wasatch

Well, I turned the big 59 yesterday, so as has become custom on Bastille Day, I needed to pick a challenging hike in the Wasatch to complete on my birthday. I ended up choosing Mount Superior which I have never attempted before. The peak is located on the Cottonwood Ridge which separates Big...

So @TractorDoc has been training for an August trip down into the Thorofare, and he has been posting some of his training hikes here, and basically putting the old Scatman to shame. He's been loading his pack with 50 lbs., heading off with the wife, and finishing up with some fancy ice cream...

My last hike of spring, and my last training hike for the Wyoming Range next week. I had something happen on this hike that has never happened to the Scatman before, but it takes place at the end of the report, so you will have to bear with me. Today's hike was to the summit of Mount Aire from...

Well after being worked by @Bob in the big Jelly last week, I really had no business attempting the Dragon Tail today. It was a long, steep slog, and my knees and feet are now sore after descending the West Slope Trail off the summit of Grandeur. The West Slope Trail just happens to be my...

The hike this weekend took us to the summit of Lookout Peak, which is located at the head of Emigration Canyon and Burr Fork. We began the hike at the Little Mountain Trailhead and it took us 8 hours and 57 minutes to complete the 12 miles, out and back. At the beginning, the weather was...

Hard to believe that it has already been three years since I last hiked Parley's Ridge, but it has. The hike has changed a bit since the last time I did it, due to a gated community being built at what used to be the trails end. This slight inconvenience adds roughly 2.5 miles to the total...

Eureka! Last week while doing my daily 2 mile walk, my daughter asked me about hardtack. I said, "You mean what the soldiers in the Civil War ate?" I then told her that maybe hardtack would make a good food to take on hiking and backpacking trips. So preparations for this hike began on...

This weekends hike took us along the Van Cott Ridge. With temperatures rising this weekend, getting close to 80 degrees, this was easily our warmest hike of the year so far. I was expecting the foothills to be covered with blooming arrowleaf balsamroot, but it looks like they are still a few...

Headed out from home this morning with the intent of hiking a trail in City Creek Canyon that I have never been on before. I've been going up City Creek going on 39 years now, and I always wondered where the trail went. Well, today I was going to find out. This loop was approximately seven...

Well, my hike up Mount Olympus got off to a bad start on Saturday morning. I arrived at the trailhead a few minutes before 7:00 am, and with it still being dark, I went to take a picture of the city lights. When I turned my camera on it flashed the warning, "No SD Card!" WTF! I had left the...

It's been a cold March thus far in SLC, but today the sun came out, and I think the high was 44 in the valley, and almost no wind to speak of. I'll take it. :) This weekend's hike was to Pencil Point, which is a subpeak of Parley's Ridge. I haven't done this hike in ten years, and the first...

You've all seen Mount Wire several times, but this hike to the summit was my hardest ever. With all the recent snow, the last 0.5 - 0.7 miles of this hike was post-holing to the summit. It absolutely wore me out. It took me a good hour and twenty minutes to cover that last half mile. :)...

After snowshoeing along the south ridge of City Creek last week, I was pretty much obligated to hit the north side this weekend. :) An inversion has set in here across the Salt lake Valley, so it was nice to get up above it for a few hours at least. Sheila joined me on this one Passing...

I started out with micro-spikes on this hike, but soon switched over to snowshoes as I began to sink in quite a bit. That should make @kwc happy. :) I read this past week that we are having the best winter in twenty years here in SLC, and I won't argue with that. We have had storm after storm...

12 degrees at the Little Mountain Trailhead at 10:00 am this morning, as my wife and I hiked to Little Mountain for our weekend exercise. While it was cold, it was sunny for the first half of our hike which made things quite pleasant on the way up. Once we got to the top, the clouds that had...

Had the day off today, so I decided to hike up Grandeur. We've had a cold spell here in Salt Lake, and the temperature at the Church Fork Trailhead was a cozy 19 degrees this morning. :cold: When I go to the summit, I switched out lenses to a wide angle one, and used it on the way down...

Back to the foothill follies for me this fall. Yesterday I hiked to the summit of Mount Wire with my wife. We hiked up the south side of the mountain and came back down the northern most of the western ridges. Can anyone tell me why it might have been 2003 and 2016? Images on the left -...

Yesterday was my 58th time around the sun, and as I normally do, I spent the day hiking. Usually at this time of year I try and do one of the more challenging peaks in the Wasatch, and this time I chose the Pfeifferhorn. This would hopefully be my fifth time to summit the Pfeiffer over the...

On Sunday, it was time to go fetch my gallon of water and 32 oz. of Gatorade off of the Millcreek Ridge that I had stashed there two weeks ago for water bottle refills on my failed attempt to hike the entire ridge. For those interested in the hike along the eastern portion of the ridge a week...

Have you ever heard the saying "the whole enchilada?" How about "the whole nine yards," or perhaps "the whole ball of wax?" Maybe even "the whole shebang?" Those terms mean that one competes the lengthy task at hand. Well, Scatman wasn't able to pull it off. In other words, his eyes were too...