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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As always, we wanted to run a Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) this summer, and I'd had my eye on Colorado or Utah as both are always beautiful states through which to travel. This would be our seventh BDR in as many years, the original Oregon BDR being one of the very first trips we'd attempted with the CVT roof top tent. With record snowfall across the west, we realized a few weeks before our departure date that Colorado was completely out of the question, and even portions of the Utah route could still be blocked by snow. Still, the Utah BDR…
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Where was I? Oh right, I'd just completed an 11-mile hike before lunch in order to avoid the weekend crowds that never developed - at least, as far as I could tell. Still, I was left - in one of the most beautiful places in our country - with half a day to explore; the only thing standing in my way was figuring out where to go! Ultimately, I only seriously considered two options. The first - having just hiked the South Fork of Mule Canyon - was to hike the North Fork. I had almost no info on it…
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Just as I was nodding off after a peaceful day of hiking Road Canyon, I realized that it was Friday night - a fact that was interesting only in that it meant that the following day was Saturday. Now, bear with me because I'm going to spend entirely too much time making this point. You see, Saturday itself wasn't all that interesting, rather, it was the fact that it was a weekend. And even the fact that it was a weekend wasn't very interesting, except for the fact that I'd planned to hike the South Fork of Mule Canyon -…
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I was pooped when I climbed into the tent on the edge of the West Fork of Johns Canyon. A full day of hiking (I'd covered more than 16 miles), after only a few hours of sleep (about five), meant that I knocked out a full three minutes of reading before my eyes closed and my thumb stopped "turning pages" of Tom Clancy's Red Winter. Sleep was bliss. I'm not sure I woke up at all before the soft charm of my alarm - a little diddy that everyone probably knows from YouTube survey ads that play before videos but…
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Having thoroughly enjoyed my time at Cedar Point, I figured it'd take me about an hour to make my way north, up the Moki Dugway, and to my next destination along Johns Canyon; this time the West Fork. But, as had been the case earlier in the day, events conspired to distract me as I pulled up behind another stopped truck in the middle of UT-261. At first I wasn't sure what was going on. Then, I was fumbling to get my zoom lens fitted to the camera. Mama cow was putting up a good fight to protect her little…
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