robbers roost

We were backpacking in the Roost this week. One afternoon two of us decided to explore a canyon that was mentioned as 'no rope needed' on the photocopied Kelsey map we had along. It turned very narrow, frighteningly narrow, and not being canyoneers we were relieved to finally pop out into the...

Pictures first. Then narration below. I'm trying to fill in some gaps left wide open from previous hikers - namely the Coconato/Sys trip and the descriptions by M. R. Kelsey in his guidebook, Canyon Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau 6th edition. This is the first major drop of the Wingate...

So there I was, cruising south on Highway 6 in the LED spaceship, about 30 miles south of Wellington. After my last solo trip I decided to get back on the podcast bandwagon and I was totally entertained by season 1 of Serial. But a nagging thought kept popping to the foreground. I do not want to...

Quick overview: Last weekend in Feb, 2016, with my son and his buddy. Three days. Easy hike down to put in, with a spring nearby. Maybe 3 miles. Water level 100-120 cfs. Lots of hunting for the deeper channels. Some wading. In and out of the boat a lot. Still fun. Excellent hiking in No...

I have been cleaning up some of my old posts, I had a hard drive failure and a lot of broken links for the pics. This is a trip from 2015. There are 2 days in the year that belong to ME, and that is my birthday and fathers day. My son say's fathers day does not count, as it is a "Hallmark...

I had Friday off work but I woke up much earlier than I would have on a normal weekday. With the days being shorter and the recent time change for daylight savings I decided to get an early start to my hike. I'd planned an easy exploratory trip to the Frog, which is an abandoned meander of the...

Saturday, April 4, 2015 Today I headed back into Utah so I could visit Moonshine Wash in the San Rafael Desert which has been on my list of places to visit for way too long, especially since it's not too far away from home! Moonshine Wash received it's name from the moonshiners who were active...

This is a 4 day backpack I did earlier this week. We started at Burr Point, dropped down to the Dirty Devil River, and headed up Sams Mesa Box Canyon. We climbed out of that, and dropped into Twin Corral Box Canyon. Then we headed back down to the Dirty Devil, and climbed back up to Burr...

I was asked about pictures from Poison Spring Canyon. There are old slides from 1998 and around 2000 and digital images from 2013. The last ones are still undeveloped . Here are the old scanned images with only littel comments. Poison Spring Canyon - at the beginning near UT 95...

(Trip made in 2006!) An old booklet written by Jack Bickers mentioned a route on the west side of the Green River. He called it "Entrada Gap Trail". But his description was mainly for Bull Bottom Stock Trail. How to find this "Gap" trail was vaguely specified. A good requirement to make us...

4.17.14

The Preface Robber’s Roost is an area of Utah due south of the town of Green River and on the western side of the actual Green River. The area is extremely remote and rugged which made it an ideal hideout for outlaws and cattle rustlers in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. Most notably Butch...

After a day of canyoneering Hogwarts twice and visiting Angel Cove, I headed to the Roost. My plan, visit Moonshine Wash. The road was in worse shape than a month ago, I'm not sure why. I just knew I could only drive 40 instead of 60mph. Then I got behind a caravan of vehicles going 30 and...

On the third and final day of my trip in the southern Horseshoe Canyon area, four of the group--Alan, Wade, Paul, and I--hiked to Cowboy Cave. The cave, and its neighboring cave, Walter's Cave, was excavated in 1975 and found to contain a mammoth dung layer from the late Pleistocene, along with...

After two shorter warm-up hikes the previous day, we left camp on Saturday morning and drove north along the Spur to a drop-in point near Northeast Spur Fork. We were joined by Pat the previous evening at camp, bringing the total group size to seven. Our plan was to drop into Spur Fork (a...

After my long weekend in southern Utah, I took a relaxing break at home for a weekend and then set out for another three-day weekend and did some tough but rewarding hikes in the southern Horseshoe Canyon area. Day one consisted of two hikes: Bluejohn Spring and the Millard Canyon Trail, for a...

A couple of weeks ago I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and decided to check out a place that has been on my list for some time, Happy Canyon. Just like most folks, due to the remoteness of the canyon I unfortunately only had a couple of hours to shoot the narrows before I had to...

I was feeling lethargic this past weekend and on Saturday, after doing very little all day, I half-heartedly made plans to drive to the end of the Spur the following day. The Spur is a long, narrow strip of land bordered by Horseshoe Canyon on the west and the Green River and Millard Canyon on...

For my last hiking trip of 2013 I finally got an opportunity to visit Horseshoe Canyon. Alan invited me to come along with him, Wade, Kari, and Travis, the latter two of whom I hadn't met but had heard much about from the others. At 6AM on Saturday Alan and Kari swung by my place and picked me...

Well... after putting together the video for my Boulder Mountain to Moab hike back in May, things got a little crazy for me and I didn't follow up with a full trip report. With 2013 winding down, I made myself sit down and put it all together this past weekend. The 18-day, 283-mile hike was...