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Tag: trail canyon

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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Dome Plateau

Saturday, March 5, 2016

This weekend Diane and I decided not to stray too far from home and made our way out to the Dome Plateau area northeast of Arches National Park to do a little exploring. We started out by driving up onto Winter Camp Ridge to check on a geocache I placed here a few years back. It’s also an area we just enjoy visiting.

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Toms Canyon to the Little Dolores River

Saturday, December 6, 2014

In a recent conversation with a Facebook friend, he mentioned to me that there might be some rock art located along the Little Dolores River between two parcels of private property. After doing some research on the property boundaries and finding that access would probably be possible by hiking down Toms Canyon, I mapped a possible route on Google Earth that avoided all private property and stayed on BLM land to the area. The only concern I had left was finding an access point down into Toms Canyon from the rim. I had found a spot on Google Earth that looked good, but would not know for sure until I was there and checked it out for myself. On Saturday morning I decided to head up and give this hike a shot. After stopping at the Visitor Center in the Colorado National Monument to pick up a calendar that features one of my photos, I continued up through Glade Park to the Little Dolores Road and took it almost to it’s end at the private property. I turned off on a side road that lead to a campsite and started hiking from there. First, I had to climb to a short pass on a faint trail that gave me a nice view down into Toms Canyon. The faint trail I followed up to the pass pretty much ended there and I had to bushwhack through the steep and rocky wash on the way down into Toms Canyon. There was one rocky ledge that I thought was going to stop me and prevent me from going further, but after a little searching I managed to find a way down. It turns out that the route I had planned in Google Earth worked out perfectly. Once I was down in Toms Canyon the hiking was much easier and I followed some well-used cow trails.

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