Last tour of the year

The winter of 2008 will go down as my all time greatest ski year (until next winter). It seemed like the snow never stopped. To top off the year Creed and myself made one last venture into the high country to get some spring skiing in. We had been planning this trip for awhile and since we were going to be on the Wastach Front for Ridges birthday and the Symphony it worked out great. We left at 4:30 am and met in Alpine dropped a truck at the Dry Creek Trailhead and drove around to White Pine trailhead in Little Cottonwood Canyon. We got skiing a little before 7 am skiied up Red Pine and over the pass at about 11:30 and down the truck at 2:30 pm, just in time to head back for the Symphony.

Conditions were not ideal but still plenty soft and turnable and you can't beat skiing in the sun, high in the mountains. The snow has not even started to melt up high so I am expecting some heavy runnoff once things actually warm up. We logged right around 10 miles for the whole tour and had so much fun that we might have to make one more trip before it is all gone.

Creed kicking steps up the headwall of Red Pine

Lunch beneath the Pfeiferhorn

Rivers Rising

Mom, Dad, Mckell, Nate, Miranda and the kids, came down the for the weekend. So, we took Nates new boat (aka DOC) down the daily to introduce it to the muddy Colorado. It was nice and warm with a brisk upstream breeze all day, but we still had a good time.

DOC on the Colorado with Fisher Towers in the background

The Sequel, Fairy Meadows Part 2

Everybody has been asking "When can we see more of the Fairy Meadows trip? We just can't get enough of it". So here it is the final installment. Creed put this together with all of the video we took. I like the juxtaposition of Eric on his circa 1860s handmade solid wood skis with natural fiber bindings (and single pole a.k.a. lurk) and Jake with his new school AT gear and helmet jumping the pillows. A little something for everybody.

Arch Canyon Ruins and the New Bridge

Friday I went out in the field to check on road conditions and sign some illegal OHV trails. I tried heading up to the Bears Ears and was turned back by new snow and deep mud. I also found a vehicle that had run off the road. I stopped and looked in and there was a guy in the drivers seat. He had gone off the road the day before and had spent the night there. He was an ex-marine that was paralyzed from the waist down from a previous accident. I pulled him out and got him sent on his way. But before he left I told him to be thankful because I had felt impressed to drive that road that day. He said he was not religious bu that he had done a lot of praying during the night.

Later in the day I hiked into Arch Canyon which begins on the Forest and flows out into BLM lands. It is an amazing deep canyon with year round water, giant arches and anasazi ruins.The canyon had been in the news a lot lately as there is a OHV trail in the bottom of it that a lot of people including the Hopi and Navajo tribes don't think should be there. Fortunately the OHV trail ends at the Forest boundary so I don't have to deal with it.

Looking down Arch Canyon from the rim
Pristine ruins. Can you see them? There is a big two story ruin in the bottom left corner with it's roof still intact and many more along the steep ledge. The ones at the end of the ledge are very exposed. I imagine the kids that grew up in these structures learned to climb at an early age.
Moab's new foot/bike bridge over the Colorado. It should be done in May. I took the photo from high above it on a ledge in Arches NP

Bearfoot Bluegrass and Westwater Canyon

Several years ago we were floating Westwater Canyon and came across a boat full of kids and two women. They were floating in a little micro eddy above one of the larger rapids and were screaming "help"and waving their arms. I thought for sure someone had died after flipping a boat and we were going to be floating a body out of the canyon. But as we approached they said they were fine but were not expecting that big of rapids and were wondering if we could oar thier boat out the rest the way, which we did. They turned out to be a bluegrass band from Alaska called Bearfoot Bluegrass and had just won the best new band at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, which is a big deal. They ended up giving us a bunch of smoked salmon and some of thier CDs. anyway just the other day I heard one of thier new songs on the radio, so I looked up their website and they are actually getting quite popular in the bluegrass genre. Check them out. I emailed them the other day and asked if they remembered Westwater and they emailed back saying they would never forget it!

Heres a little video of Creed last year on Westwater

Sprocket Kids

Ridge has started riding his bike this spring and he is pretty excited about it, so when he heard that River and myself were going up on the slickrock he would not take no for an answer and he came with us. Aside from a few crashes and tears, I think he really liked it.

Wandering Comb Ridge

We spent the weekend down in the Comb Ridge area camping and exploring, looking for signs of the ancient ones. Saturday we hiked into Butler Wash to a very interesting petroglyph panel called the Wolfman Panel. The panel contains what appears to be a half-man, half-bear creature swinging his clawed arms. Somehow all of our photos from Saturday disappeared,you can ask Alina what happened.

Sunday we hiked into a site called Double Stack Ruin in an unnamed canyon,it took us a while to find it as we took a few wrong turns but eventually we wandered into the ruin. One portion of it sits about a hundred feet off of the canyon floor and the larger portion is on the ground level. Most of it has toppled but several large walls and the remains of the kiva are still standing. The interior walls of the kiva had intricate little geometric designs on them. My thoughts always turn to the families and kids that were raised in these sites. What we think of as wilderness, was a thriving population center 800-1000 years ago. It is estimated that there were more people living in San Juan County 1000 years ago than there is now.

Photo of me yelling at the kids to keep off the walls

We also ran into two different Navajo structures in the canyon. Both were what appeared to be skeletons of small hogans or sweathouses. The interesting thing, was one of them was built almost directly beneath the Anasazi ruin. Generally, traditional Navajos stayed away from Anasazi sites, but these were built directly beneath them.

Cotton textile that River found at Double Stack Ruin.

Long Live the Wolves

Wolf 253 brings up the rear in the Druid Peak in Yellowstone back in 2004. Copyright © Kim Kaiser

The Bush Administration delisted the Wolf last week and the same day three of them were shot and killed outside of Daniel, Wyoming. One of the Wolves killed was known as "253" and had a long history, he had a limp and was the one that made it to Utah several years ago. You can read more about him here. The Wolves that were reintroduced back into Yellowstone and Central Idaho have done better than anyone expected and amazingly they have not eaten any school children as was predicted (there is no recorded human ever killed by a wolf in North America) . They have killed livestock and all of the owners were compensated for their losses. I hope as a society we will have the wisdom and foresight to keep some of the wild things on this continent that we live on.