Featured content

Wasn't sure we were going to make our usual 'end of school' trip up to Yellowstone this year, but glad we did. Grabbed a last second site at the Mammoth CG - I must say, it's a much more pleasant spot with the new north entrance road largely avoiding it. I spent some leisurely time around the park with the family, but took one day to hike up and over Mount Everts. For the last few years, I've enjoyed taking a day on our frontcountry trips to hike from our campsite - no cars, no shuttles -...

In September 2014, Chris, Peter and I did a 47 mile traverse of the Sawtooth Range in Idaho. We had a shuttle drop us off at Grandjean, and from there spent 7 days crossing the range to Pettit Lake. The weather was perfect, and since then this trek has been the benchmark for excellence for all that followed. I recently re-edited my photos from that week. Below is the route. Hopefully some of you can follow our footsteps across this land of jagged peaks and brilliant lakes. PS: According...

I was on my own last weekend so I decided to try a hike that Mrs. TractorDoc would be less than thrilled to join me on. We had a good amount of rain days prior, and I decided to find my way to Contour Falls in Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This was not that long of a hike at about four miles; half of it follows the canal towpath trail so that portion is quite easy. The other half involves making your way up the walls of a steep ravine (or walking up the creek bed) to reach the waterfall...

Intro After reading the post from @Kullaberg63 on his Stevens East Benches route, I immediately put it on my to-do list. Allen's Stevens/Fold route ranks high among my all-time favorite routes, and I was anxious to try the variation. In March I did a spring warm-up trip to scout the Stevens Arch descent into Stevens Canyon and do the normal Stevens/Fold route. Thanks to @Jammer for the helpful Stevens Arch descent beta (to the extent it's possible to describe that). Fast forward a few...

Took advantage of a sunny morning to hike up the Mastodon Trail (off the Chena Hot Springs road outside of Fairbanks) with my son and grandson. Saw sign of moose but saw no moose. Did see a porcupine as we were near the end of our adventure. Trailhead signage Trail starts out winding through tall spruce Trial starts to open up a bit Fuzzy somethings along the trail Lots of new growth along the trail. This area burnt several years ago. Moose sign Some water and old corduroy...

I put on my big boy shoes yesterday and headed to Mount Olympus to see if I could still make it to the top and back down again. I used to do Olympus two to four times a year, but as I've gotten older and my knees, feet and hips have begun to wear down, it has become more difficult for me. Even for the young of mind, body and soul Olympus is a tough hike. It was forecast to reach 85 in the valley yesterday, so I got up early and took advantage of the shade of the mountain so that I...

Yesterday was my 29th wedding anniversary, and to celebrate Sheila and I managed an anniversary hike to the top of Grandeur Peak. At 8299 feet in elevation, Grandeur would be the highest that I have hiked since my knee surgery last October and I was interested to see how the knee would hold up on this one. Wildflowers haven't been that spectacular this year, due to the record warm winter we had here in Salt Lake, but there were some along the trail that kept me busy taking pictures all the...

On May 2 through 7, @futurafree and I canoed from Mineral Bottom to Spanish Bottom on the Green River (and a little of the Colorado). We came up with the plan maybe 2 months before the trip was to begin and were surprised to be able to snag some spots with Tex's to rent a canoe and get a jet boat shuttle. We scheduled for 5 nights, which is a night longer than most people take for this trip. It was perhaps a bit too long, but it made for a very relaxed trip. We only had to canoe at...

It's been six years since I was last on Perkin's Peak, so this past weekend it was time to step up a level beyond the foothills and try something a little more challenging to see how my surgically repaired knee would hold up. I approached Perkin's from Jack's Mountain for the first time. Normally I take in the peak while doing a traverse of Parley's Ridge, or just hike up the west side of the ridge. Also, for the first time, I hiked up the Straight Jack's Mountain Trail instead of my...

This picture has a bit of everything from our breathtaking week in the Grand Canyon - flowers, water, rocks, and sky. Living for a week in the canyon was magical. Day 0 We flew to Phoenix, got fuel in Flagstaff, and stayed at Cameron Trading Post. We were glad that we would approach the park from the east entrance rather than the more crowded and built-up main entrance. Day 1 We checked out the beautiful Navajo art at Cameron Trading Post. We didn't buy the $465,000 rug but had a lot...

Headed up to Limekiln Gulch here in the foothills to check out the historic limekilns that were built by pioneers that settled the Salt Lake Valley. After visiting the kilns, we continued up the gulch to the Shoreline Trail, then followed it down into Dry Canyon. Once we reached the bottom of Dry Canyon, we took a trail up the North Fork of Dry Canyon to see where it went. We hiked maybe 1.3 miles up the north fork of the canyon before turning around and heading back to Dry Canyon, then...

Canyonlands Needles District 4/20/26-4/25/26 Day Zero Horse Canyon is dry so my group made the decision to utilize the 4x4 road into Horse Canyon to cache 70 liters of water at the junction of Trail Fork in Horse Canyon. We rented a jeep from Jenn's Jeep Rentals in Moab and completed the cache in under 3 hours (with written permission from the NPS of course). Day 1 We parked at the Salt Creek Gate near Cave Spring and hiked about 10 miles to our cache. We then lugged our water (10L per...

EDIT: Alright, despite accidently hitting the post button when I didn't mean to, this is finally at a semi-acceptable state. I've been meaning to discuss this trip report for awhile, but never really gotten around to it. But inspired by @Gretchen Millward 's post here, I have decided to push past that and actually talk about what happened. 2023 was a wild year for Southern Utah. That year, a ranger at the Pariah station told me it was like monsoon season had never ended, and I believed...

My family headed out to Antelope Island this past weekend for a short backpacking trip to Split Rock Bay. Split Rock Bay is located on the western side of the island and a bit north of center. It's roughly 4.6 miles from the White Rock Bay Trailhead to the primitive campsites at Split Rock and there is one 600 foot climb to get over the saddle on Elephant Head and the foothills of Frary Peak before dropping down to Split Rock Bay. We had originally planned on going out in March, but rain...

I left the Front Range of Colorado last weekend with the intention of hiking Lower Grand Gulch from the Government Trailhead to the San Juan, then over to Slickhorn and out Slickhorn 1 for an approximately 55 mile loop. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas and the night before I was to drop in Cedar Mesa got snow and a forecast for an unstable pattern. The thought of negotiating snow covered slickrock alone on an unknown trail seemed unwise, so I shifted plans to fit in several...

Trip report for the Beehive Traverse in Capitol Reef National Park from earlier this month. For those interested, I have even more pictures on my blog than what I posted here. Day 1 Since this would be a thru hike, the three of us met at the trailhead with two cars. We left one car at the trailhead we would finish the trip at and all hopped in the other car to drive to the starting trailhead together. We didn’t start hiking the first day until 3pm, which led to a shorter mileage day. We...

Well, we continued our foothill follies this weekend with a short hike up Pencil Peak which is a subpeak of Parley's Ridge. The forecast called for about a 50% chance of rain, but mostly in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we caught some of it in the morning with a drizzle on the way up, another drizzle on the summit, and then we really caught it on our way back to the trailhead for about ten minutes of downpour and ferocious winds. I hauled my Canon EOS 5D Mark II with me, but about...

This is a brief trip report of a 3-day backpack trip to Hatch/Fiddler's Canyon on March 23-26. We drove down Poison Springs Rd to the Dirty Devil in my stock Ford F150 without any incident. On Day #1 we crossed the river and hiked along the road up to the high point and then dropped down using the Steve Allen/Hayduke exit/entrance route into Hatch. It was pretty easy finding the wash/shallow drainage and then pretty easy to find the traverse. I was surprised how steep it is to drop down to...

Progression along the Salt Lake foothills brought us to Jack's Mountain this morning. Of course, there had to be some drama as when I arrived at the trailhead and opened up the hatch of the Subaru, I realized that I had left my daypack at home and had to turn around and go back and get it. :mad: While this hike is a short one, it is steep, gaining roughly 1240 feet in 1.05 miles. I was looking forward to see how my knee would handle this at this point of my recovery. On our way down, we...

On this trip I wanted to check out a few Maze packraft access options I've been thinking about for a while. Backpacking from the Island in the Sky trailheads is limited and mostly on the shorter side, plus water is scarce from the White Rim and up. But used as a transit to access the rivers one can enjoy the vast views and stark landscape untroubled. On the Green river side of ISKY from near Queen Anne Bottom and 35 miles downstream to the confluence of the Colorado I know of only one...