Hell Storm

Photo of yesterdays storm in Moab. The winds kicked up most of Canyonlands park into the air and then brought it over Moab and rained it down on us. The Weather Service listed it as "unknown precipitation". I was on the back side of th La Sals when it hit and could see a huge red cloud coming over the mountain.

Coast

We made a pilgrimage to the edge of the continent last week part work, part fun. I went to the interagency trails planning training that was held on Tomales Bay this year. We spent all week laying out trails in the coastal ranges and hiking different trails looking at trail designs and structures in the Mount Tamalpais area.

Every time I go to the coast it feels like travelling to a different world from the arid Colorado Plateau and Great Basin that I am used to. Everything is so green and humid, and the trees are all so different. Redwoods, huge Coast Live Oaks, Madrones and Bishop Pines.

The ocean itself is such a foreign entity to me. Growing up on the eastern edge of the Great Basin (Wasatch Front) the first time I actually remember seeing the ocean was in Brazil travelling by bus at night, I could see the moon reflected in it and I had no idea what it was. I think I actually asked somebody on the bus what it was.

Even though I realize the Earth is 70% water it still seems unbelievable to look out across that much water always moving and crashing into the land. It doesn't seem right for something that big to be moving. I always forget how loud it is too, out on Point Reyes it was almost deafening. I was reading in National Geographic last month about Native American names in North America and saw that the word "Malibu" (as in that place in southern California)translates something like "that place over there where it is always noisy". Sounds like a pretty good description.

The boys looking out into the wild surf off Point Reyes

I love this photo, it looks like Ryder and myself sitting down amoung the carcasses of dead aliens on the beach

Sculpted Beach

Tule Elk.

This suspecies of Elk that used to live in the marshes and deltas of Californias Central Valley was presumed extinct and then a small population was found and transplanted out to Point Reyes.

21 armed purple sunflower starfish that Alina found in a tidepool, of course River was the only one that dared pick it up.

Backpacking on a Different Tectonic Plate

After spending the week on Tomales Bay, we backpacked into Drakes Bay, named after Sir Francis Drake who landed here in 1579 on his way around the world. We had very windy conditions all week on Tomales Bay as storms passed by to the north, but when we went backpacking we had perfect weather. Alina saw some sort of whale rising out of the water as we were setting up camp the first night. The area we backpacked into is within the Point Reyes National Seashore and the Phillip Burton Wilderness. From a geologic viewpoint the area is also on a different tectonic plate than the rest of the US. The Point Reyes area is on the Pacific plate and is slowly drifting north grinding against the North American plate.

Santa Maria Creek flowing off of Inverness Ridge and into the Pacific.

Coast camp. It actually froze our first night there.

Keeping the packstring moving along. The boys are starting to pack more and more of thier own gear.

Hiking in with packs and hands full

Arch on Sculpted Beach

Big Trees Sequoia Semprevirens

During our time on the coast last week we made it down to Muir Woods a protected old growth Coast Redwood grove, named after John Muir. I have only been to see the coast redwoods a few times but everytime I walk amoung these big trees it is a spiritual experience. To see and touch something so colossal and old and living is humbling. As humans we feel like we have things pretty well figured out, we feel so secure in our selves and our institutions and technology, but these trees have watched human civilizations come and go and will maybe see ours go as well. Maybe they are the ones that have it all figured out.

Holding up the sky

Boys and Mom in the UN Grove. The United Nations met here in this grove several days after they formed. At the meeting FDR gave a speech outlining that without sustainable use and conservation of natural resources world peace was impossible. That being said the US has cut the old growth coastal redwoods so extensivley that there is only about 6% of the stands left. Not very sustainable.

The Pinchot Tree

Nevills Arch

Nevills Arch in Owl Canyon, whichI have always assumed was named after legendary river runner Norm Nevills, but have not been able to verify

Cedar Mesa

Myself and Ty and Bre went down to Cedar Mesa over the weekend and hiked the Owl/Fish Canyon loop. We had tried to do this hike in December four or five years ago but did not make it around because we ended up hiking into so many side canyons looking for kivas and pot shards.



Cedar Mesa is one of my favorite places. When you are on top it looks like a big endless plain of pinyon and juniper and then you start walking and canyons begin to cut into the mesa and drop away for a 1000 feet or more. The corneaters loved it too. Every nook and cranny is full of thier structures and art.

Ruin at the very head of Owl Canyon with an intact door

Well preserved ruin on the rim in Owl

Tyler looking at me like he does not trust me as I lower him over some sketchy ledges after retreating from the elusive ruin that I have tried twice to get into. Next time.

Trying to figure out a route to the ruin. I am begining to belive in flying humanoids

Big water/dry fall in Owl Canyon. The pothole below the fall was still frozen.

A Peace to End All Peace

I am currently reading a book called "A Peace to End All Peace" about World War I (the War to End All Wars). The first thing I realized is how little I know about world history. I thought they were supposed to teach me this stuff in college? I guess I was too busy studying Dendrology and Biology, next time I go to college I am getting a degree in History (then ethnobotany).

The book is primarily about the Ottoman Empires role in World War I and the creation of the modern Middle East. I have done research on how the Middle East was created (politically speaking) but never realy understood how much of a role Western Imperialism played in creating what the Middle East is today.

The other point I have been pondering lately is how important history actually is to a country and a people. Everyone has heard the saying that goes something along the lines of "those that don't know thier history are destined to repeat it" (can't remember who said it?). Without knowledge of history we really are just floating in time unattached and clueless of why the world is how it is, simply repeating ourselves over and over.

One line from the book I found particularly interesting was an article printed in the Times August 1920, which asks

"How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeveour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?"

The article was specifically referring to uprisings in Mesopotania (what Iraq used to be called) against British rule in thier country. Sound familiar.

Marketing and Hoarding

One of the things on my Top 10 list of things that drive me crazy is marketing. I never really noticed how much it annoyed me until we stopped watching television two years ago and stopped listening to commercial radio. Now when I see or hear ads they all seem so pathetic and tawdry.

But my favorite two ads that I have seen lately are the "free" miracle Amish Heater and the "free" armored safes. Both ads are written to look like newspaper articles, very tricky.

The electric (yes it runs on electricty) Amish Heater is free you only have to buy the handcrafted cherry wood frame. Unfortunatley you can only buy two per household because they are so popular. Damn I really wanted one for each room of our house.

Next is the free armored safe. You get the safe for free after purchasing $1800 in coins, which the ad refers to as a "hoard". I thought only dragons and trolls had hoards, apparently I was wrong. Anybody can have a hoard, even me. Sign me up.

My favorite part is the photo of an older grandmotherly woman receiving her safe. The caption below it says "No More Worries: Carolyn Ford of Perry Town, OH thought she hit the jackpot when her free Armored Safe was delivered. "I already have some gold coins, but I wanted this whole hoard of US coins as a nice nest egg. I'll also set side some of my hoard for my Grandchildren".

Wow , thanks grandma I aways wanted some of your hoard

Long Live Commercialism and Capitolism (or did they just fail?)

Spring Weather

We started out the day watching Ridges soccer games in warm sunlight, then Rowans game was cancelled because of the rain, by the time we got home it was a full on snowstorm, and by the afternoon it was back to warm and sunny.

The storm clouds were swirling around the Moab Rim as the storm was burning off so I climbed up on the roof to get a photo.

Sun and Snow

Creed and Jen came down this weekend to get out of the snow in Summit Park and let the kids run around in the desert.

Creed and I woke up early hoping to ski some corn in Gold Basin, but the snowpack is in transistion from winter to spring conditions and the snow was less than perfect, but the views were incredible.

We came back in the afternoon and went to Arches with kids to lay on some warm slickrock.

Sunday we went out to Island in the Sky and looked down on the Green River

Creed and I looking into Gold Basin from the top of Pre-Laurel , last time we were here together was 12 years ago on one of our Christmas trips wearing wool German army pants.

Alaska or Moab? Creed with the north ridge of Tuk in the back

Survival skiing down Gold Miners into Gold Basin

Family photo at the Green River overlook

Alina beneath Double Arch

The beaver and the bobcat

We took the sleds up the rapidly melting Warner Lake road today to the snow line and rode into the Warner Lake campground. We then skiied over Warner Lake and up into Mill Creek to look for some more loop opportunities for our nordic trail grooming program. I had never skiied in this part of the range so it was great to get up there. It rained over 9,000 feet in the La Sals last week which left a bullet proof crust on everything, but as warm as it has been the south faces are already starting to corn up. I am still in powder mode, it is too early for corn.

I skiied out onto Warner Lake where we spend a lot of the summer canoeing and fishing and found a set of bobcat tracks (see photo) he had been hanging out at several holes in the ice that I think the resident beaver has been keeping open for his use. I did not see any signs of carnage so I think so far the beaver has evaded the bobcat.

Holy Wasatch

I wish I could say the incredible turns displayed above were mine, but they are not. Todd sent me this photo of his ski tracks from last week in an undisclosed location, and since he never posts anything on the blog I thought I would do it for him. These lines are just too good to not show to the world. It is like scripture in the snow showing mankind how to attain eternal happiness, just looking at them makes me feel good. Thanks Todd for sharing. (and now Alina will mock me for all of my spiritual references)

Wandering the Maze

We drove out to a relatively remote portion of Arches on the weekend and hiked out to an area called the Maze, not to be confused with the larger Maze District in Canyonlands. It is a large outcropping of Entrada sandstone that is eroded into numerous canyons that are intertwined. We saw nobody else while hiking which is pretty rare for Arches. We did run into two lost Germans on the road out.

A small natural bridge we found
Walking the wave

Side canyon

Happy Birthday Rowan, Abe, Darwin and Mom

Most of the Murdock Clan came south for the long weekend to celebrate birthdays. I took Todd out for his first runs in the La Sals, and later went to Red Canyon Lodge for dinner with Alina. The last day they were here, we hiked out to the very end of Grandview Point and climbed some Fins in Behind the Rocks.

Skiing into the slickrock

Julies Glade

Climbing a fin

Behind the Rocks

Ty creeping up on the big jump-off. Todd holding the rock down.

Abbey had a chapter called "Dead Man at Grandview Point" in his book "Desert Solitiare" I really like his description of the view. So here it is

" The big jump-off is only a few steps south and beyond the edge lies another world, far way. Down below is the White Rim; deeper still is the gorge of the Colorado; off to the right is the defile of the Green River; looking past Junction Butte we can see the the barren point where the two rivers join to begin the wild race thorugh Cataract Canyon; beyond the confluence lies the wilderness of the Needles country, known only to a few cowboys and urnaium prospectors; on the west side of the junction is another labrynth of canyons, pinnacles and fins of naked stone, known to even fewer, closer to anything else in the forty-eight United States to genuine terra incognita-The Maze. Far beyond these hundreds of square miles of dessicated tableland rise the sheer walls of futher great mesas comparable in size and elevation to the one we stand on; and beyond the mesas are the mountains- the Abajos and Elk Ridge forty miles south, the La Sals and Tukuhnikivats forty miles to the east and teh Henrys fifty miles soutwest"




Grandview Point

Todd and Ty making sure the old man does not accidently go over backwards. The Abajos and Elk Ridge in the distance

Little Canyon

The boys and I went up a small canyon off the river the other night looking for an old stock trail that I had read about that the old timers used to get horses up onto the mesas above the river. We found the trail but did not have time to go all the way up it to the mesa top.

We also found this bottomed notched quartz arrowhead in the wash. And yes the arrowhead is still out there, where it has been for the last 1,000+ years, where it belongs.

River and weapons

The dryfall at the end of the canyon, the boys thought they could climb out