Professor Creek/Mary Jane Canyon

Thirteen years ago almost to the day Alina and myself hiked up Mary Jane Canyon to a little waterfall. So today after finshing the wiring in the bathroom and hanging around for awhile to make sure that the house did not burn down due to my electrical inepdtitude I took the kids back up to Mary Jane Canyon. Last time I was there the main thing I remember was cutting down willows to use as swatters to swat the deer flies off of our calves, it was brutal. Today we only saw one deer fly and the kids loved walking up the stream bed. We did not make it to the waterfall this time but we caught a lot of frogs. See Rivers blog for frog details

The boys standing in Professor Creek below Castleton Tower

Ridge walking on water, he thought if he could run fast enough he could actually stay on top. I think he belived he did it

Horse Pasture Canyon

Horse Pasture Canyon in the Dark Canyon Wilderness. I spent today hiking down into Horse Pasture Canyon with the Trail Crew, clearing out all the trees that had fallen into the trail during the winter. Horse Pasture Canyon is a realtively small side canyon to Dark Canyon, it is full af Anasazi Ruins and is always nice and green due to the subsurface water flow in the canyon . Historically it was used as a horse pasture by the loacl cattlemen and it still serves that purpose.

and the Rivers Risin'

The Colorado is at 43,000 cfs and is quite the site to behold right now, even the rapids on the Moab Daily look big . We went up to Rocky Rapids last night to see the river in all of it's spring glory. Full cottonwood logs are floating down and lots of debris including at least one dead cow that we have seen.

The Mother River at Rocky Rapid with Fisher towers in the background

Castleton Tower, the Priest and Nuns with the snowy La Sals

Man Down

Video Creed shot on our last ski tour from Little Cottonwood to Alpine

Pinballing down the Price

Yesterday I met Ty and Creed in Green River and we dropped a car off on drove around to the metropolis of Woodside, Utah (abandonded gas station along Highway 6) and put our kayaks in the mighty Price River. We had floated this strecth about 10 years ago during high water and wanted to try it again.

The "River Runners Guide to Utah" saya that 4 feet is enough to run this section but that 5.5 is much better. The river was running 5.3 when we put on, which I would say is about the limit for floating it. The river has lots of rocky drops that you just bump and grind down at this level. Lots of manouvering around boulders. I actually had to walk three of the rapids because there was just not enough water to float me and my boat. Another foot of water would have made things a lot smoother.

This stretch of river has some great rock art along it one is a life sized bighorn several hundred feet up the canyon walls that you can see from the river.

Creed trying to figure out his next move in a boulder garden

The new rockfall rapid, I think the rocks fell in the river in 2005. We portaged

Looking for Black Squares in Bullet Canyon

River, Ty, and Myself went backpacking last weekend into Bullet Canyon on Cedar Mesa. We were hoping to find the Perfect Kiva and Jailhouse Ruins which were the first two ruins that were excavated (pot hunted depending on who you talk to) in the Grand Gulch Area.

The canyon is full of ruins and rock art. The way to find the ruins is to look for the black squares that thier doors and windows form against the red rock background. The first day we made it to the site known as Perfect Kiva the only intact prehistoric kiva ever found. It was found in 1891 and still had it's roof intact. BLM reinforced the kiva in the 70s to keep it from caving in. It is an amazing site. It felt a little intrusive even going down into it and thinking of how many times the ancients had climbed down into that hole and conducted their ceremonies.

At the junction of Bullet Canyon and Grand Gulch we found many interesting structures granaries, dwellings and what appeared to be watch towers on top of sandstone pinnacles.

River did very good and packed all his own equipment and did not complain once.

River and I at the Perfect Kiva

River entering the Fourth World through the Sipapu

Down in the Kiva

Ruins high on the wall

Camp at Jailhouse Spring beneath the Junipers