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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...

As far as knee testing is concerned, Mount Wire is a step up from what I've been doing, and so the family headed up this morning to see if I could make it or not. My knees were pretty sore after the descent. Review Photo Overview map of our hike - roughly a 2100 foot elevation gain to the top. We headed up George's Hollow and came back down the ridge Just off the trailhead Looking back across Research Park towards downtown SLC Arrowleaf balsamroot is blooming now at the lower...

Backpacking season hasn't really started yet for most of the US and I realized that I had never put together a trip report for my blog about at trip I did in the fall. I figured some people here might like to see something a little different. 10/4 - 10/6/25 The weather was nice, there was no soccer and my wife was taking the oldest kid on a trip. So, I took the youngest two kids on a short backpacking trip to VA. We started at the Elk Garden Trailhead, it was completely packed, not...

September 27 - October 1, 2025 I took even longer than normal to write this up, somehow. Sitting here at the end of the Winter That Never Was (for the western, non-Alaska US, anyway) has me thinking about backpacking. This was the 6th year in a row doing a trip in the Bechler area of Yellowstone. The group changes a little every time, but it's always a good time. The plan was to start at the Pitchstone Plateau, then head off trail to the upper reaches of the Bechler drainage, down the...

Here is a brief trip report and a few pictures from last fall. The centerpiece of my trip was to make it to the top of South Guardian Angel. I had failed on two previous attempts over seven years and I was hoping the third time would be the charm. I knew it would be a beast of a hike and just hoped I had enough juice in the tank to do it. I have realized that as I get older, trip planning for each day has become paramount. 20 years ago, I would just go "all out" each day but I'm...

I headed back to Antelope Island with Katie and Sheila to complete a six mile lollipop loop hike on the northwestern side of the island this time. We started at the Lakeside Loop Trailhead and made our way along the shoreline of the island before heading up and over Buffalo Point. After dropping down the north side of the point, we hooked back up with the Lakeside Trail to complete the lollipop portion and then retraced our footsteps back to our car. We saw and heard lots of birds on this...

The weather report was ok( 80 ish and 50 overnite) so I met some folks for a short overnite trip near home…but things don’t always go as planned. The trip turned out good except for the excessive wind which whipped up the cedar pollen in the air that affected most of the people out there …you can see th pollen in one of the pictures -that yellowish looking smoke is the cedar pollen. 80 degrees in central Texas with th humidity can be icky…it was hiking in. The temperature is dropped about 40...