What an epic weekend. Chris and I camped in a snow storm, hiked Little Wild Horse Canyon in the snow, and played around in Goblin Valley in the mud and snow. Although in hindsight it wasn't terribly difficult, it's still one of the craziest things I've done in a while.
Chris showed up in Price Friday afternoon, and as soon as I got off work we headed south on Highway 6, with me driving my truck and him following in his car. I had a good idea of where I wanted to camp after seeing this photo on Panoramio in Google Earth. We arrived there in plenty of time to set up camp before dark, but Chris had to leave his car on the main road about 0.4 miles from camp because the snow was too deep. Our tents were laid out on top of several inches of snow, and early in the evening it began snowing more. It took a long time to get a fire going because the firewood I brought had been covered in snow and ice behind my garage, but once we got the fire roaring it was a comfortable evening. We sat around the fire until about midnight, listening to coyotes howl not far from camp and occasionally brushing the accumulating snow off our shoulders and hoods. I had never before camped during the winter and wasn't sure how well I'd sleep in the cold, but using the new winter sleeping bag I got last week, it wasn't bad. The uneven ground bothered me more than the cold. It stayed about 36° inside the tent all night, and it was probably barely above freezing outside.
We woke up Saturday morning to about three inches of new snow and a very low cloud ceiling such that the entire San Rafael Reef was shrouded in clouds. We got the fire going again, then took our time eating breakfast and taking down camp. After dropping Chris' gear off at his car, we took the truck a couple more miles down the road and got to the Little Wild Horse Canyon trailhead at about 10:00 AM. It was foggy and snowing when we started hiking, and it continued to snow for about half of the hike. There was a well-worn trail through the old snow, so we were only breaking trail through the snow that had fallen during the night. Half a mile into the hike we ran into the first and only real obstacle in the bottom of the canyon. It was right after the canyon first narrowed up, and there was a jumble of boulders blocking the narrows that would have been tough to climb in the snow. We bypassed that part by hiking up a sandstone ramp that took us well above the canyon floor, then scrambled down some ledges to bring us back down to the floor upstream from the boulders. We came to the junction with Bell Canyon and turned north to stay in Little Wild Horse. From there, the canyon alternately narrowed and widened and narrowed again. Some of the narrows were nearly free of snow in the bottom, protected by overhanging cliffs above, while others were choked with as much as 10-12 feet of snow due to the funneling effect of the steep canyon walls. We encountered several tiny avalanches of snow, likely triggered by the sounds we were making as we hiked. It seemed that most of these small avalanches (which behaved more like waterfalls) landed directly on me, while Chris managed to escape being dumped on despite actually trying to trigger them intentionally.
We found a geocache in the canyon, one of the oldest in Emery County, which was the main reason I'd wanted to hike the canyon. I had left Torrey in the truck at the trailhead because she would have slowed us down and because I feared that she'd make it impossible to proceed past some of the obstacles (a fear which proved to be unfounded), so after finding the geocache we decided to only proceed far enough to check out the next section of narrows. However, as we progressed, I decided that I really didn't want to go to all this trouble and only see half of the canyon. We hiked all the way to the end of the last narrows, stemming over puddles of water and slush, and climbing over some huge piles of snow. We made it back to the trailhead in just more than three hours after we'd started the hike, and I was surprised to see another truck parked there and a couple of people looking at the trail map kiosk. I was more surprised when I recognized one of their dogs. It was a friend and fellow geocacher, the same one who'd invited me to hike Moonshine Wash last weekend. We chatted for a few minutes about the canyon conditions before they set out on their hike. Chris and I ate a quick lunch at the trailhead, then drove to Goblin Valley and picked up Chris' car along the way.
Goblin Valley was muddy. We slipped and slid our way down the valley floor from the parking lot, then tried choosing the snowiest route to the geocache that we wanted to find. There was still a lot of greasy mud that we had to walk across, and there were several streams of runoff from the melting snow. Getting to the geocache required scrambling up some steep hills that, when dry, would have been easy. In the mud it was treacherous, and we were often in danger of slipping and getting a fully-clothed mud bath. We reached the cache and found it hidden deep inside a hole under some boulders. Chris dove in and wriggled between the muddy rocks and grabbed the cache:
We chose a route back to the parking lot that was more snow-covered and a little less steep, and the snow cleaned most of the mud from our boots by the time we reached the truck. I drove Chris back to his car just outside the park boundary, and he took off toward Lake Powell to find some geocaches while I headed toward I-70 and UT-10 to find some caches. One of the caches I found was another of the oldest in Emery County, and it was the last one I needed in order to be able to log a "puzzle" cache that requires people to have found the dozen oldest caches in the county. On my way up UT-10 toward home, I stopped to find and sign the log in the puzzle cache, but I couldn't find the damned thing. I spent about 45 minutes looking for it while dusk turned to pitch black, but it's either no longer there or buried in snow. I drove about another hour before getting home, and shortly afterward Chris stopped by on his way home for a short visit.
It was a truly great weekend, and it's nice to know that I can comfortably camp and hike year-round. I'm sure I'll be doing much more of this type of thing from now on. While I was in Little Wild Horse Canyon and Goblin Valley, I found it interesting to watch the snowmelt running down cliffs and along the valley floors. It's amazing that even this small amount of water helps to sculpt the canyons and formations that I enjoyed so much over the weekend. I shot a few video clips of the runoff, I'll leave you with this short video showing it doing its thing:
Most of Valentine's Day was slow, but late in the afternoon we all piled into the truck and set out for the Swell with the intention of seeing some rock art and photographing the sunset. The petroglyphs are on a boulder at the southeast base of Little Cedar Mountain, and though I had only seen them in photos, the appeared to be easy to find. I know of two short roads that lead to that area, but when we got there we were greeted by pure white, unbroken snow on both roads. I got out of the truck at the best looking road and checked out the snow depth, and it appeared to be a little over a foot deep. The road went up a moderate incline, so I wasn't worried about getting stuck in the snow since gravity would be on my side if I had to back out. I locked in the hubs and gave it a go, but only made it about 300' before the truck ground to a stop. It took about a minute of rocking back and forth before I was able to free the truck from the snow and reverse back to the main road.
We drove to the Wedge Overlook after that and had some time to kill before sunset. I went a little overboard and ended up taking about 80 photos of the setting sun and the glowing sky. While I stood on the edge of a cliff with my tripod and camera, Traci and the boys stayed near the truck and played in the snow. When the sunset had died down, I started the truck and held my hands in front of the heat vents for several minutes before I was warm enough to drive home. We were there a lot later than I expected to be, and when we got home we had dinner about an hour later than usual.
Today, we had Michael's birthday party at Pioneer Park. We rarely are able to do something really fun for his birthday (we're limited to bowling or the indoor swimming pool this time of year), but there was finally enough snow this year to go sledding at the park. We served hot chocolate and, as a departure from the usual cupcakes, cinnamon and orange rolls. The kids had a lot of fun, though understandably some of the adults didn't enjoy hanging out in the cold. I, however, enjoyed it much better than having a party at home.
With as good at this weekend was, I can't help but wonder how much better it could have been. Relatively late Friday evening, I got an e-mail from a friend who invited me to hike through Moonshine Wash the next day, but I had to turn him down because I didn't have enough notice to change the plans I already had. Then on Saturday I got an invite from somebody I've never met in person to go horseback riding to Devil's Hole on Sunday, but I declined because I would be watching the kids while Traci was at church. This morning I got an e-mail from Summit42 asking if I wanted to trespass on some mining property near Sunnyside and photograph some old abandoned buildings, but again I had to pass because of Michael's party. I hope those opportunities present themselves again sometime in the future when I don't already have something going on.
Yesterday I ventured into the heart of the San Rafael Swell to see firsthand how much snow was lingering. UDOT has a couple of webcams along I-70, one at Ghost Rock and another near Rattlesnake Bench, but it's difficult to get a good idea of the conditions of any other roads in the area from those.
I left home and headed south on UT-10. It was foggy near Castle Dale, and all the trees and fences had hoar frost on them. The power plant wasn't even visible from the highway due to the fog, but south of Castle Dale it cleared up enough to catch a glimpse of the smokestacks sticking up out of the fog. South of Ferron, I decided to take the Moore Cutoff Road rather than continuing along UT-10. It was the first time I'd been on that road since it was paved last year. I found a geocache about 50 feet off the road, but the snow was still deep enough there that I had to change into my snow pants and winter boots. The cache was near a boulder that contained some fossilized dinosaur bones. If it wasn't for the deep snow, I would have hiked around and explored for more fossils.
I stopped at the Eagle Canyon view area near I-70 and took some photos, then crossed the overpass to the other side of I-70 and tried taking the road down to Justensen Flats. I got to the end of the plowed pavement and decided not to even attempt the road. There was more than a foot of snow on the road, and I was surprised to see that absolutely nobody had been down it this winter with the exception of a couple of horses whose riders' vehicle and trailer was still parked where the pavement ends and the gravel road begins. Other than those tracks, the snow on the road was flat and unbroken and had definitely not seen vehicular travel since the first big snow storm of the winter.
I continued east along I-70 and stopped at several of the view areas, then followed the interstate out of the Swell and exited at the UT-24 interchange. I drove north from the interchange along the county road, which was a mix of packed snow, slush, and mud. I was hoping to find a nice spot to stop for lunch, but there was nowhere to get off the road because of all the snow along the sides, so I made a multi-point u-turn and ended up eating lunch just off the interchange. Following lunch, it was still too early to head home, so I took UT-24 south until I hit the old UT-24 (now abandoned by the state and, I believe, a county road). It used to be a paved road, but it's no longer maintained and has fallen into disrepair. Drainage along the road is poor, and there were several places where slushy, muddy runoff was flowing across the road. Most of the road was a mix of wet asphalt and packed snow and ice, and it was bumpy and slow-going. As I neared the Green River airport the road turned into thick mud, and I was heavy into the throttle trying to keep my truck going forward in 2WD--I didn't want to step out into the mud to lock in the hubs. It was foggy at the airport and all the way into Green River, so I didn't get to see much along the way (another good excuse to go this way again someday). From Green River, I took I-70 west then US-6 north and had an uneventful (and slightly drowsy) drive back home without making any other stops.
This may very well be the first weekend out of many that I don't get outdoors to play in the snow. I woke up to more snow this morning and suddenly lost the will to do anything today. We'll see how tomorrow goes. Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to one of the best camping trips I've ever been on, to Justensen Flats in April 2006. Specifically, I've been thinking about the hike to the San Rafael Knob, which is the highest point in the San Rafael Swell at 7,921'. At the time, I dedicated a scant half of a paragraph and six photos to that hike on this website, but it deserves more.
We started our hike at 9:30 on the morning of Saturday, April 22nd, after a short but rough five-mile drive from our campsite at Justensen Flats. I wasn't feeling well (in all likelihood hung over), but didn't want to miss out on any action. I rode on the back of Cortney's 4-wheeler, and I remember hanging on for dear life for part of the ride to the Knob. We parked as close as we could get, which was a mere 0.2 miles as the crow flies from the highest point of the San Rafael Knob, but the hiked turned out to be 1.2 miles round trip. The first part involved steep and loose scrambling up a heavily-wooded slope. About halfway up the Knob we reached a flat ridge that we followed around to the north side of the Knob, skirting around the bottoms of some nearly vertical sandstone cliffs. At the base of the cliffs there was still some lingering snow that hadn't seen direct sunshine all year and was slowly melting.
We reached the northeast side of the San Rafael Knob, and the going got really tough. There were two spots where the route was nearly vertical, and we sent our strongest climber up each, who then lowered a rope that the rest of us used as a hand line. Once we got past the tough parts it was a relatively easy stroll over to the high point, which we reached about an hour after starting the hike. We spent about an hour on top, taking in the views and finding the geocache on the far west side of the upper plateau. It took about an hour to get back to the vehicles using the same route and having to handline down the two bad spots.
At the time I remember thinking it was a difficult hike, but with some more experience under my belt I think it would be much easier for me now. I'm hoping to do the hike again this year, but considering all the snow we've gotten lately it might not be until May when the snow has melted off the steep northern slope of the San Rafael Knob. One of the best parts was the teamwork involved, so I'll have to see about putting the same or similar team back together for a repeat of this hike. The geocache we found on that day hasn't been found since, and it would be fun to return after four years with the same crew of usual suspects.
After work today I drove to the Pinnacle Peak area to find a new geocache. The roads were a mix of mud and packed snow, and now the truck is in desperate need of washing. There was a lot of fog around Pinnacle Peak, but on the benches above there, it was clear and sunny. I saw a few deer where the main road leaves Pinnacle Wash and begins climbing up to Porphyry Bench, and they were still there on my way back home, so I stopped to take some photos. It was a short outing, but it's still nice to be able to get outside after work and still have some daylight left in which to play around.
Chris showed up in Price Friday afternoon, and as soon as I got off work we headed south on Highway 6, with me driving my truck and him following in his car. I had a good idea of where I wanted to camp after seeing this photo on Panoramio in Google Earth. We arrived there in plenty of time to set up camp before dark, but Chris had to leave his car on the main road about 0.4 miles from camp because the snow was too deep. Our tents were laid out on top of several inches of snow, and early in the evening it began snowing more. It took a long time to get a fire going because the firewood I brought had been covered in snow and ice behind my garage, but once we got the fire roaring it was a comfortable evening. We sat around the fire until about midnight, listening to coyotes howl not far from camp and occasionally brushing the accumulating snow off our shoulders and hoods. I had never before camped during the winter and wasn't sure how well I'd sleep in the cold, but using the new winter sleeping bag I got last week, it wasn't bad. The uneven ground bothered me more than the cold. It stayed about 36° inside the tent all night, and it was probably barely above freezing outside.
We woke up Saturday morning to about three inches of new snow and a very low cloud ceiling such that the entire San Rafael Reef was shrouded in clouds. We got the fire going again, then took our time eating breakfast and taking down camp. After dropping Chris' gear off at his car, we took the truck a couple more miles down the road and got to the Little Wild Horse Canyon trailhead at about 10:00 AM. It was foggy and snowing when we started hiking, and it continued to snow for about half of the hike. There was a well-worn trail through the old snow, so we were only breaking trail through the snow that had fallen during the night. Half a mile into the hike we ran into the first and only real obstacle in the bottom of the canyon. It was right after the canyon first narrowed up, and there was a jumble of boulders blocking the narrows that would have been tough to climb in the snow. We bypassed that part by hiking up a sandstone ramp that took us well above the canyon floor, then scrambled down some ledges to bring us back down to the floor upstream from the boulders. We came to the junction with Bell Canyon and turned north to stay in Little Wild Horse. From there, the canyon alternately narrowed and widened and narrowed again. Some of the narrows were nearly free of snow in the bottom, protected by overhanging cliffs above, while others were choked with as much as 10-12 feet of snow due to the funneling effect of the steep canyon walls. We encountered several tiny avalanches of snow, likely triggered by the sounds we were making as we hiked. It seemed that most of these small avalanches (which behaved more like waterfalls) landed directly on me, while Chris managed to escape being dumped on despite actually trying to trigger them intentionally.
We found a geocache in the canyon, one of the oldest in Emery County, which was the main reason I'd wanted to hike the canyon. I had left Torrey in the truck at the trailhead because she would have slowed us down and because I feared that she'd make it impossible to proceed past some of the obstacles (a fear which proved to be unfounded), so after finding the geocache we decided to only proceed far enough to check out the next section of narrows. However, as we progressed, I decided that I really didn't want to go to all this trouble and only see half of the canyon. We hiked all the way to the end of the last narrows, stemming over puddles of water and slush, and climbing over some huge piles of snow. We made it back to the trailhead in just more than three hours after we'd started the hike, and I was surprised to see another truck parked there and a couple of people looking at the trail map kiosk. I was more surprised when I recognized one of their dogs. It was a friend and fellow geocacher, the same one who'd invited me to hike Moonshine Wash last weekend. We chatted for a few minutes about the canyon conditions before they set out on their hike. Chris and I ate a quick lunch at the trailhead, then drove to Goblin Valley and picked up Chris' car along the way.
Goblin Valley was muddy. We slipped and slid our way down the valley floor from the parking lot, then tried choosing the snowiest route to the geocache that we wanted to find. There was still a lot of greasy mud that we had to walk across, and there were several streams of runoff from the melting snow. Getting to the geocache required scrambling up some steep hills that, when dry, would have been easy. In the mud it was treacherous, and we were often in danger of slipping and getting a fully-clothed mud bath. We reached the cache and found it hidden deep inside a hole under some boulders. Chris dove in and wriggled between the muddy rocks and grabbed the cache:
We chose a route back to the parking lot that was more snow-covered and a little less steep, and the snow cleaned most of the mud from our boots by the time we reached the truck. I drove Chris back to his car just outside the park boundary, and he took off toward Lake Powell to find some geocaches while I headed toward I-70 and UT-10 to find some caches. One of the caches I found was another of the oldest in Emery County, and it was the last one I needed in order to be able to log a "puzzle" cache that requires people to have found the dozen oldest caches in the county. On my way up UT-10 toward home, I stopped to find and sign the log in the puzzle cache, but I couldn't find the damned thing. I spent about 45 minutes looking for it while dusk turned to pitch black, but it's either no longer there or buried in snow. I drove about another hour before getting home, and shortly afterward Chris stopped by on his way home for a short visit.
