It's been a nice four-day weekend, and what's nicer is that I've got every Thursday and Friday off for the rest of the year. I spent this Thursday doing the usual--Thanksgiving at my mom's house. I always look forward to get-togethers with my family. My mom deep fried the turkey for the first time this year and it turned out great. We watched Star Trek after dinner, which was the third time I'd seen it in the past week. I had planned on going for a hike near Prickly Pear Flat on Friday, but my cold kept getting worse throughout the day Thursday so I decided to rest Friday instead. I slept in--a rare treat for me--then spent the day watching movies.
My cold didn't seem as bad Friday, and my cough subsided quite a bit, so on Saturday I woke up early and went on that hike. I parked the truck just past the cattle guard on Big Flat, then rode my ATV to Prickly Pear Flat. It was only a three-mile ATV ride (one way), but it was worth it to avoid driving my truck over that part of the road--it has some really nasty spots. I parked the ATV at the wooden barricade at the wilderness study area boundary and then hiked about 0.2 miles farther along the road before turning northwest and heading cross-country. I had to pick a route that crossed several sandy washes and expanses of sandstone. I eventually reached the top of a long, narrow plateau that's only about a quarter-mile wide at its widest point, and I followed its southern edge as I hiked west toward where the plateau ends in a point. That point sits just above the confluence of Pine Canyon and Calf Canyon, though the bottoms of the canyons lie just over 1,000 feet below the point, with sheer cliffs leading straight down to the canyon bottoms. The view from the point was amazing. There were some people camped in Calf Canyon below me, and I spent some time there observing them and enjoying the view all around me. I placed a geocache there, then headed back, taking a different route this time. The return hike was much nicer. The sun came out (it had been overcast and dreary up until then), and the terrain was much more interesting. I ran into Lynn Sessions (and, I'm assuming, his brother David) during the ATV ride back to the truck, though I didn't know it was him until I got back to the truck and found his Explorer parked next to me. I'm not even sure how I knew it was him because I don't specifically recall seeing a photo of his vehicle online, but something rang a bell when I saw it. For anyone who doesn't know Lynn, if you look at just about any place in Utah in Google Earth, you'll likely see Lynn's photos there via Panoramio. Here are my photos from the hike, including one taken last year from Buckhorn Wash looking up at Prickly Pear Point (yes, I've wanted to do this hike since well before then).
Today I put the Christmas lights up on the front of the house, but I spent the rest of the day being a bit bored. The last few days have been a welcome break from work, but I don't think I'll mind a few days of work before my next four-day weekend.
I spent Friday geocaching around Huntington and Ferron, but I got frustrated by not finding a couple of caches and it turned out being only a moderately good day. Only one geocache in particular, called Ferron Mesa, turned out to be a fun find and made the day worthwhile. I spent more than an hour up on the mesa enjoying the view and looking for and finding bits of Fremont pottery.
Yesterday I went for a 4-wheeler ride in Lost Spring Wash in the eastern San Rafael Swell. I had planned on riding from the Green River Cutoff Road south through Lost Spring Wash for about seven miles, then west several more miles along a trail that ends at a point overlooking the old railroad grade near Tidwell Draw. I only made it about three-quarters of the distance through Lost Spring Wash before I hit a section of the trail that was too rough and steep for me to make it across. I stopped there for a while and debated whether I should proceed, and though I think I could have made it down the rough spot, going back up would have been pretty difficult, especially riding solo, so I turned around and headed back the way I came.
During the ride south through Lost Spring Wash, I'd seen a few piles of animaldroppings that were full of juniper berries, and I really wanted to believe that it was just coyote droppings. As I passed them again on the way back north, I paid more attention and thought that perhaps they could belong to a black bear instead. The more I've thought about it since then, the more I'm sure that it was bear scat. I've always wanted to believe that there were no animals living in the Swell that are big and mean enough to eat me. Now that I know better, I'll be a lot more wary when hiking in that area. Which may be next weekend.
I had a few choices of things I could do outdoors this weekend, and though I felt I picked the easiest option, I got my ass kicked. Summit42 invited me to hike in the San Rafael Reef with him, but it would have been an all-day hike with a few hours of driving thrown in, and I simply didn't have that much time. Instead, I hiked up to the balanced rock above Helper with some geocachers. There's been a geocache up there for just over a year, and I've wanted to find it ever since it was placed, but the hike just looked too daunting to do alone and the timing was never right to get someone else to join me.
The plan was to meet up at a church parking lot in Helper at 11:00am. I assumed that the others who were going would be driving to the trailhead in Helper Canyon. The road is rough and I knew that my truck wouldn't make it, so I rode my ATV from my house in Price, up to Kenilworth on the back roads, then down to Helper along the old railroad grade. It was a cold ride, and I got to Helper just before 11:00. It turned out that everybody else was planning on hiking along the road to the trailhead and then taking a different route back, and it didn't make sense to ride my ATV there so I just left it in Helper. We walked along the old railroad grade then turned onto the road going up Helper Canyon and continued until it ended. From there, we scrambled up a steep rocky slope to the bottom of a series of cliff bands. From there, the route followed a narrow and steep ledge between two of the bands of cliffs. I'd seen photos of this part before and it looked pretty bad, and though it looked even worse in person, it turned out to not be as bad as I'd feared.
After traversing that slope we climbed a ladder up to the top of the next band of cliffs. The ladder was made from welded steel pipe and bolted to the sandstone cliff. After the ladder, the route follows some fun sandstone ledges in the bottom of the drainage, then it climbs out of the drainage and goes straight up a steep hillside to the top of a ridge. The hillside was one of the worst parts of the hike due to its length and lack of nice views. Once we reached the top of the ridge, we followed the ridge line all the way to the geocache location just above the balanced rock. The view was amazing from there. To the south we could see all of Helper and beyond, and to the north we could see up the mouth of Price Canyon.
After taking some time to rest, eat, and take photos, we headed north down into into the bottom of another drainage, then turned west and followed the water course downhill. Once we reached a huge pour-off, we skirted around it to the north until we found a way down past the cliff, then continued down the steep and rocky hillside all the way to the bottom. This part was the absolute worst of the hike. The downhill was punishing, and my knees were hurting well before we got to the bottom. Once at the bottom, we walked along the railroad tracks back to town. I bundled up again in my heavy coat and gloves and hopped on my ATV for the cold ride home.
I'm still a bit sore today, but not as bad as I was yesterday just after the hike. Despite being pretty difficult, it was fun enough that I would definitely do it again, and I probably will do so next spring when things dry out a bit. I think there are more interesting things to be seen up there, but I need some longer, warmer days in order to explore a bit more.
Traci and I were hoping to go for a 4-wheeler ride on Saturday, but she wasn't sure that she was up for an all-day ride yet after her gallbladder surgery, so it ended up just being Bradley and me. The plan was to visit some old copper mines in the Summerville Wash area that I'd missed on a previous trip, then ride north to Stove Gulch to see another mine and an old cabin. The Summerville mines are marked on the USGS 7.5' topo map and were easy to find, though I didn't become interested in going there until I saw some photos of the place here. The stuff in Stove Gulch was more difficult to come by. All I had to go on was the photos on this page, but knowing that they were in the general area of Stove Gulch/Sulphur Canyon, I was able to match a couple of the photos with Google Earth satellite imagery.
We hit the road pretty early, around 8:30 in the morning, and were in the Swell and riding by 10:00. We reached the first set of mines in the Summerville area and there wasn't a lot to see there. There were a few small adits, most of which you could see the end of, and some prospect pits. We spent some time walking around the area and checking things out, and now I wish I'd have spent less time there. We eventually moved on to the next set of mines which were less than a mile to the north, but it was a four mile ride along the ATV trail. There was one rough spot in the trail where I had Bradley get off the ATV while I dropped down a ledge and into a wash, and I took a hard hit to my skidplate along the way. Good thing I wasn't planning on going back along that route. We got to the second mining area and it was obvious that there'd been more activity here than at the last place. The spur trail that I took down to the mines ended at a large tailings pile, and at the top of the pile was a vertical shaft that I couldn't see the bottom of because it curved slightly as it went down. I threw a small rock into the shaft and heard it bounce for a long time but couldn't really tell from the sound whether it had hit bottom or just faded away. The search was on for a bigger rock (curiously there were none right near the opening ;), and upon throwing one down, we heard it go on for more than ten seconds before hitting the bottom.
After gathering up some bits of copper ore from the tailings, then horsing around some more and not finding anything more interesting that the one vertical mine shaft, we ate a quick lunch a short distance away at an old stone cabin that probably housed a miner or two. Then we got back on the ATV and regained the main road where we made good time north toward Stove Gulch. With the increased speed it became necessary to once again don our jackets that we'd shed while hiking around the first mine site. Once I turned off the main road again toward Stove Gulch, the road got badly rutted. After crossing through a barbed wire gate, I took a right turn and entered the bottom of a wash that led to Stove Gulch, which itself has no road but instead the trail just follows the wash bottom. It was rough and rocky, and at one point there was a steep uphill ledge cut by water into the gravel and rocks that I couldn't get up, so I shifted into 4WD and went around via a very rocky route out of and back into the wash that once again marred the skidplate. I parked just out of the bottom of the wash and we scrambled up to where I had guessed the mine shaft would be based on the photos mentioned above. The shaft wasn't exactly where I thought it would be, but it was easy enough to find (less than 200 feet away) because of some tailings dumped down the hillside. The mine shaft was pretty cool, with a rickety old wire and wood ladder leading down and out of sight--not something I would dare descend. This one wasn't as deep as the Summerville mine, but it was a bit more interesting.
I tried going farther north along the bottom of Stove Gulch to see the old cabin near the Price River, but the bottom of the wash was pretty rough and I don't think I had time to go that slowly there and back. I also didn't want to cross such rough terrain alone without somebody else to help me get out of trouble if I were to find it. We cruised back to the truck, stopping only once to check out a cave listed on the topo map that turned out to be not much of a cave at all. We got back to the truck as the sun was nearly touching the horizon. Instead of returning home along US-6, I took the Green River Cutoff Road since it had been very recently graded. It might have been faster getting home that way were it not for the sun being so low in the sky--I was blinded for a good part of the drive along the southern end of Cedar Mountain. Before I reached the Buckhorn Wash turnoff the sun had set and I was able to make good time the rest of the way home.
Unfortunately I became pretty sick shortly after getting home. I must have gotten whatever stomach bug the kids had last week. They each were sick for two days with intermittent nausea and vomiting but no other symptoms. My nausea only lasted Saturday evening, but I was just kind of down all day Sunday. We went out with Chris (who spent the night at our place) and found a couple of geocaches near Helper, but that wore me out and I ended up taking a nap for several hours that afternoon/evening. It feels as though I only got half a weekend, which I hope to make up for with an upcoming three-day weekend.
Look who's back. :O I also ran into John on Facebook today. There are still a few of us kicking around on the web--I've had this site going for 11 years now--but I think most of the people who were around back in the day have disappeared.
I feel terrible about something that happened last night. I took Torrey outside so she could do her duty before bedtime, and somehow I forgot to make sure she came back in with me. I went to bed shortly after that, and my poor puppy spent the night outside. It got down to 31° and I'm sure she was miserable. I'm not sure where she slept, or even if she slept. When Traci got up this morning she heard Torrey whimpering just outside the back door. I felt pretty bad, and I've pampered her all day to make up for my screw up.
I wasn't able to take much vacation from work for the first eight months of the year, and now I'm having to take a lot of vacation days so I don't lose them. Today is the last day of my three-day weekend, and it's been a well-rounded one. Saturday (Halloween) was a bit busy. I had planned on taking the kids up to a geocaching event in Riverton, but I had so much else to do that the four hours of driving wouldn't have worked into the schedule, so we skipped it. Instead I winterized the camp trailer, which made me come to the sad realization that camping season is over, and it was much too short. We drove the boys to several relatives' houses to trick-or-treat, and later in the evening I had planned to walk around the neighborhood with them while they panhandled for more candy. Unfortunately Bradley got sick and he puked on his Mario costume (and yes, Michael was Luigi), so it looked like he wouldn't get to enjoy Halloween. Fortunately he got feeling better later in the night, though his costume was still in the washing machine. We pulled out Michael's Batman costume from a year or two ago and he was able to wear that and still go trick-or-treating, so it worked out pretty well.
On Sunday Mark and I went out near Wattis with the intention of riding ATVs up over Star Point onto Gentry Mountain, then hiking down into Gentry Hollow (or upper Tie Fork Canyon) to find a geocache that was placed in July and hadn't yet been found. I made a really stupid mistake by thinking that, with the time change from DST, we'd have more daylight in the evening. Duh. Well, we stopped so Mark could find the geocache at Star Point that I'd already found a couple of weeks ago, then rode across the top of Gentry Mountain toward the next cache. It was windy up on top, and though it was mid-afternoon, I was already cold and wishing I'd brought a coat instead of just a jacket. There was some snow in the shaded parts of the road, but for the most part everything was dry. We reached where I figured (from looking in Google Earth) that we'd be able to park the ATVs, but we were able to ride another third of a mile closer to the geocache from there. The hike down was very steep and followed a fence line most of the way, though there were cattle trails on either side that made it easier going through the brush. It didn't take us long to get to where the cache should have been, but after well over an hour of searching, we weren't able to find it. There was some snow on the ground that may have made it more difficult to find the cache, but we looked under every rock, log, and fallen tree, inside every stump, and under every bush within 100 feet of where my GPS zeroed out. We gave up the hunt when the sun fell behind the ridge to the west and it suddenly got very cold. As we hiked back up along the fence line toward the ATVs, we got back into the sunlight, and the steep climb kept us warm. As soon as we got back to the ATVs the sun yet again set behind the mountains to the west, this time for good. It got cold and dark pretty quickly, and it was a long and cold ride back to the truck. We stopped a couple of times to warm our hands on the exhaust, and I was very relieved to get back to the truck to find that the engine was still warm enough that the heater was putting out warm air instantly. It would've been nice to find that geocache, though it was nice enjoying the mountains for what will probably be my last ATV ride there until next summer. Here are some photos from the ride/hike.
Today I was going to ride Traci's ATV (since mine needed an oil change and I didn't have time to change it) up into the Book Cliffs from Horse Canyon to find another geocache. My plans got changed because Bradley was yet again sick last night, and we didn't want to send him to school this morning only to get a call to come pick him up after he vomits again. Since Traci was doing her preschool thing (I refrain from calling it a job because that suggests that she gets paid for it) in the morning, I ended up taking Bradley with me, though I had to take the truck because I couldn't fit him and Torrey with me on Traci's ATV. It ended up being a long and slow drive once I reach Horse Canyon. I kept the truck in 4-low because it's such a hog and the rear tires tend to spin on steep grades. The views from the Little Park Road were amazing. I could see well into the San Rafael Swell and even beyond to the Henry Mountains. I only drove a small portion of the road before reaching the geocache, but I had to go so slow in the truck that I didn't have time to keep going, so I turned around and headed for home. After this little taste I definitely want to return on my ATV, but it'll probably have to wait until next year as well. Here are the photos from the drive.
