Coming soon

I was trying to think of a way to segway from Nazi war criminals (last post) to powder skiing, but I am not creative enough.

With the high pressure stalled out right on top of the four corners and the amazing fall weather we are getting it is hard to start thinking about snow quite yet, but it is not far off. However with the last river trip of the year wrapped up I was watching ski videos on line and found this gem from the 70's. It is not the backcountry but Alta is a close second. Check out the guys star studded pants.

Alta always reminds me of skiing with my Dad, Creed, and Grandpa wearing levis and courderoy jackets.

Today on Radio West Doug Fabrezio interviewed Phil Donahue about his new documentary movie "Body of War" it sounds pretty interesting. One of the clips they played was Senator Byrd quoting Herman Goering a high ranking Nazi. who said this at the Nurenburg trials

"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Serenity Now

Myself, River, Ridge and the Scouts went up and camped in Arches over the weekend and hiked into some petroglyphs I had not yet been to. Why do all 12 years old boys have to be so annoying?

Sunset in Devils Garden

Sunrise in Devils Garden

Happy shiny people holding hands

A herd of elk

The new trail around the fallen Wall Arch. You can see where the arch used to be in the background

Here is the photo that Colin Powell referenced in his endorsement of Obama this week. Seems like a lot of people in this state were quite upset with the predjudice Romney recieved when running earlier this year but don't have much of a problem with all of the the insinuation that Obama is a muslim and is therefore not fit for public office.

Fall Float

We made a quick low water run down Desolation and Gray Canyons over the last four days and proved that if you wake up and get on the river and pull on your oars all day long until dusk you can make it down the 84 miles from Sand Wash to Swaseys Beach in four days in low water. Next time we need to take 6 days.

I grew up running this river and have taken my boys down it almost every other year since river was a year old, but we had never floated it in the Fall. The weather was perfect (except for an hour or two on the last day when we got some rain), the cottonwoods were changing, bighorn sheep were down low along the river, massive beaches were exposed all along the river and we only saw a couple of other groups.

The rapids were all smaller than at high water except for 3 Fords which had some big waves and a steep entry and the new and improved Joe Hutch Rapid.

River marking his territory at the first camp

Leaving Deso and entering Grays

Morning below Rock Creek

Fall Float Part II

Mile 20 beach camp
Firewater Canyon
Floating in the morning
The photo is blurry but you can see the size of the boulders and debris that the storms in August pushed down Joe Hutch Canyon. The rapid is now a very steep drop with nice sharp rocks at the bottom. It will be interesting to see what high water does to the rapid next spring. It may become the biggest rapid on Deso.

Joint Trail

We hiked into the Joint Trail in Chesler Park on our backpack trip. The trail travels through a series of tight joint canyons. These are not typical slot canyons formed by water, they are places where the rock has fractured from pressure being applied from below and then slowly widened over the millenia from wind and water. They are interesting becasue they form at right angles and create almost perfect squares when viewed from above.

Aerial view of the portion of the Needles we hiked through

Overview of the area the Joint Trail travels through, you can see all of the squares that are formed by the fractures

Ty, River and Toad heading up a side canyon along the Joint Trail. River told me I needed to start working out so that I could fit in this side canyon. Thanks River.

Hiding in the Rocks out in Hoodoo Land

We got back last night from a couple of days backpacking in the Needles District. Ty, Bre, Kell, Toad, and Ash came down and we hiked the same loop we did last year, except this year we went over into Chesler Park and the Joint Trail. We were expecting a major winter storm and were surprised to get sunshine pretty much all weekend. If you ever need a place to hide from the authorities keep this place in mind, it is a maze of slickrock canyons.

Highlights of the trip included the ravens figuring out how to open the zipper on Kells backpack and stealing all of her food, and the old German ladies walking in on River in the bathroom at the end of the trip.

Ty exploring a side canyon "joint"

River and Toad peering in from above in another joint

Looking down on River

The ladder into Squaw Canyon

Chesler Park

No respect for Kokopelli

One more bit of news today coming from our neck of the woods, the banishment of Kokopelli and his parts to the back of the Edge of the Cedars Museum. It seems that the image of the flute player (and his part) which has greeted visitors to the museum for almost twenty years has been banished by the "Blanding Values Committee". You can see the whole story here.

I am so glad that we have organizations like the Values Commitee to keep us safe from Kokopelli porn. Whose values are they protecting? And technically the staute is not of Kokopelli but of a Hopi clan symbol.

Not all Republicans are bad

In an attempt to be a little more objective when it comes to the GOP, I am writing this post to point out something that a Republican did that I agree with (there are actually lots of things out there that Republicans do that I agree with, I just don't like to admit it very often). I do like to use parentheses though.

Last week the Guv had this to say about illegal OHV use

"It's an abomination, it's an embarrassment," the governor said Wednesday during a meeting with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board. Huntsman said that he recently visited the area around Moab with David Bonderman, a prominent venture capitalist and major financier for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, to see the damage done by illegal off-road travel. "I wanted to get a sense of what the concern was, and it became a concern to me," he said.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Not all OHV use is bad, but there are enough people out there who think it is their right to drive anywhere they want to and who have forgotten what thier legs are for, that it has become a major problem.

Thirty Years

I talk with a lot of different people in my job, with lots of different opinions, but the one thing they all have in common is that they all tell me they have been involved in what ever their activity of choice is for thirty years.

I hear all the time "We have been camping in this spot for thirty years", "What do you mean I can't drive on this road? We have been driving it for thirty years", "I have been hunting here for thirty years", "I have been hiking this trail for thirty years". It really does not matter what their age is. I have had people that could not be older than 30, tell me I have been coming here for you guessed it 30 years.

Why thirty? Why not twenty or thirty five? I think somebody needs to write a thesis on the link between the the time period of 30 years and the human mind. I guess twenty just doesn't sound quite established enough. I mean anybody can do something for twenty years. Maybe forty just sounds greedy, like your pushing the limits of believability?

So today when I stopped and talked to an old couple on a four wheeler with a very large gun I was not suprised at all when they told me "Hey Forest Guy we have been hunting these elk for thirty years". I was suprised when the little old lady wearing a pink visor explained to me that she was having trouble shooting at moving targets so she had missed a couple of running cow elk earlier in the day.

Reckless words

If any of you just watched the Presidential debate and have not seen McCain's wonderfully insensitive rendition of the Beach Boys song that Obama alluded to, here it is:



And in case you missed the debate, McCain decried Obama for using reckless speech when talking about Pakistan, really? McCain sings "Bomb Iran", and then says Obama is reckless. I think it shows a little insight into some of his foreign policy leanings. So, if you want to send your boys out to fight another reckless war in the Middle East, vote for the Maverick.

Golden Aspens and Pirate Ships

We spent the weekend up at the Forest Service cabin at Warner Lake and got to see the first big fall storm on the mountain. The colors were insane, the aspens are all peaking, the fish were ravenously feeding stocking up for the long winter and the elk were bugling. We were going to try and hike over to Miners Basin but the weather changed our plans. Today the peaks are all covered in snow and most of the leaves in the high country have blown off the trees. The season has changed.



Todd, Ashli and Creed were all out on a 130 mile bike ride (from Crescent Junction to Cisco down the river to the Loop Road and back to Crescent Junction) and were supposed to be stopping in Moab on Sunday, but with the weather moving in we decided to drive down and try and find them. As we got into Castle Valley we saw a pirate ship on the side of the road with a license plate saying "Pirates bury thier treasure deeper" and of course they were they were all under the ship seeking shelter from the storm. We gave them a ride back to Moab to warm up and they spent the night with us and rode back to thier car at Crescent Junction on Sunday.

On the trail to Miners Basin

Warner Lake Rainbow

The boys

Overwhelming fall colors

Thirsty in the Rain

One of my favorite Peter Rowan songs is "Thirsty in the Rain" which says "in green valleys lonesome people trying so hard to tell each other what they think they know, with greedy hands they take each others money just to buy back each others pain, in this land of flowing milk and honey they wander thirsty in the rain"

Don't wander thirsty in the rain.

Some of Garrision Keilors thoughts about the current situation offer some clarity, he sees it like it is.

"What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an American war hero. It is painful. First, there was his exploitation of a symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn't funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain has made a fool of her. Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now this chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home.

Mr. McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in Macy's window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or claim to be a reformer. Obviously you can fool a lot of people for awhile and maybe he can stretch it out until mid-November. But the truth is marching on. A few true conservatives are leading a charge against the bailout. Good for them. But how about admitting that their cowboy economic philosophy was at fault here? "

And a few of my not so eloquent thoughts:

Being relatively poor has allowed me to obtain very little knowledge of the workings of the economy and the intricate financial markets that our global economy operates on. So like most Americans I am trying to figure out what this whole economic meltdown even means. It seems to me that we are seeing the worst that a capitalist system has to offer. Capitalism essentially gives people (and corporations) the incentive to think of themselves and their profits, period. There is no incentive to look out for others or to even care about what is happening to anyone else. It all hinges on how much you can get, accumulate and hoard. Why does a person even need a billion dollars? What would you do with it?

It also seems to me, as easy as it is to blame government deregulation and lack of over site (ala the Free Market Republicans) or corporate greed, we seem to miss the third party in all of this, us, the people, society. Our society, made up of millions of individuals, has not lived within their means. We have become so materialistic, so bent on accumulating things that we have lost sight of reality. Seems that this economic crisis is simply a symptom of a much larger societal problem, the fact that our whole way of living is based on the consumption of things. Maybe this crisis will force us to reevaluate our love of material things and to remember that simple is better.

Arch Canyon

I spent the last three days with our trail crew and volunteers from Red Rock Forests hiking to the end of the jeep trail in Arch Canyon and builing a trailhead and barrier at the Forest boundary. So that people will know where the road ends and the hiking begins. I had never hiked up the canyon bottom , just looked in from the rim. It is a pretty amazing canyon lots evidence of the ancient ones.

Cathedral Arch on the Forest Service portion of Arch Canyon, the canyon has three large arches hence the name.

Angel Arch futher up the canyon

Playing Everet Ruess below the Dream Speaker Tower

The real Everett