San Juans

We left the heat of the slickrock and went to the San Juans in Colorado last weekend. The San Juans are some of my favorite mountains, amazingly big. It was one of the first places I fled to post mission. It is also the southern stronghold of the Lynx and possiblly Grizzly (a pregnant female was killed here in the 1970s). Read Ghost Grizzlies for a good description of the mountains.

Tyler telling the kids to stop playing in the fire, while he is playing in the fire.

The Hobbits and Alina heading back to the trailhead after the thunderstorm

Rio and I looking back down to the Animas and the Weminuche Wilderness

Mo Middle Fork

Deep in the Canyon
Toad and Creed fishing the big pool in Big Creek

Upper Canyon at Trail Flat

River at the put-in ramp

Wild Idaho

After a six year dry spell we finally drew a permit for the Middle Fork Salmon this year, actually four permits. If you boat wilderness rivers this place is Heaven on Earth. It flows 100 miles through Frank Church -River of No Return Wilderness the largest designated wilderness in the lower 48. The area is considered the heart of the largest temperate zone wilderness on the planet and it is the longest undammed river system in the US, my kind of place.


No roads access the river for 100 miles and big predators (wolves, mountain lions and bears) thrive along with herds of Elk, Deer and Bighorn. Steelhead and Salmon still run up the side streams (though their populations are much diminished due to the damn dams on the Columbia) and wild Cutthroat are abundant. The water is normally so clear you can see down 20 feet to the golden boulders on the bottom of the river and the rapids still get choked with logs and washed out again in the high water every spring. The landscape changing forces of nature still function. I have always said my two favorite places on the planet are the Colorado Plateau (Southern Utah/Four Corners area for those that recognize political boundaries) and the Central Idaho Batholith. I live in one and visit the other as much as possible.



Highlights of the trip were River catching his first fish on a dry fly, floating up on a mountain lion sipping water out of the river, big rapids, no flipped rafts, soaking in almost every hot spring along the river (playing cards until midnight in the Loon Creek hotspring) and beating a commercial group in a coin toss for the Loon Creek Camp.

Rio and I at Elk Bar looking down into the Impassable Canyon section of the river

River holding down the gear in the stern


Elk Bar camp

Fly fishing lessons from uncle Ty at the Loon/Middle Fork Confluence

Morning light in Impassable Canyon

Hike off the Recession

Interesting story on NPR about people thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail after losing their jobs (might be hard with a family though). I love the idea of people turning to wild places to deal with the recession. Hopefully it makes us all appreciate simple, authentic, wild experiences.

River and Ridge smelling the flowers

Owl Man with the Old Man

Today we went out to the Owl Man panel before the family left back north.

Hanging out in the shade with the Owl Man and the Old Man

I love this part of the panel because it looks like the artist put the hunter around the corner from the bighorn sheep, so he could sneak up on them.

Unnamed Canyon

The family came down for Ridges baptism this weekend. We got out to a few places and ate way too much food. The weather continues to be much cooler than normal which makes for great hiking temperatures, still a little cool for swimming.

Friday we went out to a new canyon that I had been to the bottom of a couple times but never all the way through. It turned out to be a really great techincal canyon with smimming, downclimbing and a couple of rappells, and River was excited because he got to save a bat from drowning in a pothole.

River heading down the last drop

Downclimbing into the cold water



River being a little dramatic

Conan in Moab

In case you missed the opening of Conan hosting his first late night, here it is. It is a little cheesy but check out where he is at 1:48 and 1:25. That's right, it's the La Sals in the background, he's running just behind our house.

Horses, Hitches and Rocky Trails

Wilderness Volunteers came down this past week to volunteer for the Forest Service maintaining trails in Dark Canyon. We had originally set up the trip to work on eradicating tamarisk, but for a number of reasons we switched to a trail project. The volunteers hiked in with our trail crew last Sunday. Monday and Tuesday we packed thier food and group equipment in on horses. We came back out on Wednesday and Thursday for meetings and office work and back in on Friday and Saturday to pack the rest of thier food and gear out. They got a lot of much needed trail maintenence done down in the canyon. We packed watermelons in to them on the last trip in, it may have been the first time watermelon weas eaten in the bottom of Dark Canyon, unless the Ancient Ones were growing corn and watermelons.

We could not come down the Trail Canyon trail with stock so we ended up coming down the Horse Pasture trail which meant we had to go 12 miles one way in to get to their basecamp. We made the the trip twice last week for a total of 48 miles with the packhorses.

Two bull elk in Horse Pasture Canyon. They thought our horses were elk and ran right up to us before they realized we were'nt elk.

Scorup Cabin. The cabin was used as a line cabin by some of the big cattle operations that used to operate in the canyon.


Coming up one of the steep sections with unloaded packhorses.

Ponies watering up at a lunch break

Constantly Changing Priorities

I am fortunate to be employed doing something that I am passionate about and that I love doing, however the constant shifting from one problem to the next can get frustrating. Today was one of those days where every five minutes a different "crisis" erupted that I had to deal with. I started listing all of the things that occurred today and realized why it is so difficult to stay focused and concentrate on one thing in this job. So here is the list from today.

-I just got back from two days in the wilderness packing 200 lbs. of food into a volunteer group and trail crew doing trail work. I left Monday morning at 5 AM and got back Tuesday night at 8 PM. One of the horses started having problems with a leg so we were trying to get him into a vet to take a look at him. I also found a new illegal OHV trail in the wilderness that I need to go back to and deal with.

-Started this morning trying to download GPS data on new tamarisk trees we found in the wilderness and photos of OHV damage.

- First phone call of the day was from a local game warden who said that bears had broken into out weather station and had bitten into a line containing antifreeze (which causes kidney failure in animals) and that we needed to remedy the problem. Problem is that it is not our weather station it is run by a different agency but is located on the forest, So I started trying to track down the person responsible for maintenence.

-Found out several volunteer agreements for Campground Hosts were filled out incorrectly and need to be changed before we can pay them.

-The Health Dept. calls saying some of our water samples were bad for two of our campground water systems and that we needed to shut them down and retest.

- Campers called mad that they could not get the gas stove working in cabin at Warner Lake.

- Two letters requesting a permit to conduct a non-commercial "Mountain Man Rendevouz" and a Stake Girls Camp come in.

- Public calls wanting to know the best place to backpack in the La Sals

- Tried to work on an Environmental Assesment that I have to get done to designate roads and trails in seven different areas on the La Sals.

- Campground host comes in to the office to tell me he has turned off the gas to the cabin at Warner Lake, mystery solved.

- Call wanting to know if the road over Geyser Pass is open and where is the best place to take 12 high school kids.

- One of our permitted outfitters (who leads New Age backpack trips) called wanting to add several trips to thier permit and wanting to know where they can go to avoid cattle. Apparently cattle are not conducive to New Age Vision Quests or something.

- Tourism Board calls wanting a permit to film mountain bikers on the mountain for an ad campaign.

- 4 hour Staff Meeting to discuss numerous topics including next weeks orientation/BBQ for the seasonal employees, quarters, NEPA, planning, etc..

-After meeting, try and return phone calls and work on Environmental Assesment but get stuck approving Travel Vouchers and responding to other mundane emails.

-County calls to say that several large trees are down on a trail and needs to be cut out, add it to the list.

- Scout Camp emails wanting to know if they can gravel a road into their permitted camp.

-Supervisors Office in Price calls with questions on a design for a new campground that we may get stimulus money for in Colorado (a small portion of District is actually in Colorado)

- Give up working on Environmental Assesment and have still not downloaded GPS data

-Go home

If I could concentrate on one thing I might actually be able to get something done, but I am not complaining and I still love my job.

Guardian

Yesterday I hiked into a ruin in an amazing part of the forest (location undisclosed). The ruin is in a spectacular setting and aside from being an incredible ruin it also has some local history. The structures were built by Anasazi, then Utes came into the area (many years later) and created historic rock art at the site (mainly horses and riders) and lastly a local looted the sight back in the 1980's. The looting of sites, unfortunatley is not uncommon. The difference with this looting is the guy was actually caught. You can read about the case here. I love it when the bad guys get caught. He eventually died of cancer after serving a lengthy prison term.

This is a petroglyph located on the wall behind the main ruin. I had to manipulate the light but you can see that it is a snake and a human. I thought little of it, until I reached down to examine a pot shard sitting on top of one of the ruin walls and saw this (see below)

Respect the Ancient Ones or pay the price, sometimes in the form of prison time, cancer or a bite from a guardian rattlesnake.

I went out to day with BLM to look at a trail that comes off of BLM lands onto the Forest. We hiked along the rim of Arch and Texas Canyon and had some pretty incredible views looking down into the depths.

We hiked up Courthouse Wash the other night. When the Colorado gets high it backs way up into Courthouse and creates a big slough full of fish, frogs, beavers and herons.

Falls in Courthouse Wash
Reflection of cliff walls and flying heron in the backed up wash

Spring Fishing

We just opened the road to Oowah a week or so ago so we drove up there yesterday to see if any fish were hungry after their long winter under the ice. River caught one on his first cast and I did not even get my rod together because I was undoing tangles and snags and unhooking fish the whole time. Oowah attracts an interesting crowd on the weekends. I was the only guy up there wearing a shirt, pretty classy.

North face of Mellenthin

Rowan waiting for a fish to bite with his batman pole.

The reason I did not get my rod out of it's case, four kids in a canoe with fishing poles.

Elk Ridge

I was back down on Elk Ridge on Wednesday, scouting out another trail for maintenence and checking on a youth crew we had down there working on the Brushy Knoll trail. I usually try to spend the night when I do any work in the area because it is so far out, but I made it into a long day trip this time.

Elk shed on Elk Ridge

Confluence of Woodenshoe and Cherry Canyon


More bear tracks on Elk Ridge

Aerial photo of the canyon complex we hiked into on Tuesday. I had been to this canyon several times ( I actually used to guide trips into this canyon a long time ago for Seldom Seen Smith) but had never been up any of it's forks. We went up the first fork this time and I was surprised at how lush it was. It is one of the prettiest canyons around Moab, full of cottonwoods and box elder. We followed deer and turkey tracks in the wet sand all the way to where the canyon ends in a large dryfall.

Can you tell where it is without looking at Google Earth?