South Elk Ridge/Dark Canyon

We have a new District Ranger (my boss), so I took him out the last couple of days to show him the Dark Canyon Wilderness that we manage. We spent a night at the Gooseberry Guard Station on Elk Ridge and took the ponies down into Horse Pasture Canyon and looped back up Dark Canyon. Our retired Range Manager came on the trip as well. His name is Jimmie Forrest, which I think is the greatest name ever if you are going to work for the Forest Service. He worked on the District for almost 40 years so it was great to have him along to point out features that I have walked past several times already like hidden springs, arches and ruins. I also got down in the head of Hammond Canyon. I was hoping to get to some of the larger ruins, but had to turn back when it started getting dark.

Me, Rags and Zipper, faithful government employees

Gooseberry Guard Station

Horse Pasture Trail, if you're smart you walk this section

The head of Hammond Canyon

Down in the canyon

San Rafael River

The San Rafael River finally got high enough to float last weekend so I drove up and met Dad, Tyler, and the Nielsons at the bridge across the river. We dropped off a truck and drove up to Fullers Bottom and launched the boats for a 18 mile relaxing float beneath the high walls of the "Little Grand Canyon". Last time I floated this section of river I think it was the year that Alina and I were married 14 years ago.

The convoluted landscape of the San Rafael holds so many memories for me almost every butte, mesa, and canyon reminds me of some past adventure. Climbing and sleeping on top of Mexican Mountain with my Dad, chasing wildhorses with friends and family every Thanksgiving (before I knew it was illegal), climbing Window Blind Butte in a snowstorm in February with Creed and Todd, swimming horses through the frozen river on a winter ride that turned out to be a little longer than planned, getting a first descent on Segers Hole Canyon, rappelling kayaks into the lower Black Box, and meeting Alina for the first time at Copper Globe. The San Rafael is where I fell in love with the Slickrock and my wife, it will always be home to me.

Floating beneath the Navajo Sandstone

Barrier Canyon Petroglyphs in Virgin Springs Canyon

River flowing from the Sunrise

We just got back floating the San Juan with the whole family. It rained and snowed on the drive down but the sun broke through the clouds as we put our boats in and we had great weather the whole trip, it actually never got very hot which is unheard of on the San Juan. The kids love living on the river, playing in the sand, collecting driftwood swords, and catching toads.

The San Juan is a mellow float with just a few minor rapids, but I have always loved this river. It flows through some of the wildest portions of the Colorado Plateau and is littered with signs of the ancients. I have found Navajo scarecrows in it's sidecanyons. It has intrigued me and represents one of the things I love about rivers; thier role as boundary. Humans have always used rivers as boundaries and used the imagery associated with boundary to represent death, crossing over, the other side. The San Juan is a very literal boundary between the Navajo World and the Anglo World. Even before we Anglos drew the reservation bounday along the river, the Navajo used the river as a boundary. Traditional Navajos perform specific rituals before crossing over to the north and any deer or elk killed to the north of the river have to be cleansed before they are brought back south over the river to be eaten.

On another note, after linking my last post to the Radio West website, Doug Fabrizio read my post on the show. Fortunately I had erased everything that may have offended somebody. But it just goes to show that what you put on your blog is not private and may actually end up getting read on the radio. Heres the link to the show where he quoted me. For the record I do not refer to myself as "wildbri"

Moab, the "New" West

Doug Fabrizio is in town this week broadcasting his show "Radio West" this week. Today they were discussing the town of Moab, how it has changed and if the shift from extractive industry to a tourist base economy has worked. Pretty interesting program. You can find it here.

Ed Abbey had this to say about Moab in his book Desert Solitaire "For myself I'll take Moab, Utah. I don't mean the town itself of course but the country which surrounds it-the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky-all that which lies beyond the edge of the roads."

I have to say that "all that which lies beyond the edge of the roads" is the reason I always wanted to end up here. But now that we live here, the community and the people that live here are also some of the reasons I want to stay.

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

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