High-tailing it out of Water Canyon - after getting turned around by a flash flood in the narrows on our first attempt to reach the White Domes - we had about half the day remaining and found ourselves in a predicament. As usual, I'd fully overbooked our time in Utah, so if we had any hope of returning to Water Canyon the next day - when it wasn't raining - we needed to accomplish whatever I'd planned to do then, now. Or, not. We could decide to just skip something, like normal people. Now, if there's one thing that's been…
3 CommentsTag: hiking
It's rare that I'm at a loss for where to go, but in trying to figure out a plan for an early-October trip, I found myself casting around a bit. It's not that I don't have places I want to visit - in fact, I've been itching to get back to Death Valley, longing to spend more time up in British Columbia, and curious to see if I can find more Grand Canyon Polychrome out on the Esplanade. But - as I looked at these places, and trips I already have mapped out for each of them - none of…
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After a leisurely morning at the site of the Project Faultless nuclear test debacle, I had a little less than 24 hours before I needed to be back in Las Vegas for a quick alignment - I'd somehow knocked the driver front out on my first day - and my flight home. It was the perfect amount of time to allow for an afternoon of petroglyph hunting in the Pahranagat Valley region. Another underrated place in an underrated state. Now nearly a week into my trip, my first stop was in Alamo to gas up the Tacoma. I'd been able…
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I'd delayed my hike to the top of Boundary Peak - Nevada's highest point - for 24-hours, and that turned out to be a good thing. As I turned off US-6, clouds - that had deposited rain and snow over the course of the day - still obscured the peaks along the northern end of the White Mountains. I crossed my fingers that the weather guessers were right, and that they'd clear up for the first half of the following day; if not, I was in for a rather anticlimactic summit. Still not sure this is a good idea. The…
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I have no real goal around peak bagging in Death Valley, but something fun just happened, and so now I'm keeping a list. Maybe someday it will become the basis for more. While @mrs.turbodb and I were enjoying our first Fall 2025 trip to Death Valley, I shared with her that we'd be climbing Funeral Peak on the last day of our adventure. Keen to see what Digonnet had to say about the hike, she pulled up Hiking Death Valley on her Kindle and was surprised to find that the hike wasn't listed at all. However, it did mention (highlight…
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I figured that the next leg of my adventure would be a rather predictable one. In fact, as light faded from the sky as I drove toward through the Marietta Wild Burro Reserve, I sort of wondered what I was going to do for most of the following day. A slight rearrangement of my schedule. My destination - deep in the Excelsior Mountains - was one where I would have told you that, with near 100% certainty, I was going to find my first fully-functional, rolling ore cart. I say would have, because I'm getting about an hour ahead of…
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Morning along Pine Creek. A quarter mile from the Pine Creek Tungsten Mine, I remained fantastically horizontal for 12 hours while my body recovered from the ordeal of the previous day. As I climbed out of the tent to start my new day, I decided that perhaps I'd overdone things a smidge, and that I should take this as a rest day. Twenty minutes later, I found myself a mile down the road - enjoying a big bowl of Wheat Chex - just outside the Pine Creek Pack Station, as the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter grew louder overhead. Initially unsure…
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For the second time in as many trips, I'd been abandoned. This time, a trip to the Arizona Strip and North Rim of the Grand Canyon was on the books until life got in the way for a few buddies, and as they bowed out, so did @mrs.turbodb. This left me in a bit of a pickle, as I'd left the Tacoma in California at the end of my previous outing, and still needed to ferry it down to Las Vegas for the winter. So, it was back to the computer and a bit of time sorting through the many-lifetime's-worth…
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As we cruised down the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains, I knew it was the perfect time to take a detour. As is common on a Backcountry Discovery Route, the Colorado BDR was designed to get us from point A to point B, but not necessarily by seeing the coolest things along the way. There are many reasons for that - which I won't get into here - but in this case, just south of the stage end at Buena Vista, there was a 14,000-foot-tall peak - Mt. Antero - that I'd been trying to reach the top of…
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We'd gotten up with the sun at the Farnham Emergency Hut and it wasn't yet 7:00am when we departed our 7,300-foot camp site for temporarily lower elevations. It was there - at 4,800 feet - that we'd disembark from our American Hiking Machine (the Tacoma) in favor of our own two legs, regaining all of the elevation we'd lost - and more - as we fought our way through the 10-mile trek to The Lake of the Hanging Glacier. A perfect day on Horsethief Creek. After hiking the Conrad Kain Hut during the afternoon heat of the previous day, temperatures…
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Having woken up at what @mrs.turbodb continued to remind me was 5:15am Real (Pacific) Time - and admittedly early given our long day of driving to reach British Columbia's Kootenays the previous evening - we completed our exploration of Doctor Creek FSR and rolled into Radium Hot Springs only a few minutes after 10:15am. Having enjoyed an ice cream at Screamers the last time we were through, this was high on our list of places to revisit, even if it meant a slightly later start to the hike we'd planned for the bulk of the day. Plus, ice cream is full…
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Having thoroughly enjoyed our downtime along the gurgling banks of the Bruneau River, found ourselves racing north along Rowland Road shortly before 11:00am. Our plan for the remainder of the day was to visit several homesteads that I'd marked - but that we hadn't been able to see due to time - on our first adventure to the Idaho-side of Owyhee. Oh, and there was a possible hike down to another of the canyonlands rivers, should we feel as though we hadn't had enough of the start-sweating-as-soon-as-the-Tacoma-door-is-opened temperatures outside. Our first of several visits to Sheep Creek throughout the morning.…
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Last year, we didn't get to Owyhee at all. This was entirely due to the fact that the Tacoma didn't come home to the Pacific Northwest - from Las Vegas - until early July. By that time, we'd missed prime Owyhee time - a short period of weeks right around Memorial Day - when the grass in the high desert is green, the rains (and resulting mud) are largely done for the year, and the temperatures haven't yet climbed into the unbearably hot range. Missing the undulating grass, we are trying our best to make up for the lack of…
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With only 4 miles between us and a hot shower, we strolled right past the mouth of Kane Gulch on our way to check out Junction Ruin. Then, the plan was to tick off another mile - or so - of the trail out, in search of a nice slickrock camp site for the night. But oh, how plans change. High above the wash, there was no way we were going to get ourselves up to this gem of a ruin. As we approached the enormous alcove in which Junction Ruin sat, it began to rain. The storm we'd expected…
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Even before we'd pulled our sleeping bags out of the tent, I was distracted. Just outside an alcove behind the grassy area we'd called home, I'd stumbled upon some colorful spring flowers that were also waking up to a new day. Indian Paintbrush. (left) | Evening Primrose (Oenothera). (center) | Utah Serviceberry (Amelanchier utahensis). (right) The difference between the three of us and the flowers was that the flowers hadn't been stuffed into an ultralight Marmot Superalloy 3P for the last 12 hours. Now, I shouldn't complain too much - the mosquito netting of the tent did its job fantastically…
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Despite dozing off easily, our second night on the trail wasn't as great as the first. With all the dusty, dry conditions, I woke up in the middle of the night with a bloody nose, and our proximity to water resulted in a few mosquito bites - on the face - for @mini.turbodb. Still, we were all in reasonably good spirits when @mrs.turbodb's alarm went off, and soon, she and I were packing stuffing our backpacks - having informed the kiddo that she could stay warm in her bag - in preparation for the short walk to refill our water…
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I wasn't sure how comfortable @mini.turbodb would be under the stars and on slickrock, but with a few strategically placed rocks - which we all placed around our pads - to alert her to a getting-too-close-to-the-edge situation, she slept great. Better than either @mrs.turbodb or me, in fact! We'd set an alarm for two minutes before sunrise, which was technically about 30 minutes later than we should have gotten going. The cool morning temperatures are much nicer to hike in, and we weren't yet familiar with how long it would take to filter our water. Regardless, we had a relatively…
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"I want to do something epic for @mini.turbodb's spring break," @mrs.turbodb mentioned to me a few weeks ago. At the time, I think we were on our way home from a day of skiing, and I jokingly suggested that we could take @mini.turbodb on her first ever backpacking trip, through the Grand Gulch. After all, I'd recently created a goal around hiking the length of this amazing gash on the Earth's surface. Anyone who has followed along for a while will likely recall that I don't like carrying weight on my shoulders. In fact, I have a collection of variously-sized…
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After hiking 24 miles through Shangri-la Canyon - a few more miles of Grand Gulch than a sane person should in a day - cool temperatures made for one of the best night's sleep we've had in a long time. And, even waking up an hour before sunrise to "do it all over again, only in Water Canyon," we were well-rested, having fallen asleep just after 8:00pm, and only a few minutes after climbing up our ladder. All ready to go, no shadows yet playing across the land. From the little I'd been able to find about Water Canyon, it…
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Every time I go to Utah's Cedar Mesa, I find myself wondering why I don't visit more often. When I really think about it, the answer is a combination of factors, with the largest being: Distance - It's a 24-hour drive from home. Anything over 19 hours is a slog - even for the younger me, who could conquer long drives and still hike the next day. Even when the Tacoma is stored in Las Vegas, it's a 9-hour trek - nearly a full day of driving - just to get there! Death Valley - Much of the time I'd…
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