The snow came a day late this weekend. Saturday's hike on Cedar Mountain wasn't all that great because it was cold and windy instead of snowy and still. There are three roads that get close to the area where I wanted to hike, and two of them were fenced and gated, while the other one turned into little more than a cow trail a couple miles short of our destination. Mark and I hiked down the cow trail anyway and walked along the bottom of a wash called Johnson Hollow for more than a mile, then climbed out to the rim and hiked along the edge of the wash back to the truck. Based on what little I know about geology, I'd have to say that the geologic map of the area is wrong where it shows several huge sections of Morrison Formation exposed on top of Cedar Mountain. We only ran across one tiny area exposed, and there wasn't much to see.

We did come across a really cool place up there. Cedar Mountain is pretty much completely covered in juniper, pinion pine, sage brush, and a little bit of ponderosa pine, but there was this one little nook at Gooseberry Spring that had aspen and spruce trees which seemed completely out of place there. It was like going from the desert straight to the mountains instantly. If it wasn't for the cold wind and the little bit of old snow on the ground, I would have climbed down the ledges into the aspen stands and hiked around a bit. I'll have to put this place on my list of places to visit this spring when it warms up.