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- Aug 9, 2007
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June 2006
This trip has brought me to the reality that I won't be going backpacking as much as I would like purely because it totally sucks to do it alone. It has its upsides of course like being able to move as fast or slow as you want. Hmm... what else. You get a lot of quiet time. Thats nice. But when it comes down to it, company is good and sometimes it can save you.
It's never a good sign when a trip starts with getting pulled over en route to the trailhead.
This all went down between Park City and Oakley on the Brown's Canyon Road. The cop apparently clocked me going 69 in a 55. After sitting there for a while he came back and said 'dispatch must be on a smoke break' and let me off with nothing but a verbal warning. Go dispatch!
This is the road that winds up Weber Canyon outside of Oakley. What a beautiful day.
Nikita salivating for some open space.
About a mile and a half down the trail came the first river crossing. There was no suitable crossing to be found so I decided to search upstream.
A few hundred yards upstream I found this log jam. It worked okay until it broke and about sent me downstream.
Back on the trail, it's obvious this hadn't seen much use yet this year. You can hardly even see the trail in this shot.
About a mile and a half after the last river crossing came this one. I looked at the map and realized that if I bush whack it up the wrong side of the river for about a mile I would reconnect with the Abe's Lake trail. It seemed like a good idea at the time so I left the trail and started up the other side of the river.
Bush-whacking up the wrong side of the river was hard work.
Yeah. So the make my own trail thing didn't really work out. After trudging through boulder fields and thick forest I ran into this nice little road block. This is where things started to get bad... very bad. My options were A. Turn around and hike roughly .75 miles back to the river crossing at which point I would get very wet crossing the river. Or B. Hike straight up the slope you see to the left of this photo and hope I can get to a spot where I can manage a traverse to continue my path up canyon. I should've gone with A. But I am a dumbass and I chose B.
So there are certain things you should avoid when backpacking alone. Near the top of that list are off-trail hiking, negotiating downed trees with a pack on, and bouldering. For those of you not familiar with the term, bouldering is essentially rock climbing without a rope. From the time I left the trail I did a lot of all of those things. When I made the decision to hike up above the river instead of going back I didn't realize that the slope was as steep as it was. I ended up climbing roughly 200 vertical feet from the river. It was bad... super steep. Every footstep I had to kick in my foot and test the ground or I would slide down the slope into the rapids below. My heart was racing a million miles per hour. And the cherry on top was this nice little piece of rock near the top. By this point a fall would have been almost definitely fatal. And if it weren't fatal I would've wished it had been. Did you ever see Planko on The Price is Right? Well I would've been the Planko puck and the trees and boulders would've been the posts on the gameboard. The raging river below would've been the end. Anyway, this sucked. Every rock I held onto was coming out of the wall. Oh yeah, and I was doing it with a 35 pound pack on and treking poles hanging fom my wrists. Lame.
The one good thing about my death climb... the view.
Hiking up on the ridge wasn't too bad. I never saw any sign of humans, I can't help but think that very few people have ever walked through here considering the difficulty to reach this shelf.
After a while the slope forced me back down to the river and I found a reasonable crossing. This is back on the main trail.
This is the turn-off to Abe's Lake. By this point I was just too exausted to try and make it up there so I decided to spend the night by the river.
The obligatory campsite self-portrait. Nikita was out hunting squirrel.
The night consisted of me sitting by a fire consuming backcountry cocktails. It was okay. I did however manage to get an excellent 11 hours of sleep. The river was only a stones throw from my tent... nothing like good white noise for the dreams. It was a strange night.
The next day I decided to just suck it up and get a little wet on the river crossings. There were a few times I thought Nikita was going to get swept away but she stuck in there.
Heading home again...
This trip has brought me to the reality that I won't be going backpacking as much as I would like purely because it totally sucks to do it alone. It has its upsides of course like being able to move as fast or slow as you want. Hmm... what else. You get a lot of quiet time. Thats nice. But when it comes down to it, company is good and sometimes it can save you.
- trip date: 6/17 - 6/18/06
- distance: 7.5 Miles
- starting point: Holiday Park Trailhead on the Middle Weber
- ending point: The goal *was* Abe's Lake
- elevation: Trailhead elevation was 8,040', peak elevation for this trip turned out to be 8,734'
It's never a good sign when a trip starts with getting pulled over en route to the trailhead.
This all went down between Park City and Oakley on the Brown's Canyon Road. The cop apparently clocked me going 69 in a 55. After sitting there for a while he came back and said 'dispatch must be on a smoke break' and let me off with nothing but a verbal warning. Go dispatch!
This is the road that winds up Weber Canyon outside of Oakley. What a beautiful day.
Nikita salivating for some open space.
About a mile and a half down the trail came the first river crossing. There was no suitable crossing to be found so I decided to search upstream.
A few hundred yards upstream I found this log jam. It worked okay until it broke and about sent me downstream.
Back on the trail, it's obvious this hadn't seen much use yet this year. You can hardly even see the trail in this shot.
About a mile and a half after the last river crossing came this one. I looked at the map and realized that if I bush whack it up the wrong side of the river for about a mile I would reconnect with the Abe's Lake trail. It seemed like a good idea at the time so I left the trail and started up the other side of the river.
Bush-whacking up the wrong side of the river was hard work.
Yeah. So the make my own trail thing didn't really work out. After trudging through boulder fields and thick forest I ran into this nice little road block. This is where things started to get bad... very bad. My options were A. Turn around and hike roughly .75 miles back to the river crossing at which point I would get very wet crossing the river. Or B. Hike straight up the slope you see to the left of this photo and hope I can get to a spot where I can manage a traverse to continue my path up canyon. I should've gone with A. But I am a dumbass and I chose B.
So there are certain things you should avoid when backpacking alone. Near the top of that list are off-trail hiking, negotiating downed trees with a pack on, and bouldering. For those of you not familiar with the term, bouldering is essentially rock climbing without a rope. From the time I left the trail I did a lot of all of those things. When I made the decision to hike up above the river instead of going back I didn't realize that the slope was as steep as it was. I ended up climbing roughly 200 vertical feet from the river. It was bad... super steep. Every footstep I had to kick in my foot and test the ground or I would slide down the slope into the rapids below. My heart was racing a million miles per hour. And the cherry on top was this nice little piece of rock near the top. By this point a fall would have been almost definitely fatal. And if it weren't fatal I would've wished it had been. Did you ever see Planko on The Price is Right? Well I would've been the Planko puck and the trees and boulders would've been the posts on the gameboard. The raging river below would've been the end. Anyway, this sucked. Every rock I held onto was coming out of the wall. Oh yeah, and I was doing it with a 35 pound pack on and treking poles hanging fom my wrists. Lame.
The one good thing about my death climb... the view.
Hiking up on the ridge wasn't too bad. I never saw any sign of humans, I can't help but think that very few people have ever walked through here considering the difficulty to reach this shelf.
After a while the slope forced me back down to the river and I found a reasonable crossing. This is back on the main trail.
This is the turn-off to Abe's Lake. By this point I was just too exausted to try and make it up there so I decided to spend the night by the river.
The obligatory campsite self-portrait. Nikita was out hunting squirrel.
The night consisted of me sitting by a fire consuming backcountry cocktails. It was okay. I did however manage to get an excellent 11 hours of sleep. The river was only a stones throw from my tent... nothing like good white noise for the dreams. It was a strange night.
The next day I decided to just suck it up and get a little wet on the river crossings. There were a few times I thought Nikita was going to get swept away but she stuck in there.
Heading home again...
