Moab Day 2: Mmmm Heat

My second day in Moab consisted of more quality desert fun. I woke up early again and headed to the Sovereign Singletrack Trail. Moab has been getting pressure to build more trails and in particular singletrack for mountain bikers and this was the newest trail around. I had expected it to be more like the trails near Salt Lake but it was similarly covered in slickrock like the day before... Good stuff! I rode out and eventually got to this gigantic area of just plain old open rock. A pure mountain biking playground:



Eventually I would ride down into that and play around a whole bunch... mmmm....

I had started an hour later than the day before and was starting to feel the heat. I think the desert started to get to me as I swear this really looked like mint chocolate chip ice cream:



After the ride, I took a quick drive to Dead Horse Point before driving back to Salt Lake. The view point looks into Canyonlands and is pretty darn sweet.



I've made it to RPI and classes start tomorrow... Missing Utah, but it's good to be back.

Moab Day 1! and 80 on 80

I'm back in Ohio.... woot? After three days of humming along 80 generally at 80, I'm back in Cincinnati for a couple days before returning to school.

I'm about three weekends behind... well time to start catching up!

I didn't feel like I could leave Utah without mountain biking in Moab. Known as the practical Mecca of mountain biking, Moab has some of craziest, funnest, trails around. The town is situated in a Southern Utah canyon and is about four and a half hours away from Salt Lake. I raced down Friday after work to arrive just in time to snag a motel room. I know... I know... a motel room? Not camping? What's the deal? It's freaking hot in the desert and I went in August. After riding hard in the blazing desert sun, I decided a shower and air conditioning would be better than a tent.

My heat related suspicions were confirmed when I joked with the motel owner about the heat. He said I should be used to it coming from Salt Lake. I explained that I figured we probably had more shade. He looked at me quizzically, "What's shade?"

I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning to ride the Slickrock Trail. And I mean the crack of dawn. I was at the trailhead and riding by 6 AM to try and thwart the sun. The slickrock trail is probably the reason Moab is so popular. About 99% of the trail is hard, grippy rock. The traction on the rock let's you climb and descend on stuff steeper than you ever thought possible. It's mountain biking Utopia. Until you realize that falling has equally raised stakes...



You can see the trail here... it's marked on the rock by all the little white dashes; riding is kind of like playing connect the dots. I think your rode the above section in the downhill direction.

The trail winds around a plateau above Moab which you can see down into at a couple of overlooks.



After the ride, I ate a ridiculously good lunch at a little coffee shop in town before taking off to Arches National Park for some late afternoon hiking. I hiked about 7 miles and saw a bunch of natural stone arches including the famous Delicate Arch (Utah's unofficial symbol). Of course, my battery died early in the hike so all I have pictures of are the driving views and Balancing Rock:






That sucker could go at any moment.... Feeling lucky? I wonder why the Park Service doesn't charge people to hit the rock with a bat like a pinata... Probably a bad idea....

I pushed hard and really just caught Delicate Arch at sunset. It was wicked dark and late by the time I got back into town. Only a Wendy's Baconater would fufill my recovery needs... mmmmm....

Wind River Range Day 3: Coming Down....

Ok, ok, I've finally got a minute to write about my third day in the Wind Rivers.

I woke up earlier than the previous day; I've got ten miles to get to my car and I'd prefer not to have to drive home in the dark. I quickly pack up my bags and start to look for the trail. There's supposed to be a three-way trail junction at the lake... but I'm seeing nothing.... Eventually I work my way in the direction that should be my car and find the trail. The hiking has more rolling ups and downs but with less lakes and more big open meadows.



There's a crucial intersection along the way and the first time I come to a sign it points out all the trails in question but has fallen over giving no good indication of direction (they go about the same way). I pick the one that feels right and chug along when about half an hour later I get to an intersection marked with the exact same trails..... Strange..... I fiddle around with my compass and conclude that I'm sane and not going in circles. I keep going the way I planed. Fortunately, this intersection didn't show up a third time.... It's strange how as I get closer to civilization the trail signs are getting more random... eh, no worries.

Eventually I got down into the trees which was still pretty nice:



Later in the morning I passed my first group of humans in more than 24 hours. There's 4 guys and six horses. I'm carrying all my stuff on my back. These guys have it spread over six horses. What did they BRING? There's not outlets for that big screen buddy.... My descent gets steeper and steeper and I eventually drop into the basin where I started. Another quick 2 miles along the lake brings me to my car.

This day was relatively uneventful but that's alright because my legs were tired and the easy hiking was an enjoyable break.... All in all, the Wind River Range was awesome. Big mountains, little crowds, quality trails. I dig it.

Wind River Range Day 2: Chutes and Ladders

I slept in relatively late on the second day of my backpacking trip in the Wind River Range and got on the trail around 10 AM. I continued to work my way out of the valley that I had hiked up the day before and eventually came to an amazing land of alpine meadows. The wildflowers in the morning were simply stunning:



As I continued, the scene became more and more open, rugged, and ridiculously beautiful. Ludacrisly beautiful. The high alpine practically nudges the peaks only a couple of hundred vertical above the basin. At some point I dropped my pack and bagged a random unknown peak. It was there.

I continued my merry way through the alpine in an incredibly cheery mood when my first tactical mistake was made. I'm relatively used to the trails in the NorthEast that romp their way over peaks, but most of the high points around this area are too cliffy for trails; I had managed to practically mentally flip the up/down hiking of the rest of the day in my mind. What I thought was going to be a steep valley became a mountain pass:



I would continue down to that little Lake (way the heck down there) where I would see another bull moose tromping away from me. It was 3:30 and I discovered that I had only gone 3.5 miles out of my projected 11 or 12 for the day. I had stopped so frequently to take pictures and bask in the views that I was going stupidly slow. Not only that, I had another flip where I expected to go DOWN a valley where my direction would actually go UP the valley. It was time to crank on the gas. But I want to take piiiiiicturess......

I hiked hard up the valley for about 3 miles before coming to a junction where I turned West into a region known as No Name Lakes (most of them actually have names). I was back above treeline (with a few pine tree exceptions) and climbed in and out of what felt like dozens of little basin with random lakes (probably more like five).



It felt like the lakes would never end when finally I came to Palmer Lake and decided to call it a day (ok, it was getting dark and I was exhausted).

I settled into my bivy only to watch lightning across the mountain ridge. I had to get my head around this.... If it rained, I would probably get soaked and the lightning made me think too hard about wildfires (a serious issue...) Finally I dozed off after another indescribable day.

Wind River Range

Last weekend was pretty uber. This Tuesday was Pioneer Day (in short, the day the Morman posse arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and decided to chill here) so I was off work and snagged a vacation day on Monday to procure a four day weekend.

I had wanted to check out the Yellowstone/Grand Teton area for a while and got some good information on a three-day backpacking loop hike in the Wind River Range. This range isn't actually in the National Parks, but it's on the same ridge (the Continental Divide) and meant I wouldn't have to deal with permits or hordes of people.

Day 1:

I set off for Pinedale, Wyoming and the trailhead; driving through Wyoming was interesting, it's really pretty flat and filled with small towns until you hit the mountains. And I mean REAL small towns. Most of these places had less than 500 people and I couldn't help but wonder what they do for a living (I hypothesize the answer may be cattle ranch stuff).

Somewhere along the drive I discovered I had no pot to boil water. This means my freeze dried dinners would be... freeze dried... and my oatmeal would be dry too. I stopped in Pinedale and picked up a pot. A random lucky close call.

I took off from the trailhead after registering and all that. There are grizzly and brown bears in the wilderness and signs declared this in a way that made me think I was guaranteed to get eaten. A couple miles later, I passed this on the trail:



Shnikeys... Hmmmmmmm.... Well...... Ok.

My first day was spent mostly working my way up a creek drainage that was absolutely beautiful. You forget how much mileage you can cover in one day and I was surprised at how far back in the canyon I was getting.



I saw not one, but three moose along that river. One of which was a bull (male), these dudes are big and scary. We had a classic moment of "Looking-At-Me-Looking-At-You" before deciding that we were friends and not food (phew).



I started the climb out of the valley that night and found a campsite along a stream on a little bluff overlooking the valley. In an effort to cut some weight, I hadn't brought a tent and was instead using a bivy sack (sort of like a waterproof cocoon for your sleeping bag) and a tarp. Sleeping with the sunset and under the stars was magnificent.



I'll post day two and three in the next couple days...

Pfeifferhorn

Aye! I'm sort of frustrated with not updating this... but I've been one busy dude!

Two weekends ago I went on a hiking trip up a peak in the Wasatch range called the Pfeifferhorn. I explained my plans to some of my co-workers at the bar on Friday and Greg agreed to join me. He'd been thinking about the peak for a while and it was a good way to group up. The Pfeif doesn't have a trail to the top so it requires a bit of navigation and a lot of boulder scrambling so two is probably better for safety.

We met up at 7 AM and begin the ascent. The first three or four miles were straightforward on a trail to Red Pine Lake. After Red Pine we began the scramble up to a ridge. The views down into the lake were pretty awesome:




Eventually we found the ridge and a quick jaunt got us to the summit cone proper:



Our ascent route was that sort of left gully almost dead center in this picture. The climbing was pretty good and the views would clearly be rewarding.



The way down was tough on the feet as the boulders were not forgiving... The lake and real trail were quite a welcome sign...

Greg is training for the Wasatch 100 which is a run covering 100 miles (naturally) of rugged mountain trails in one body killing day. So he decided to run the rest of the way down to train and was considering doing another run back up another trail... schnikeys...

I went the chill route and opted to hang out by the lake and relax and enjoy the mountains. The wildflowers are out and are pretty awesome; I enjoyed them on the way down:



Rock steady!

Ah, the 4th of July.... was days ago....

I visited New York and the family for the weekend and half of the week until the 4th of July. It was good to see family including Aunts/Uncles/Grandparents I only get to see a couple of times a year.

We did the usual, a lot of relaxing, beaching, boating etc. I waterskied a couple times and wish I could have more. Waterskiing is a great outdoor sport for it's utter pointlessness. Hikers, bikers, canoers, etc. all use their sports to travel and have historic adventurous roots. Organized sports develop teamwork and strategy. Waterskiing is just the sheer glory of racing around getting dragged behind a boat. Bliss.

We also checked out the Sandy Creek County Fair. An event for the highly cultured, the demolition derby was awesome as always:




Carnage! I think this was following the firefighters righting a flipped car. The flipped car continued in the demolition heat like a champ.