bears ears

The SEUG Circuit As detailed earlier, I am starting a new position in early-mid June. As such, I gave myself the gift of time to packraft and walk to connect the four national park units that comprise the South East Utah Group. Connecting the parks and seeing the lands in between allowed me...

Although I had been carrying plenty of water, I hoped that I'd be able to refill my bottles at Lake Canyon. The dirt road from the highway out to Aladdins Lamp Pass used to skirt the edge of the canyon, but it has now completely collapsed and 4WD drivers now need to take a detour further south...

Plans to backpack thwarted by some great Final Four Basketball, Lori and I took a leisurely sightseeing tour of Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, and Cedar Mesa. No pics of Hovenweep visiting the Towers and Lowry Pueblo on April 4. April 5: A hike down into White Canyon and Armstrong Canyon viewing...

Back at the end of October, @Adventure monkey and I went on an 8 day Canyoneering/Backpacking/Packrafting trip through the lower Cataract Canyon/Dark Canyon/Orange Cliffs area. We began at Clearwater Canyon, and worked our way down to the Colorado River where we packrafted to Bowdie Canyon. We...

March 18-20, 2018 There was a huge difference in weather between my spring break this year and my spring break last year. Last year was sunny and a bit warmer than normal. So you likely can imagine what this year's was like. My wife, @Jessica, and I headed down to Cedar Mesa Sunday March 18 to...

April 2015. I drove down to Cedar Mesa, intending to hike the class Fish/Owl loop. I stopped by the ranger station to collect my permit. The road to Fish and Owl, the kindly volunteer ranger told me, was impassible. Too much wet clay. Fortunately, I had thrown my third-edition Kelsey book in my...

With snow putting an end to the Colorado alpine backpacking with which I have so recently and completely fallen in love, I thought I'd take a few days and see what backpacking in Utah had to offer. I've never visited Utah before at all, so when I saw a nice stretch of weather forecasted between...

It looks like Obama is going to declare Bears Ears National Monument this afternoon! http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865670039/Obama-expected-to-make-Bears-Ears-announcement.html http://www.sltrib.com/news/4675012-155/mike-lee-staffer-says-obama-will EDIT: It's official...

I have a very short list of hikes I might never repeat. This one got added! Why? Brush! Too bad, because I love wild and remote places like this where nobody hardly ever goes. Followed @Bob 's track from here: http://backcountrypost.com/threads/fable-valley-bowdie-canyon.2787/ It ended up...

So we started out at 4:00 AM on Thursday April 9 to drive down to Cedar Mesa. After stopping for gas and breakfast in Hanksville we made it the Kane Gulch Ranger Station. After picking up our permit we headed to the Fish & Owl Trail Head. From the Ranger Station it's a mile further south on...

Grand Gulch Loop Friday - Saturday, May 1-3, 2015 After spending a few days in lower Grand Gulch last week, I went back home to work for four days before driving back down to Cedar Mesa to backpack the popular Kane Gulch to Bullet Canyon loop of Grand Gulch with Diane. This would be Diane's...

Wednesday - Sunday, April 22-26, 2015 It seems to have become an annual spring tradition for Jared, Dave and myself to plan a backpacking trip in late April or early May to southern Utah in search of ancient ruins and rock art. This year we decided to spend three nights in lower Grand Gulch...

Hidden Valley is a tributary of Blue Notch Canyon south of Hite. Blue Notch and its road is mainly used for lake access on Lake Powell and the smaller Hidden Valley with its mining history often missed. The same happened to us on our first visit. Returning from Castle Butte on the bank of the...

Saturday - Monday, February 14-16, 2015 Diane and I spent Valentine's Day and the long President's Day weekend on Cedar Mesa for our very first camping trip of the year. We setup our base-camp at the Natural Bridges National Monument campground and enjoyed the beautiful spring-like weather all...

Joey and I headed out for a short trip into Grand Gulch. All missed out, weather was like end of April....excellent: went in via Coyote Canyon and out of Bullet Canyon via side canyon. Found a nice small ruin, with actually no sign of ever being visited. Here are a few pic:

Oldie but a goodie, easy day hike or camp and explore canyon. Day permit required, in season.

Short trip in 2012 looking for some ruins I heard rumor of from a fire crew. Only substantial one we found, supposed to be others hidden along the top in the Junipers. Pretty rough. Borders Rig Canyon.

Thursday - Sunday, November 27-30, 2014 For Thanksgiving this year, Diane and I decided to spend a nice relaxing weekend on Cedar Mesa and we really lucked out with nice weather all weekend. The high temperatures were in the upper 50's during the day and low temperatures only dropped into the...

This looks like a pretty good fall campsite, don't you think? Lots of afternoon sun , reflected warmth from the canyon walls during the night, nice clear water in pot holes fifty feet away, These pot holes might not look like much, but finding beautiful clear water like this in the desert...

Winter always leaves me jonesing to get out. It's a long time to not be backpacking. So i decided to get down to southern utah as soon as i could this year. I planned on the first week end of march, which also ended up being the last week end of february. I drove down to Provo with my girl and...