Rock Art of the San Rafael Swell XX | Saturday & Sunday, January 11-12, 2025
It’s been a few years since I spent any time exploring the canyons of the San Rafael Reef and I’ve been feeling the need to get back this winter, so I left home early on Saturday morning, drove west into Utah, and then spent the entire weekend on the Reef. Not only did I hike and explore a few unnamed canyons that have carved their way into the Reef within the San Rafael Reef Wilderness which were completely new to me, but I also revisited ...
Sauntering Through The Swell | Friday – Sunday, October 25-27, 2024
This weekend I took it pretty easy and headed out into the San Rafael Swell so I could search for some new rock art and revisit some sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade! I was hoping that my friend Jared would be able to join me on this trip, but unfortunately he was unable to make it this time, so I was on my own. For the most part I found everything I was looking for and the weather and temperature was very nice ...
Monday, August 26, 2024
After my plans were washed out in the Book Cliffs on Sunday, I met up again with my friend in the San Rafael Swell on Monday morning so we could spend most of the day visiting and searching for some rock art sites. The storms that had been prevalent the previous week had all cleared up overnight and the weather forecast was looking very dry for the foreseeable future so we didn’t have to worry about any of that today, although it was now a bit hazy or smoky out. Many of the roads we drove ...
Monday – Thursday, May 6-9, 2024
After spending the weekend in Salt Lake City with Diane, we returned home for a normal day of work on Monday and then I drove back up to Price afterwards since I would be spending the rest of the week attending the annual Utah Geographic Information Council (UGIC) Conference, which was being held in the Carbon Corridor this year. Of course, during my drive to Price I took a detour off of the highway into the very northern reaches of the San Rafael Swell so I could go on a short hike and a ...
Cleveland – Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry | Friday, May 3, 2024
This weekend Diane and I headed up to Salt Lake City so we could attend a pair of concerts put on by Imminence & The Amity Affliction, which are a couple of our favorite bands that we’ve been looking forward to seeing. Of course, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get in a little hiking along the way to break up the drive to the big city, so we took a detour off the highway to spend a couple hours visiting the Cleveland – Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry at Jurassic ...
Friday – Sunday, April 12-14, 2024
A few months ago I finally did something that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time when I signed up for a Swiftwater Rescue Training class that would be taking place on Monday and Tuesday along the Green River near Swaseys Beach at the mouth of Gray Canyon. Since I needed to be in Green River on Sunday night for the class, I figured this would be a good weekend to spend some quality time wandering around the fringes at the southwestern edge of the San Rafael Swell and into the adjacent ...
Floating Through the Muddy Creek Wilderness: Tomsich Butte to Hidden Splendor
Friday & Saturday, June 16-17, 2023 | Average CFS: 185
This year Jackson was really hoping we would be able to make it over to the San Rafael Swell so we could float through The Chute of Muddy Creek before the water levels dropped, but for a while there it was looking like we might not be able to make it happen this season. Luckily, the water levels of Muddy Creek have continued to stay high enough for a couple of weeks and on Friday afternoon as I was ...
Friday – Sunday, June 2-4, 2023
This weekend Jared and I met up in the San Rafael Swell so we could float the San Rafael River with our packrafts while there was still enough water left this year. Although our last packrafting trip together on the Dirty Devil River may not have gone as well as we had hoped, Jared was looking forward to getting his packraft on a river that actually had enough water this time and I was looking forward to a return visit into the Little Grand Canyon! I left from work on Friday afternoon and made ...
Muddy Creek to the Little Wedge | San Rafael Swell Rock Art XVII
Friday – Sunday, April 21-23, 2023
As I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go this weekend, I realized that I had not been back to the San Rafael Swell since Diane and I did a little mountain biking on the Good Water Rim Trail over the Halloween weekend in 2021, and I thought that this would be a good time to finally get back out there to remedy that oversight. As usual, I left after work on Friday afternoon and headed west into ...
Halloween Weekend | Saturday & Sunday, October 30-31, 2021
This weekend Diane was able to get away from her schoolwork for the second time this month, so we decided to head on over to the San Rafael Swell for a little mountain biking on The Wedge. I’ve known about the Good Water Rim Trail for a long time and have always thought it might be fun to take my mountain bike over there to check it out, but I never got around to it before. However, now that I have a mountain bike that I actually enjoy riding and have ...