I had a pretty crappy day Saturday, so yesterday I went for a hike with Mark to the Aberdeen mine near Kenilworth. I've wanted to hike to the mine for many years, but just never took the opportunity to do so until now. The USGS topo map shows the Aberdeen mine in a side-canyon off of Cordingly Canyon, and that canyon basically runs between and parallel to Cordingly Canyon and Bull Hollow. However, most of the information I've found on the web relating to any "Aberdeen mine" near Kenilworth seems to refer to another mine (or several mine openings) either in Bull Hollow or on the mountain just above Kenilworth. In addition, there's another Aberdeen mine several miles away near Coal Creek, so it's been difficult finding specifics about the mine I visited. The best information I've found that clearly refers to the mine we hiked to is in a 1972 publication by the Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey. That publication gives UTM coordinates that closely match up with the position shown on the topo map. It says that this particular Aberdeen mine was in operation from 1898 to 1916, but gives little else.

When I called Mark to see if he wanted to go with me, it was sunny outside and the breeze was pretty calm. An hour later when I picked him up on my way to Kenilworth, it was extremely windy and the sky was filled with so much dust that it was a gray-white instead of blue. There still weren't a lot of clouds around, but the sun was pretty much blocked out. We parked along the side of the gravel road in Cordingly Canyon and hiked up the unnamed side-canyon toward the mine. The hike was fairly easy, with some light bushwhacking in places and a little bit of scrambling over boulders and such.

There's an old wagon road that winds in and out of the bottom of the canyon, though it's almost completely obliterated in places. Due to the steepness of the wash, I'm sure there had to have been small bridges where the road crossed it, but there were no signs of them now. The road has been in a state of disuse for so long that it's been reclaimed by nature to the point where it's no longer recognizable as a road. In places there are 20-foot tall trees growing in the middle of it. Near the mouth of the canyon we found an old miner's camp complete with a mattress spring (all the fabric and stuffing has long since rotted away) and the remains of a crude shelter. We also encountered an old wooden gate about halfway between the mouth of the canyon and the mine, which was presumably used to keep people from loading up their own wagons with coal.

Shortly before reaching the mine we ran into an area that was completely covered in coal, which I assume is where they loaded the wagons to ship the coal out of the canyon. Just beyond that was the mine itself, though the entrance was long ago filled in with dirt and rocks. There are still some timbers that probably made up the headframe and shoring, but they're mostly buried. A couple hundred feet up the canyon from the mine we found another opening that had been sealed off with rocks and mortar and then partially buried, but it looks like somebody had pulled out enough rocks from the wall to squeeze inside. I couldn't see much inside, but I stuck my camera through the opening and took a few photos with the flash on. There had to have been a deeper mine shaft behind the rock wall, but it must have collapsed because there's only a small room there now. There was also a strong odor coming from the opening, sort of like lighter fluid or diesel fuel. Methane is supposed to be odorless, so I'm not sure what would have caused that smell.

After seeing what little there was to see near the two mines, we started the hike back down the canyon. On our way back to the truck, we climbed out of the bottom of the canyon and up onto a portion of the old wagon road that we'd skipped before. It pretty much followed the contours of the hillside, and in several places where it crossed small drainages there were the remains of old wooden bridges. It had been snowing lightly for most of the hike, and although it was windy, we were pretty sheltered from it in the bottom of the canyon. Up on the wagon road, however, it got really gusty, and there was enough shade there that there was a foot or more of lingering snow in a few places.

If it hadn't been for the cold wind, I would have spent more time exploring the area near the mine. I had brought a geocache and intended to place it up there, but I forgot about it amid thoughts of hurrying up so I could get back to the truck. :) I'll probably go back this summer, since it's such a short hike (a little more than two miles round trip), to poke around a bit more and maybe hike to the end of the canyon.

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Aberdeen Mine Photo Gallery

This past weekend started out to be quite boring, and I wish it had stayed that way. Traci was in Utah County from Thursday evening through Saturday evening doing some scrapbooking, and the kids and I stayed home doing very little. Throughout the day Saturday, the cough that Bradley had for the past day or so got worse, and his breathing became more labored and he was wheezing a lot. By the time we put him to bed that night he was running a fever, and Traci and I began to get worried about him. Early Sunday morning, Bradley was bad enough that we didn't think it could wait until the doctor's office opened on Monday morning--he was trying so hard to inhale that his chest was making a popping sound--so we took him to the emergency room. They did a chest x-ray and concluded that he had pneumonia, and it was bad enough to admit him to the hospital. He received a couple of breathing treatments and some antibiotics, and by that evening he was feeling quite a bit better, although he was still having a difficult time breathing freely. Yesterday he was feeling much better and was out of bed and wanting to play. His breathing had improved significantly and at around 2:00pm they finally discharged him from the hospital.

Other than that bit of excitement, it was an uneventful weekend. Since it looks as though the worst of the cold weather is over for the season, I trimmed Torrey's hair on Saturday. It took me well over an hour to trim her, and she went from looking like a typical shaggy Brittany Spaniel to looking almost like a German Shorthair.

Michael and I also spent a couple of hours on Sunday building and painting his pinewood derby car. He started Cub Scouts last month, which I'm not entirely thrilled about. I was in Scouts briefly as a kid and I found it to be quite exclusionary. Of course, being a non-Mormon in Utah and being in Scouts can be difficult, since nearly all of the packs/troops are run by Mormons and meetings are held in Mormon churches. There are no secular Scouting groups in this county. I suppose I'll allow Michael to remain in Scouts as long as they don't get preachy or pushy with him.

Okay, that was quite a tangent there. Anyhow, with Bradley recovering from pneumonia, we had to cancel our plans for the upcoming weekend. We were all going to hike the Little Wild Horse Canyon - Bell Canyon loop. I had been thinking last week that there are a lot of "classic" or "touristy" attractions in the Swell that we've avoided for just that reason, but it's about time that we checked them out. As an alternative to LWH/Bell, we considered going to the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, but quickly scrapped that idea when we realized that this is their opening weekend for the year, and I wanted to avoid any crowds that might be there as a result. So, at the moment, we're still undecided as to what we're going to do for the weekend. I still haven't ruled out going for a hike by myself and letting Traci have a turn watching the boys by herself ;), but I'd rather do something that includes the entire family.

I work from home on all but a handful of days each year, and I normally dread the days that I work in the office because each one ends up being a very long day with the added three hours of commuting. Yesterday was a pleasant exception to that. I woke up early and was on the road by 6:20am, and I was sitting at my desk in Orem before 8:00am. My team had planned a potluck lunch, to which I brought some homemade coleslaw, though I ate very lightly because I had planned on attending a lunch with some guys from Bogley.com at 1:00pm. The potluck was nice--I rarely get to see my co-workers in person--and I ate quiche for the first time there.

For the Bogley lunch, several of us got together at Thai Village in American Fork. I had never met any of the guys there, but I felt like I already knew several of them. One of them (Dan) I was familiar with because of geocaching, but we had also never met in person. We planned on doing some geocaching after each of us got off work at around 5:00pm. The food at Thai Village was excellent (I had a huge plate of cashew chicken), and I loved the building as well--it looks like an old (though large) house that was converted into a restaurant--and I would highly recommend eating there.

I returned to work after lunch and worked until just before 5:00, and then I decided to find some geocaches close to the office while I waited for Dan to call me. I was a few hundred feet from my second cache when Dan called my cell phone and told me that his wife had just made some dinner and asked if I wanted to eat at their place before we went out geocaching. I was still full from eating two lunches, but I ate dinner at Dan's anyway, which ended up making me laugh--she had made quiche, so it was the second time in my life, and the second time that day, that I'd eaten the dish.

After eating, Dan and I headed up Dry Canyon to find the oldest multi-cache in Utah. Luckily Dan had printed out the cache listing before we left his place. We accidentally took the most difficult route to the first stage of the multi, and by the time we got there we couldn't find it. There was a hint on the printout that helped us locate it quickly (after actually taking the time to read it), then we had to determine how to enter the coordinates to the second and final stage into our GPS units, as those coords were in UTM format. Once we got that figured out, we made the relatively easy hike farther up the mountainside to the final cache location. Our total hiking distance was only 1.6 miles, but the foothills of Mount Timpanogos are steeper terrain than I'm used to hiking in, so it was a good workout. I hadn't hiked or geocached much in northern Utah, and this was a new and fun experience.

We got back down off the mountain just after the sun had set, then Dan drove me back to my car at his apartment and we parted ways. The drive home was in complete darkness, which I was glad for because I hate driving at dusk when it's too light for the headlights to do any good, but too dark to see down the road clearly--mostly I worry about hitting deer or elk at that time though. I kept my foot on the gas pedal when I couldn't see headlights approaching from the opposite direction, and let off the gas whenever I saw headlights around the next curve or hill, and I barely made it home in time to tuck the boys into bed at 9:30.

All in all it was a great day, and if I can manage to plan my days in the office around lunch get-togethers and geocaching like that, I may work in Orem more often. :)

I spent all day yesterday with my family in the Swell, and we thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather we've been having lately. We were gone from home for 12 hours--less than two hours of that was drive time, and the rest was riding ATVs and hiking. We covered 50 miles and stopped at several places of interest, and we were all sore and sunburned when we got home.

We parked the truck at a staging area within sight of King's Crown. It was a little before 10:00 am, and it was still a bit chilly. We only wore sweatshirts with windbreakers over them, and we had to keep our speeds down for the first part of the ride in order to not freeze. We rode the ATVs for a couple of miles on the main road until we came to our first turnoff, and the next road followed the edge of some Morrison Formation badlands. We connected with several other roads as we headed roughly northeast, and eventually came to our first stop near the head of the San Rafael River. The river begins when Ferron, Cottonwood, and Huntington creeks all converge within a quarter-mile of each other. The road doesn't go down to the river, but instead ends at an overlook that drops steeply down to the river bottom. I had hoped to find a nice spot there to eat lunch, but it was pretty barren and wide-open, so we opted to turn around and find the road to our next stop which was an old piece of mining or drilling equipment. We enjoyed our lunch there, and I examined the old machinery and tried (unsuccessfully) to figure out what it was used for. I also hiked around a bit and found a couple of old mining claims in glass jars. I'm not sure what they were prospecting for (uranium?), but apparently they didn't find it.

The next place we visited was a trail across Sand Bench that dead-ends atop a cliff above the Red Ledges. I couldn't see much of the trail in Google Earth, so when planning out our route on Friday evening I just used the USGS topo maps in ExpertGPS to mark waypoints along the dashed line that represented the road. However, even being there in person, the trail is impossible to make out on the ground. The beginning of the trail is signed with a Carsonite sign, but after a hundred feet or so, it completely disappears. We ended up traveling cross-country, picking the best route to the next waypoint in my GPS, but the waypoints were spaced about four-tenths of a mile apart, so that required a lot of route-finding. Along the way, we saw some interesting Curtis Formation rocks that the kids wanted to climb around on, so Traci and I dropped them off at the rocks while we kept riding and trying to find the trail. The kids hiked along the top of a ridge of rocks that paralelled our course and eventually we met back up in the bottom of Red Wash. From there, the trail was partially visible for a short distance where it climbed a sandy hill out of the wash. About halfway to the end of the trail, there was another Carsonite marker, but the trail was completely obscured and overgrown at that point. We ended up traveling the remaining distance in as straight a line as we could manage while trying to avoid large clumps of cactus and large brush. The view from the overlook was great, though typical of such overlooks that exist all along Sand Bench for the 40 or so miles that it stretches across the San Rafael Swell.

After bumping back down the now well-traveled (hah!) "trail," we rode north again and parked the ATVs where the road ended at Red Wash. We hiked down the wash until we reached a large spring-fed pool of water that I'd been to before while finding a nearby geocache (Herder's Game - GC11E7T). My reason for returning is that there's an 1863 carving in the rock nearby that I didn't see the last time I was there, and I wanted to see it and photograph it. The hike there was fun, and the pool of water was more interesting than I remembered. If I'd had the time, I would have found a route down to the pool, but we had more places to see and it was getting later in the day.

From the dead-end where we were parked near Red Wash, the road leads south all the way to the main road, and we followed it there uneventfully and with no more stops. Upon reaching the main graded dirt road, we started looking for places to camp for a future trip to the area. We also took a short road heading south from the main road (so far, all of our riding had been to the north) along Sand Bench so that we could find a secluded spot to eat dinner and for the kids to play on the rocks some more. After eating, we made good time along the main road back to the truck, and the sun had set by the time we got there. It was pretty cold by the time I finished loading and securing the ATVs, and I was grateful to jump in the truck and crank up the heater for the drive home.

I could do that trip all over again and still have fun. There wasn't a place that we stopped that isn't worth going to again, and I think someday I'll do it. I would like to explore the area around the head of the San Rafael River on foot, and there are some sections of Red Wash where it cuts through Sand Bench that I would like to hike through as well. There's one place we had intended to look at but didn't have time to, about 1.5 miles south of where we ate dinner. Judging from the aerial imagery in Google Earth, that area is similar to Ghoul Gulch, but it involves a short (less than half a mile) hike to get there, and is probably better suited for a half-day exploration. I also found out just today that there are some amazing pictographs about a quarter-mile from there, so I suppose it's a good thing I didn't make it there yesterday. It will be nicer to spend some time there when I'm not in a rush.

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Photo Gallery
Google Earth .KML GPS Track and Waypoints

I'm beginning to think that whenever the weather forecast is iffy, I should automatically plan on getting outdoors to enjoy the sunny weather. It was supposed to be mostly cloudy and rainy/snowy yesterday, but instead it was sunny, albeit a bit chilly. Traci and I decided at the last minute (mid-morning) to drive the car down into the Swell to do some hiking and play some vigps.com contests. Since we would be in the car we were limited in where we could go, and ultimately we decided on the Wedge for a bit of hiking.

We first made a quick stop to dig up a buried bottle near the dinosaur quarry. The road was a bit rough, and once I felt a rock scrape the bottom of the car as I drove over it. We found the bottle easily and photographed the contest instructions inside, then made it back to the main road without damaging the car. After that we continued to the Wedge, and we parked at the dead-end on the Lower Wedge Road. I'd only been out there once before when Mark and I tried finding a route to the far southeastern tip of the Wedge about three years ago. I'm continually amazed at how much awesome scenery there is out there, and I don't think very many people get out there to see it. We decided to just hike to wherever looked the most interesting, and we ended up going roughly due east toward the rim of Buckhorn Wash. Along the way we saw some interesting Navajo Sandstone formations, and a few small alcoves with springs/seeps in them. Shortly after we began hiking, we saw a small natural arch, and we made it our goal to reach it (well, ok, I made it my goal to reach). :) Upon reaching it, Traci and the kids were tired and didn't want to go any farther, so I left them there to play around on the rocks while I kept going east and ended up at the top of a cliff looking down into Buckhorn Wash. It was an awesome view, and probably one that not many people see.

After taking some photos from the canyon rim, I returned to my family and we made a beeline back to the car. From there, we drove to Fuller Bottom to find another buried bottle. I was pretty nervous about this one because I had to cross the San Rafael River on foot in order to reach it, but I wasn't sure how much flow to expect. I had crossed the river there only once before, on my ATV, and the flow was pretty low then. Fortunately the spring runoff wasn't heavy yet, and the water level was still quite low. I changed into some old shoes and pants, then crossed the nearly freezing water while everyone else waited for me. It was a fun experience, and I was the first to find this bottle (unlike the last one), so it was entirely worth it.

I tried fixing the fuel leak on the truck a few days ago. I spent half an hour taking things apart before realizing that I was in over my head, so I put it back together and I plan on taking it to Landon's Diesel Service this week. The last time I dealt with Landon's, they said it would be a week before they could even look at my truck, but then they called me the next day saying that they had found the problem and could have it fixed before they closed that day. I'm not counting on that kind of service now, but it would be nice if they could get it fixed before next weekend. I really need to get out and ride my ATV in the Swell!

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Photo Gallery - Hiking at the Wedge

I managed to get the brake job done on the truck on Saturday, though it took me another trip to the parts store because one of the wheel cylinders they gave me was the wrong one. That makes nine trips to three different stores in order for me to get the correct parts. I bled the brakes but the pedal feels pretty spongy, so I may not have gotten all the air out of the system. It's something I'll have to work on before camping season starts, because I don't want to be towing a trailer without the brakes working 100%.

My next project will be to fix the fuel leak on the truck. It's been leaking very slightly for a couple of years, but I never worried about it because it only did it after very long trips. It's gotten much worse over the past few weeks. I tracked it down to one of the fuel lines going into or coming out of the fuel pump, but they're buried under some of the turbocharger duct work and some other parts that I can't even identify, so I'm hesitant to start tearing things apart. Until the leak is fixed, I don't plan on driving the truck any more than is absolutely necessary. And that means that I'll probably not be going for any ATV rides until it's fixed, so hopefully that's motivation enough to get it done soon.