wasatch

A sunny late summer afternoon hike to Lake Blanche wasn't enough. It had been years since the last time I stood on the airy dizzying summit of the Sun Dial and it beckoned in the afternoon light invitingly. Stopping to smell (photograph) the wildflowers along the way up to the lake proved a good...

What has become something of a winter tradition of mine, drclef and I set off for Broads Fork last weekend. Mixed terrain, diverse geology, open vistas, and grand views of one of the Wasatch's most spectacular cirques makes this destination one of Northern Utah's best. Approximately 1.5...

The full moon is supposed to come once a month. Once in a Blue Moon we get two full moons in a single month... and once every few years we see 13 full moons in a 12-month calendar year. This was the case in 2012. The 13th full moon occurred on December 28th. It followed a significant winter...

I haven't spent any time posting lately so I'm trying to make up for it a bit. This will just be a short list of the many hikes we've done from spring-fall. We've been committed to doing about 2 per week and it's been good for the soul. We live at the base of Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons so...

Headed down to Maple Canyon about a month ago for a day trip. We left from Salt Lake at about 11am and made it in 1.5 hours. Met up with some friends that had camped there and also my wife's twin sister and fam who had also traveled from SLC. We put up 3 routes all on the same wall and took...

Crossposted from my blog at www.livevicariouslythroughus.blogspot.com Maple Canyon is another place that's been on my radar for a while. We got out there this past weekend and had a blast. I sometimes wonder why it takes me so long to go to some of these places! Maple Canyon is no exception-...

Originally posted at www.livevicariouslythroughus.blogspot.com I didn't know whether to post this in hiking or other, but hiking prevailed. Our twighlight stop at Porcupine Reservoir over the Labor Day weekend really got me pumped up about looking for salmon, so Friday night we went camping...

A friend of mine and ultrarunner (Karl Meltzer) is the creator and race director of the Speedgoat 50k trail race at Snowbird Ski Resort. This is 30 miles of hard running with 12k elevation gain and 12k elevation loss. My wife did this race 2 years ago so I know first hand how nutty it is. The...

Hit up the Weber bright and early Saturday morning with a buddy of mine. We were on the river and fishing before the sun came up and it paid off. I landed my biggest Weber Cutty to date as well as another slab Brown among some other smaller fish. The Cutty hammered a size 2 sculpin pattern. I...

Up the long ladder. The common trail into Bells Canyon begins in the Wasatch foothills at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Suburban development has cut off the best approaches into the canyon, so most hikers access it from the Sandy City/Salt Lake County trailhead located near 9600 South...

I have been doing lots of peak bagging latley and have been having canyon withdrawls. I haven't had a decent canyon trip for a month, hoping to get out in the next few weeks. Untill then I heard of this little canyon in Sandy that only takes a few hours and has some sweet little raps in...

I haven't done a Utah post for a while, so since I've been out a time or two recently, here's another one. Posted from my blog at www.livevicariouslythroughus.blogspot.com Last Monday my wife and kids were up at Bear Lake, so I had a free evening to go hiking. It didn't take me long to...

July 3 Instead of fighting all the idiots for a spot to watch the Logan fireworks this year a friend and I decided to hike Mt Naomi as it was the full moon! We didn't leave Logan until almost 10pm and got back to Logan just before 3am! It was an absolute blast! The moon lit up everything! It...

On the 26th, a friend and I hiked Timp, starting at the Timpanooke Trailhead and finished at Aspen Grove. I had never done the "cross-over" as I'll call it, and knew that it would make for a long day. But in the end, it was a great experience and I can't say that I'll ever want to do that again...

I was in the area and decided to hike the Grotto Trail. It is a short hike up to the waterfall but worth checking out. I passed two other groups on their way out and had the falls all to myself. I tried taking some longish exposure pics. Not as good as some I've seen...

Alene and I were able to celebrate our 7 year anniversary by doing a hike up Little Cottonwood canyon called Red Pine Lake. Neither of us had done it before so it was fun to have 6 hours to ourselves to hike without kids or anything else to slow us down. The trail was really nice and for about...

Bill and I had talked about doing this for quite a while but we didn't want to do it on a weekend and I usually had work issues that made it tough for me to pull it off on a week night. But on the spur of the moment, we decided to finally do it. We met up at my place in Cottonwood Heights...

Wow we had some fun weather over Memorial Day weekend; it made backpacking a little more interesting. We were going to start this trip on Saturday but due to weather we waited until Sunday to start. We tried to get out a few times Sunday afternoon, the first time we got of the he put our packs...

MotionX Track: Aspen Grove (one-way) I love hiking Timpanogos. I wanted to check things out this afternoon, but didn't get to get out as early as I intended due to work, and also because Timpanooke TH was closed, and I didn't find out until I was heading up to the Ranger pay station. So, we...

We spent part of a Saturday hanging out at Crystal Hot Springs with our friends the Beatty's along with a few other members of their extended family. It was actually a lot funner than I thought it would be, but I'm sure the water slide helped :-). Matt Beatty is a new member of the forum and I...