Fire on the Mountain

We had a fire start in Castle Valley and burn up on to the mountain this afternoon (maybe last night with the lightning?). It has burned fast and as of about 6:00 it had burned up into the heavy timber of Miners Basin. We evacuated several of our campgrounds and have closed all the access roads into that portion of the Forest. I stole this photo off the blog of a Castle Valley resident.

We just drove up onto Sand Flats to see how much of the mountain had burned. It looks like most of Miners Basin had already burned. We are meeting in the morning to see what the damage is. Hopefully none of our campgrounds, historic cabins or other peoples cabins have burned.

Running from Lightning at Medicine Lake

Early out day at school so I took the boys to Medicine Lake (pond) a small little drop of water up at La Sal Pass that has an amazing amount of big fish for how small it is. South Mountain is in the background, the least visited part of the La Sals. We have spent a lot of time up there this summer trying to maintain our old trail system that has not seen maintainence for 15+ years. We did not get to fish long as a major monsoon thunderstorm moved in and started throwing lightning at the high peaks. Ridge is not real fond of lightning so we headed home.( I am afraid we scarred him for life in the San Juan thunderstorm a few years back).

Tuk reflected in Medicine Lake, pre storm

Big Meadows at La Sal Pass. Rowan made everybody line up according to age and height.

First Fish

Ridge finally caught his first fish tonight at Oowah Lake. He has been trying all summer and never gave up he was pretty excited. He let it go before we got photo documentation. If he looks a bit odd in the above photo it is because he got stung by a wasp just below his eye.

Left Fork

We made our semi annual pilgramage to the Left Fork last weekend. This section of river holds a lot of memories. It is the first place Dad took us backpacking. I still remember Creed wanting to carry all the heavy stuff, so we gave it to him and he ended up crying about a mile down the trail, and then we had to unload everything and redistribute the weight. Seems like I still have to do that every time we go out. Taking my boys out to places that I experienced at a young age with my Dad and brothers (and sisters) is one of my favorite things. Hopefully there will always be wild places for generations of Murdocks to go to.

Creed and I backpacking Old School on the Left Fork with the Springville All-Stars hat and signature Murdock bowl cut

Grandpa and the next generation, notice the frame pack and pink ski pole and I am pretty sure he is still wearing some form of Springville sports hat

Bagels for breakfast

Brothers on a Rock

More Left Fork

Left Fork Brown
Ty casting from a log

Ty giving a fish a ride down a waterfall

Ridge tempting fate on a log

Monsoons and Oowah

Monsoon season is in full swing on the Plateau. We had significant rains over the last week but none of them really hit town. All around lightning and rain were falling but Moab itself seemed to miss most of it. Arches got hit really hard on Monday so we went up after work and watched Courthouse Wash flood and hiked around the Windows with the Europeans. We did.nt know that Wall Arch had fallen until the next day.

Friday we went up tp Oowah Lake. I still am not sure how it got its name. River started catching fish before I even had my pole together.

Flipping canoes and climbing Tuk

Tyler, Bre, Todd, Ashley and Mckell came down to visit over the weekend. We took the canoes and kayak out on the River and ended up swimming in Whites Rapid. We ran through the biggest waves just to see what would happen.Everything I row or paddle now days is self bailing and I think that I forgot that canoes are not.We filled up with water pretty quick and with no floatation to displace the water we ended up slowly rolling over. You can see the whole sequence on the Moab Action Photos webpage.

We also climbed Tukinikivatz, the third highest peak in the La Sals (12, 482 ft.) and the most recognizeable.

Todd and Ashley climbing the last steep section of the summit ridge with Mount Peale in the background

Prayer flags on the summit with Ty (curly Mullet) and Todd (President Van Buren)