kind of a tradition for Diane and I to spend the long Thanksgiving Weekend exploring southern Utah around Cedar Mesa, Comb Ridge and Montezuma Canyon. This year was our first Thanksgiving in the area since it was officially designated as Bears Ears National Monument late last year. Of course, at this point it’s not certain how much longer this Monument will be around in its current form…
3 CommentsSouthern Utah Wanderings | Cedar Mesa
Tuesday – Thursday, October 3-5, 2017
After spending Monday in the Abajo Mountains and the previous weekend in the northern section of The Bears Ears, it was time to head over to Cedar Mesa so we could spend then next couple of days exploring some new areas of this part of The Bears Ears searching for new ruins and rock art sites. Here are a few photos from the remainder of our trip…
1 CommentSaturday, March 25, 2017
After spending the previous two weeks exploring the deserts of the southwest on our Honeymoon Adventure, it was time to get back to exploring places a little closer to home since I needed a little break from driving long distances. I wanted to go somewhere new to me and needed to get some decent hiking mileage in. It had been a while since I had done a longer hike and I was planning a very long one for the following weekend and I needed to make sure I would be up for it!
After some thought I set my sights on Eagle Park in Arches National Park. This obscure section of Arches has actually been on my radar for quite a while, but I had always wanted to do an overnight backpacking trip into this area. However, now that Arches has stopped issuing backpacking permits in the Park, I figured I might as well give it a try as a day hike.
3 CommentsWednesday, October 5, 2016
On Wednesday morning Jared and I woke up with the sun, broke down camp and then hopped into my Jeep so we could drive a little further down the Mormon Trail to begin our hike. Today we would be hiking a loop starting in Step Canyon and following it down to the confluence with Pine Canyon which we then planned to hike up to complete the loop. Hiking down through Step Canyon was pretty easy with only a few obstacles that we had to get around, but as soon as we reached Pine Canyon we found that much of the canyon bottom was either full of water or slick mud and in order to get around those sections we had to deal with bushwhacking through thick vegetation. I’m sure if the canyon were dry it would have been an easy hike, but it was not too much fun today.
10 CommentsWednesday – Saturday, April 13-16, 2016
Spending a few days backpacking in southern Utah seems to have become an annual tradition for Dave, Jared and myself. A few months ago we started planning our trip to visit another section of Grand Gulch between Pollys Canyon and Collins Canyon that we had not been through before and Dave secured the backpacking permits for our small group. Our plan for Wednesday was to drive down and meet up at a campsite along the road to the Collins Canyon Trailhead. Dave and Jared would be leaving early in the afternoon from Salt Lake City and I’d be leaving after work from Grand Junction. I stopped for a quick dinner in Moab and made it to the campsite just after the sun set for the day. They had arrived about an hour before me. I quickly got my tentcot setup just after dark and we all went to bed early on this beautiful evening.
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