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The Upper Escalante River & Lower Death Hollow

Canyons of the Escalante | Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Sunday & Monday, September 29-30, 2019

After spending Saturday hiking through Phipps Wash and Deer Canyon, we were ready to begin our overnight backpacking trip through the Escalante River Gorge on Sunday morning. The previous night we had found a campsite on Big Spencer Flats and had done our best to prepare for the high winds and storms that were forecasted overnight. It did stay pretty windy out for much of the night and there was a little on and off rain, but not enough that anything was still wet in the morning. It was still pretty windy out when we got up shortly before sunrise, but there were plenty of nice clouds in the sky and the sunrise was looking good, so we grabbed our cameras and took a few photos around camp.

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Navajo National Monument: Keet Seel & Betatakin

Thursday – Sunday, May 30 – June 2, 2019

After a quick visit to Navajo National Monument back in 2011, which was when I was on my way to visit The Wave for the very first time, I knew that I needed to come back another time so I could actually hike to the Keet Seel and Betatakin ruins. Every year since then I have thought about going back but I never got around to making the advance reservations for the Keet Seel hike which typically fills up early in the year. When I made the decision that I was going to try to obtain some hard-to-get permits earlier this year (i.e. Havasupai), the hike to Keet Seel was up near the top of my list! On the first day that reservations were being taken for Keet Seel in February I called and reserved an overnight permit for Diane and myself for the first weekend in June because it was the first Saturday of the season that you could do an overnight hike this year. Since this particular hike is only available from Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is typically the hottest part of the year on the Colorado Plateau, I hoped that the weather would cooperate with us this year and not be too warm…

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Cedar Mesa Memorial Weekend

Friday – Sunday, May 24-26, 2019

Years ago I used to spend my Memorial Day weekends exploring the canyons of Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah, which was before I started going to The Maze, but then I stopped doing that when it seemed like the cedar gnats (no-see-ums) were starting to get worse during that time of the year. This year my friend Alan was going to be in the area over the holiday weekend and asked if I’d be able to join him for a couple of hikes, so I thought it would be nice to return to that old annual tradition and said yes! Our original plan was to explore some of the canyons up from Elk Ridge, but thanks to a late season snowstorm we decided to skip the muddy roads and changed our plans to stay lower in the canyons of Cedar Mesa instead.

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Ancient Architects of Arizona

Wednesday – Saturday, April 24-27, 2019

Earlier this year two of my favorite bands, Architects and While She Sleeps, announced a tour that started in late April and went through May. These two bands don’t tour in the US very much so I knew that I really needed to go to this one! I’m just glad the tour dates closest to home didn’t coincide with a weekend that I had already made plans for! We were unable to go to the Denver date, which was the closest one to us, so we decided to go to the Phoenix date instead and would plan a short easy trip around it. I had never been anywhere between Flagstaff and Phoenix before, so I thought it would be a good idea to play tourist for a change and visit all of the popular National Monuments as an introduction to the area. I also figured that since we were going to be seeing the Architects in concert on Saturday night, that it would be nice to visit the ruins left behind by the ancient architects of Arizona on our way there!

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Ruins Around the Bears Ears

Friday – Sunday, April 19-21, 2019

I can’t believe that it’s almost the end of April already and this is only my first trip of the year to the canyons surrounding the Bears Ears! At the very least I typically spend Presidents Day weekend exploring this area, but this year we had planned a trip around a concert in Las Vegas over that holiday weekend instead. Then I ended up concentrating on exploring more of The Needles during a few of my other weekends this year and have neglected getting down to the Bears Ears. I finally wanted to change that this weekend, so a few weeks ago I contacted my friend Jerry to see if he was interested in joining me this weekend, and he was, so we met up Friday evening near Blanding to hike a couple of canyons together around the Bears Ears over the weekend. The weather was great and we visited a few nice sites. Enjoy these photos from our weekend!