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…
11 CommentsTag: utah
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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Comb Ridge. There, somewhere, is a ruin that I've been searching for over the course of several years. While not unknown, this ruin - with walls supported by a Juniper Tree trunk - is infrequently visited and photographed, and the location is kept well under wraps by those who have been lucky enough to visit. And I'm fine with that. I appreciate it and understand why. Still, even as I've failed to find it on several previous occasions, I knew I'd have to keep searching until I found it. This would be our third full day with feet on the…
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Having spent a bit of time dealing with the rear e-locker, we were running about two hours "behind schedule" as we barreled west along UT-163 towards Monument Valley. In reality, I'd somehow significantly underestimated the number of miles between Comb Ridge and the Muddy Mountains where we planned to setup camp for the night, so we were running more like five hours later than planned. That meant we'd need to alter our itinerary a bit - eating dinner rather than lunch in St. George, as well as finding a nearby spot to camp so we could complete our final hike…
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I wouldn't say the wind was calm as we went to sleep overlooking John's Hole in the San Rafael Swell, but it was definitely tapering off. By midnight, only a gentle breeze blew past our camp before cascading down into the canyon. Until 3:00am. That's when we were sent scurrying for our earplugs. It's amazing how much difference a good set of these can make, and soon we were sleeping like babies, the flapping of the roof top tent muffled as our cliff-edge-cradle was rocked by the wind until just after sunrise. Wanting to catch the canyon before too many…
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As temperatures have started to rise across the west, areas that were covered in snow or otherwise too cold to wander during the winter are once again opening up. And, while I have an endless list of desert destinations to explore, it's always an exciting time to venture beyond the confines of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts that we've recently called home. And so, we're headed to Utah. There, San Rafael Swell and Cedar Mesa will be our destinations. Like the desert, an infinite number of days could be consumed savoring the sandstone formations, deep canyons, and Native American Indian…
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We'd wrapped up the Arizona Backcountry Discovery Route (AZBDR) in record time, a full day faster than even our most ambitious estimates. On the one hand, it was nice to relax a bit, knowing that we had plenty of time to make it from the Arizona-Utah border near Kanab to our flight out of Las Vegas. On the other, now we were faced with figuring out what to do with our spare time; I hadn't researched any backup plans should a situation like this occur! After a bit of "we could do this," and "we could go see that," we…
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A quick recap... We knew even before starting the AZBDR that we'd need a permit to cross the Navajo Nation, and we knew we could conveniently pick up the permit just outside of Cameron, AZ just prior to entering Navajo land. What we didn't know for sure were the hours of the permit office. Knowing that we didn't know, we'd tried calling the permit office earlier in the day - just before visiting Wupatki National Monument - thinking that we could pick up our permit well before the office closed for the day. However, when no one answered the phone,…
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After completing the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route, we're up to seven BDRs since we started running them seven years ago in 2016. Through the running of each one, @mrs.turbodb and I are - as you can imagine - regularly comparing the current BDR to the past ones. I finally started writing some of these comparisons down, and - of course - I now feel obligated to carry on that tradition into the future. TL;DR - The Utah BDR really is an iconic route. While it largely hugs the eastern side of the state, there is great variety in the terrain,…
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The final stage of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route. Doesn't start in Utah; doesn't reach the Idaho border. It was a balmy 83°F as we wrapped up lunch under a shady tree in Evanston, Wyoming, ready to start the last stage of the Utah BDR. As we did, a rider on a dual sport BMW rode by, his head on a swivel as he saw the Tacoma and pulled into the lot. "I live just up the road, you guys are welcome to come over for dinner and a shower if you'd like," he said. We politely declined, but still…
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Stage 5 of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route was the greenest of them all, through the Uinta Mountains. It took us longer to find a lunch spot than we expected, swarms of mosquitoes attacking us as soon as we ventured into the shade along the side of Currant Creek. While the pesky little buggers didn't seem to phase the deet-drenched RVers, we prefer almost anything else - wind, rain, and cold - over those damn blood suckers, and so we pushed on to higher ground before breaking out the sandwiches that @mrs.turbodb has prepped before leaving camp just before sunrise.…
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Stage 4 of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route - through Nine Mile Canyon (sort of), and through the Uinta Mountains to ... Wyoming? Shortly after 6:00pm, we pulled out of the Chevron station on the outskirts of Wellington on our way to Nine Mile Canyon. We were surprised when we discovered that Nine Mile Canyon was on the Utah BDR because when we'd visited - a little more than a year earlier - we'd spent an entire day in the canyon, completely overdosed on rock art, and still hadn't seen but a fraction of what it has to offer. How…
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Lockhart Basin in our rearview mirror, it was time for the main Stage 2 route through the La Sal Mountains. Having wrapped up our brief time in town with a quick meal and a refreshingly cold Coke - kept icy cold in my favorite stainless steel vacuum cup - and chocolate frosty from Wendy's - it was time to find some respite from the heat. A hotel room - with a shower - for instance. Sure, it wasn't triple digits anymore, but no one wants to sleep in this, either. Alas, there was no hotel room in our future, though…
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Before running the official stage 2 route, we were headed to the alternate (red), a more difficult trail through Lockhart Basin. Of all the stages on the Utah BDR, I was most looking forward to the expert route through Lockhart Basin. This stretch of road piqued my interest for a couple reasons: first, it skirts along the edge of Canyonlands National Park, an area that never ceases to amaze me, no matter which district I happen to be visiting at any given time. Second, it was a segment of the M~U~D trip that Monte @Blackdawg and Mike @Digiratus ran back…
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The first stage of the UTBDR meanders - like the San Juan River - through some of Utah's most recognizable landscape. It's hard to say that it was way too early when my alarm went off at the base of Mexican Hat, but it's safe to say that we'd gotten way too little sleep given our arrival at this place only three hours earlier. Still, with daytime temperatures in the triple digits, we were no dummies - though one might argue otherwise given our voluntary arrival to such conditions - and planned to get as many miles in while it was still…
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