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Tag: trail canyon

Horsin’ Around: The Return to Horse Canyon

Friday – Sunday, November 16-18, 2018

It’s been over six years since the last time I drove into Horse Canyon which is located in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park. The road washed out again shortly after that trip and I don’t think it’s been open much, if at all, since then. When I noticed at the end of October that the road was actually open again, I quickly put together a last minute weekend trip with my friends Dave and Jared since I’m not sure how long it will stay open this time! Jared came along on my last trip here but this would be Dave’s first time in Horse Canyon and he was looking forward to it. I reserved a campsite for us at Peekaboo in Salt Creek Canyon on Saturday night so we could spend two full days in the canyon and not have to deal with getting day-use permits. I left work on Friday afternoon and met up with them outside of the Park along the Lockhart Basin Road where we spent the first night since we were able to have a fire here to keep warm on the cold night. On Saturday morning we got a late start since we had to wait until the Visitor Center opened at 9:00am to get the combination to the gate which wasted a couple hours of daylight on these short days. Once we had the combination we headed through the gate and spent the rest of the weekend searching for arches, ruins and rock art. We found plenty of all of them! Enjoy these photos from our weekend trip!

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Ruins of Cedar Mesa

President’s Day Weekend | Saturday – Monday, February 17 – 19, 2018

This year for President’s Day Weekend Diane and I decided to head back down to Cedar Mesa for our first visit to Bears Ears National Monument of the year. We ended up spending most of the weekend exploring canyons carved into Cedar Mesa and visiting ruins that I hadn’t been to in a number of years, plus a few new ones. We also made a detour over to Montezuma Canyon on Monday morning before a strong winter storm moved into the area and chased us back home in the early afternoon.

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Tenmile! Canyon of Mystery

Moab Area Rock Art XXXI | Sunday, December 17, 2017

After spending Saturday in the Book Cliffs with Diane, I headed over to Tenmile Canyon on Sunday morning, which is a little ways southwest of Crescent Junction near the Green River, to do a little exploring on my own. There might be some of you out there that recognize the title of this trip report is very similar in name to a guidebook written by the late Jack Bickers (Tenmile! Nearby Canyon of Mystery) in 1991. Well, that book has been collecting dust on my shelf for almost ten years now, and ever since I got it I’ve wanted to visit and explore Tenmile Canyon. Of course, when I originally bought the book my main intention was to drive the trail in the canyon to the Green River with my Jeep, but these days I’d rather be hiking. I’ve tried planning trips to Tenmile Canyon before, but something has always prevented me from making it out there, whether it was weather or a last minute change of plans to go somewhere else. I finally decided to make this trip a priority and headed out there to do a little hiking. Better late than never, I guess!

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The Search for the Sky Faces

Friday & Saturday, December 1-2, 2017

A few years back I came across an old photo of some pictographs I was unfamiliar with called the Sky Faces. Since I’ve enjoyed visiting many of the other ‘Faces Motif’ pictographs in the Canyonlands region (Four Faces, Five Faces, Thirteen Faces, etc.), I decided to try and track them down. It took me a few years, but I was finally able to figure out their location earlier this year and wanted to try and get to them before the year was over. Back in October Jared and I tried to hike to them, but we were unable to reach them via the route we took. With warmer weather sticking around this weekend I decided to head down to Canyonlands National Park after work on Friday and go on a long hike to reach the pictographs on Saturday. I ended up spending Friday night just outside the park in Bears Ears National Monument, which may have been the last time? Looking at the new maps of the Monument, I guess I would have been camped in what is now going to be the Indian Creek National Monument.

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A Quick Nine Mile Canyon Visit

Monday, November 20, 2017

A few years ago while we were exploring Nine Mile Canyon with our friend Dennis, Diane had spotted some nice petroglyphs high above the road that none of us had seen before. We didn’t have time that day to climb up to them for a closer look, so I marked them on my GPS and we planned to return another day. On our way back home from Salt Lake City this weekend we spent a few hours in Nine Mile Canyon to break up the drive and decided to finally climb up to those petroglyphs we had seen from below. We also visited a few other locations in the canyon before continuing our drive back home and we found some other nice petroglyph panels, too. Here are a couple of photos from our quick visit to Nine Mile Canyon.

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