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Late last year I got an e-mail from Listorama (Dave) asking if I’d be interested in a hike in the San Rafael Reef sometime in April or May. I’d met up with Dave once four years ago for a little hiking, and checking out the Reef with him sounded like fun. He got in touch again in mid-April and we made plans to meet last weekend. I drove down to our planned camp spot near Spring Canyon (that’s the unofficial official name of the canyon) after work on Friday afternoon. I was there by 4:30 but hadn’t planned on Dave arriving ’til around 5:00 or 6:00, so I thought I’d take a short hike up the canyon to the dryfall and pool. I only got a couple hundred yards from the truck when I turned around to take a photo and saw Dave near where I’d parked. I walked back and we decided on a spot to camp. It was a little windy so I put off setting up my tent until it was almost dark, but the wind never let up–it kept me from sleeping through the night, but by morning things were calm and perfect for hiking.

We were awake by 7:00 on Saturday morning. We ate breakfast and I took down my camp, and we started hiking at 8:30. I had been twice to the point on top of the Reef to which Dave wanted to hike, once in 2004 and again in 2006. I still had my GPS tracklog from the 2006 hike, and I uploaded a few key waypoints into my GPS for this trip to help us find our way past the difficult-to-navigate sections in case Dave wanted to follow my route. We did just that, but there was one spot where we had to sit on a ledge and slide on our butts down to the bottom in order to get into the correct canyon. Dave wasn’t comfortable doing it, but he did anyway with the caveat that we not return that way. I was all for that because I wanted to see some different terrain on the way down the Reef.

After some steady climbing–some on broken terrain and some on enormous smooth slabs of sandstone–we reached a very pleasant valley formed around a large fault in the sandstone. I’d been there before but didn’t remember it being this nice. We reached the edge of the San Rafael Reef, though there were cliffs separating us from a higher point on the Reef to the northeast. We broke for lunch in the valley, then lied down for a bit and I almost fell asleep. The cool breeze was offset by the occasional calm that let me absorb warmth from the sun. After a nice rest we separated and each explored on our own for a bit. Dave checked out the lower edge of the cliffs on the west side of the valley while I scrambled around both sides of the fault crack in the center of the valley trying to get a better view into a large canyon to the south. After meeting back up where we’d stopped for lunch, we headed back down the valley in search for a route to the higher point on the Reef to the northeast.

We only backtracked less than a quarter-mile before finding an easy break in the cliffs to walk up and reach a higher point at the top of the Reef. We enjoyed the view from a slightly higher vantage point, then started our descent back to the vehicles. We didn’t follow my GPS tracklog on the way down and ran into a couple of obstacles that required a little backtracking to get past. We got to within a quarter of a mile of the ledge that Dave didn’t want to reascend and started following a route that Dave had discovered on previous trips. His route was less technical but more strenuous, requiring us to ascend and descend slopes across two canyons before being able to exit the Reef toward our vehicles. I enjoyed taking a different way out, but my body was starting to overheat a little bit with the added exertion. It was a relief when we could see our vehicles and knew it was an easy walk back to them. We said goodbye and I felt great as I started the drive home. We’d hiked 7.5 miles and gained/lost 1,600 feet of elevation between the vehicles and the top of the Reef (much more when you consider all the ups and downs along the way). During the drive back to Price, though, I got a migraine, probably from some slight heat exhaustion. When I got home I took some ibuprofen and went to bed at 8:00PM and slept for 12 hours. It was the first time in quite a while that I felt sore after a hike, but it was a good kind of sore.

On April 17th I drove down early for the semi-annual San Rafael geocaching event. I got off work that day at 1:00PM and got a few last-minute things ready just as Dave showed up so we could convoy to our campsite. I’d been having problems with the engine in the truck momentarily cutting out in the weeks before the event, but it always went away when the engine warmed up. During the drive south it cut out often and jerked violently each time due to the added drag from the camp trailer, but other than that it was an uneventful drive. We arrived at the planned campsite near the Temple Mountain Road/Goblin Valley Road junction, but there were three trailers already set up there. We parked our vehicles and walked over to the camp and spoke with the occupants for a while. They were “full-timers” from out of state who had been camped there for a week and said they’d be camped there for another week or more. I asked them if they’d send any geocacher traffic over the hill, then Dave and I drove west a short distance on the Temple Mountain Road to the large BLM campground, or, as it’s affectionately known, the “people pasture.” After we each set up camp, we went for an ATV ride to Taylor Flat to find a geocache whose coordinates were more than 20 miles off due to an error by the cache hider. I’d figured out roughly the correct coordinates and Dave and I found the cache pretty easily. We then returned to camp for dinner and turned in a bit early.

Dave drove in to Green River on Wednesday to find some oil because his ATV needed an oil change. I went for a hike up Wild Horse Creek to find some pictographs that I’d seen photos of online. I was planning a group hike up Wild Horse Creek on Saturday, but I wanted to find the rock art before the hike so I wasn’t fumbling around for it with a large group. The coordinates I’d estimated from looking at photos turned out to be dead-on. I had walked right past the rock art alcove five years ago without knowing it was there. The pictographs there were absolutely amazing. There were some large figures with interesting shapes and small figures with very fine details. I spent about half an hour there enjoying the rock art, then rode my ATV back to camp. Dave still hadn’t returned, so I hiked up and back down a small canyon near camp.

Dave was at camp when I returned from my short hike and I helped him a little bit with his oil change. We went for a ride to check out some pictographs I’d discovered a year and a half ago. Lighting conditions weren’t ideal for photographing the pictographs, and Dave and I split up to do a little hiking around the sandstone hills. Not long after we split up, I heard the sound of a snake rattling behind me. I swore under my breath. I was no more than a couple hundred feet from the place where I’d seen a rattlesnake a year and a half before, and Torrey was running loose this time as well. I called Torrey over to me and put her leash on, then walked about 20 feet to where I’d heard the snake. It was starting to crawl under a bush, and I got a single out-of-focus photo of it before it disappeared into the brush.

Late that afternoon I rode my ATV to Iron Wash and hiked up the canyon to look for some pictographs that I’d heard of from a couple of different people. It had become overcast and I could hear the wind roaring over the top of the canyon, but I was fairly well protected from it in the canyon’s bottom. I scrambled up to an alcove to check it out, but found nothing interesting there. A large group of dirt bikes passed by going down the canyon. I expected to see them again after they reached the fence at the WSA boundary because when I parked my ATV there I didn’t see a way around the fence. I found the pictographs just about where I thought they would be and spent only a few minutes there taking photos. I returned back down the canyon but never saw the motorcyclists, so when I got to the fence I looked for their tracks. Curiously enough, the tire tracks went right through the fence in the center of the drainage. I lifted the fence and realized that, even though it was freestanding, it could be lifted up about five feet–plenty to allow an ATV or motorcycle to pass under. On the ride back to camp I got hammered by cold, stinging, wind-blown rain. The short-lived storm was nearly gone when I got back to camp, though, and I was treated to a more sunny evening and a nice rainbow to the east. I returned to the pictographs where I’d seen the rattlesnake and got some photos with better lighting, then retired back to camp for the night.

Thursday was an awesome day. I wanted to ride my ATV and cross over to the east side of Highway 24 to look for some rock art near Crow’s Nest Spring and Cottonwood Wash. Getting there wasn’t easy. The official travel map shows a legal route through Temple Wash starting at a gravel pit near the Temple Mountain/Goblin Valley junction and going east to UT-24. From there there’s a short jog along the highway to a dirt road on the east side that would eventually lead us along the rim of Cottonwood Wash and to Crow’s Nest Spring. As Dave and I rode east through Temple Wash we came upon a fence at some private property. Frustrated by the BLM’s map issues, we rode cross-country to reach the paved Temple Mountain Road and continued east to Highway 24. After a short ride south, we turned east and finally made it to the other side of the highway. Since we’d had to alter our route, it took a long, roundabout route to the south, then east, north, and finally back to the west to reach Cottonwood Wash. The terrain along the way was mostly flat and uninteresting, but we did stop at Rattlesnake Butte and found some names carved into the sandstone from the early 1900s.

We reached Cottonwood Wash but since I didn’t know where to even start looking for the rumored rock art, we just checked out the spring and an old corral, then moved along to Crow’s Nest Spring. We parked the ATVs below the spring near the lone Cottonwood tree and hiked up to look into the three small canyons that merge just above the spring. I assumed the rock art would be in one of those three canyons because I couldn’t see any after a cursory look near the spring. We hiked up the more easily accessed left fork first. It was shallow and narrow and quite interesting, but there was no rock art. We reached the top of the canyon where Dave turned around and returned to the spring while I crossed over into the middle fork. I had to walk the rim up-canyon for a while before I found a spot to drop into the canyon, then I followed it back to the spring. The middle fork was longer and more interesting than the left, and a light rain fell as I walked along the easy bottom. I got back to the confluence of the three canyons and found Dave at the top of a slope looking at a cliff–he’d found the rock art! There were several small petroglyph snakes that appeared to be emerging from natural holes in the cliff, one large snake petroglyph, a few interesting pinkish-orange pictograph figures, and a rake figure that was lightly scratched into the rock. After a pretty thorough check of the cliffs to make sure I wasn’t missing any rock art, we took a much shorter and direct (though still not completely legal) route back to camp. We returned to find a few people had joined us at camp, and spent a nice evening around the fire with some old and new friends.

On Friday morning I went for a short two-mile hike just north of our camp. I was just wandering around hoping to find some rock art or anything else of interest. There were chert flakes littering the ground all along the sandy bottoms of the cliffs in the area, so I spent much of the time with my eyes on the ground. I saw one flint flake half-buried in the sand and flicked it with my finger, and it turned out to be a nice arrowhead! I normally like to take an in-situ photo of arrowheads before I pick them up, but I had to move this one to even realize what it was. What’s surprising is that there were plenty of footprints in the wash–many people had walked right past it without realizing it was there. I turned around when I reached an impassible canyon just south of Temple Wash, but it looked interesting enough that I made a mental note to return another day and hike up the canyon from the east. I got back to camp and found Dave and his wife getting ready for an ATV ride. They invited me along, and Dave’s wife borrowed Traci’s ATV and we rode up North Temple Wash. We went as far as the old cabin on the east side of Temple Mountain, then returned to camp the same way we’d come in. On the way I was very surprised to spot some pictographs in North Temple. I’d been past that spot a few times without noticing it. We got back to camp and found even more people there. Traci showed up with the kids that afternoon, and slowly the rest of the group trickled in that night until quite late. I spun some steel wool on the Temple Mountain Road after sunset, had some drinks, and hung out around the fire until well into the morning.

It took everyone a while to get going the next morning, but several of us set up a vehicle shuttle for the hike up Wild Horse Creek, then a large group of more than 20 of us started up the canyon. There were all different ages and hiking abilities represented in the group, so naturally we were strung out all along the canyon. I stayed somewhere around the middle most of the time, trying to keep an eye on my kids ahead of me while making sure nobody fell too far behind. There were three somewhat technical sections along the way that were easily bypassed, but several people chose the challenge of climbing up them. The first two weren’t too difficult–I was able to lift Torrey up each of them and then haul myself up. The third was the most difficult. Traci took Torrey around, and I think Chris and I were the only ones to climb it ourselves, though Chris helped a few of the kids up it. Torrey was also happy to find a couple of water-filled potholes in the canyon. We reached the top of the canyon after about three and a half hours. After making sure everybody was accounted for, we drove back to camp.

That afternoon Chris found a wheel missing from his Element with a note attached to one of the lugnuts. Jeremy had taken the wheel and hidden it, leaving GPS coordinates in its place. Chris and I rode ATVs over to the coordinates and found nothing but some reflective tacks in a wooden fencepost. Well played, Jeremy. We had to return at night with flashlights to follow a series of reflectors until we found more coordinates written on a fencepost, and those led us to the tire. We retired around the campfire, but most everyone turned in relatively early (meaning, after midnight).

Most people had a longer drive home and pulled out of camp on Sunday morning. Chris and I went for a quick ATV ride toward Goblin Valley to check out Molly’s Castle. I’d never been there and wanted to see what it was like, but it turns out I wasn’t missing much. I was hoping to see a way to scramble to the top of the formation, but the cliffs looked pretty vertical around the top. We hiked around the base of the main formation for a while, and Torrey managed to catch a lizard. We rode back to camp and Chris headed home while Traci and I got the trailer packed up. She followed me home just in case I had any major problems with the truck, though besides the occasional sputtering it never completely died on me.

Yep–another trip to the San Rafael Reef, and my fifth since Christmas. In typical fashion, after my last trip there I learned of some rock art in the same area that I wasn’t aware of at the time. A very knowledgeable friend read my last blog post and generously offered up some waypoints to visit the next time I’m in the area. With Traci being out of town this weekend I didn’t want to spend it lounging around the house, so Michael and Bradley and I set out on an overnighter to visit some of this rock art. The low temperature was forecast to be 46° on Friday night, so even though the kids don’t have good cold-weather sleeping gear, I was sure they’d be comfortable at night. On the way to camp at Garvin’s Chimney at the mouth of Old Woman Wash, we stopped at two pictograph panels. I’d been close to both of them on several occasions and never knew it. The first one had some historic names painted and scratched into the canyon wall. The pictographs consisted of several hand prints and figures and many, many lines. The interesting thing about the hand prints is that they were made by child-sized hands–very cool! The second set of pictographs were in a small alcove that was partially buried in sand, hence the name Buried Site. Some of the figures had been buried further by sand since the photos I’d seen of the panel were taken, and I didn’t try digging any of it away.

Those were the only rock art sites I planned to visit that evening, so we moved on to our planned camp spot. It was fairly windy, so much so that I didn’t want to try setting up the tent until it calmed down. After lazily sitting in the bed of the truck while the kids ate a snack, I realized it was foolish to just sit there waiting for the wind to subside when there was some beautiful country nearby begging to be explored! We started up Old Woman Wash but quickly took a side canyon and started scrambling up the slickrock. I started seeing a lot of lithic flakes, and Bradley began collecting them as we hiked. We passed a pothole full of water that had two thick iron bars embedded into the sandstone just above it. I’m not sure what the iron bars were put there for, but I assume it had something to do with the old mining activity farther up the main canyon. Later we also saw a couple of 4-inch pipes embedded in the sandstone. One was sticking up out of a pothole full of water, and both had iron caps screwed on tightly so I couldn’t tell how deep they went. We hiked until after the sun went down, about a mile and a half overall, and when we returned to camp the breeze was calm enough to start a camp fire and pitch the tent. The fire burned down to coals while we set up camp, then we threw some ham, turkey, and cheese wraps, wrapped in foil, into the fire for our dinner. It was 8:30 by the time we ate, and we stayed up another hour and a half before turning in for the night.

As we settled into our sleeping bags we heard coyotes yipping in the distance. Michael and Bradley didn’t seem concerned by the sounds, which I was glad for. It’s such a common occurrence and I actually enjoy the sounds of coyotes while camping, but I didn’t want the kids to be afraid during the night. It got a bit colder than the forecast, down to 38&deg outside and only 42° inside the tent. With two sleeping bags each the boys stayed plenty warm, and I was comfortable in my single bag this time–all my previous trips this year I needed both my sleeping bags to keep warm. Having gone to bed early, I was awake well before sunrise. I kept watch on the light hitting the east side of the tent, and when it was sufficiently bright I got up and went outside for a few photos as the sun broke the horizon. The boys were awake shortly after me, and we had a breakfast of oatmeal and pop tarts, with hot chocolate for them and coffee for me. We took down camp and packed everything into the truck, filled up our hydration packs, and drove up the road to our first canyon hike of the day.

There were again many lithic flakes in the canyon. We stuck to and scanned the north side of the canyon just in case there was rock art which I wasn’t aware of, but I didn’t see anything before coming to the first set of petroglyphs. The rock art here was different in style than most in the area, though both sites in this canyon were similar. On the way to the second set of coordinates, about 600′ past the first, I first heard then smelled (but never saw) a skunk at a spot where some trees would have forced us through a choke point between some trees and a few small alcoves. We gave that area a wide berth and came back to the canyon wall at the second set of petroglyphs. A rock rolled out from under Michael’s foot while he scrambled up the steep canyon wall and he hurt his knee, so while he sat in the shade and waited for the pain to subside, Bradley and I checked out the rest of the cliff face. Finding nothing, we gathered Michael on our way back to the truck.

It wasn’t a long drive to the next canyon I wanted to hike. The canyon itself was very interesting, with dozens of water-filled potholes that Torrey enjoyed thoroughly. The few petroglyphs weren’t terribly interesting. The kids wanted to stay near the rock art and play in the pools while I hiked another third of a mile up the canyon just to check it out. I’m glad we didn’t simply turn around at the rock art because I found an arrowhead lying in the bottom of the wash. Even more interesting is that there was one set of very recent (probably less than a week old) footprints heading down the canyon, and their maker stepped right over the arrowhead apparently without seeing it.

We’d seen all the rock art that I knew of in the immediate vicinity. We ate lunch at the truck then got back on Highway 24 for a few miles before exiting on another dirt road to check out one last pictograph panel. I’d ambitiously wanted to see this panel plus a few more in Straight Wash, but by this point I knew we didn’t have time for the latter. On the way in, and after a couple of rough and sandy stretches of road, there was a car parked just before a really rough spot. It was an older Corolla (I think) with Colorado plates, and I admired the owner(s) for making it that far and presumably hiking farther toward the San Rafael Reef. I parked the truck near the drainage that contained the Rey Lloyd Hatt pictograph site, and just before we started hiking, an attractive woman in a white Explorer pulled up and asked if there was any good hiking in the area. I told her about a nearby canyoneering route we were planning on checking out after the rock art, but for some reason I didn’t think to tell her about Straight Wash and Eardley Canyon which were also not too far away. She thanked me and drove off, then the kids and I hiked down the wash. It was a short jaunt to the pictograph site. The rock art was amazing! There were two beautiful figures side-by-side on one side of the canyon, and many other figures and lines on the other side.

We moved along to our final stop, a hike up Zero G Canyon. Just as we were starting to hike, the woman in the Explorer came back down the road heading toward the highway. I guess she didn’t find any worthwhile hiking. We waved at each other, then the boys and I continued up Zero G. The canyon was first rocky, then sandy, then finally just bare slickrock. After three quarters of a mile of hiking we reached the end of the canyon at a huge pool, pouroff, and tree. There’s an interesting canyoneering route above the pouroff that I’m hoping to do this year, but we couldn’t visit it this time because it required either a longer hike or a drive on a closed road, neither of which I wanted to do right then. We spent some time admiring the box canyon and pool of spring water. It was a beautiful spot to relax after a warm spring day of hiking. We hiked back to the truck and played around a bit, hopping over pools of water and catching lizards. I loaded the kids up with snacks and we started the drive home. Just before reaching the car parked near the rough spot in the road I encountered a younger couple walking along the road. They were coming back from Straight Wash, and I inquired about the water situation there because of the mild and dry winter, and they said it was plenty wet still. That gave me hope that it could be a nice destination for the next time the kids want to go camping and hiking.

I had hoped to make this past weekend epic by spending a couple of nights along the San Rafael Reef and hiking more than 15 miles over the course of two days, but it didn’t turn out as I’d wanted. My plan was to camp Friday and Saturday nights about half a mile east of Mormon Tanks, and spend Saturday hiking a nearby canyon, then pack up camp Sunday morning and spend that day returning to the Ekker rock art panel and seeking out some rock art I’d missed on my last trip to that area. I headed down Friday after work, and stopped in Iron Wash during the drive in and did a short hike starting at the barricade at the WSA boundary. I saw the J.A. Watt inscription from 1894 that I was expecting to see, but what I didn’t expect were some grinding marks and sharpening grooves in a nearby shallow cave. I arrived near my intended camp spot and ended up having to camp about a quarter-mile south of there at the nearest smooth and level ground. I had a nice dinner of country-style pork ribs and vegetables cooked in foil over a camp fire, then spent the evening reading a book near the fire and taking some night photos of the stars and the waning full moon. It was a boring evening, and it was all I could do to stay up as late as my normal bedtime.

I slept well that night–perhaps the best night I ever spent in a tent–and got up just after sunrise. By 8:00AM I’d finished my breakfast of oatmeal and coffee and I was hiking along the road to the start of the canyon I wanted to hike up. I chose this canyon because it went a fair distance up the San Rafael Reef, and from the satellite imagery it appeared to be full of potholes that would hold water and, hence, attract the native Americans who would have inhabited this region hundreds of years ago. I’d hoped it would be a successful rock art hunting expedition. Early on, parts of the canyon were shrouded in darkness because of the sun still being low in the sky. I didn’t see any rock art in the lower canyon, but I found a couple of shallow caves that had evidence of habitation–soot on the ceiling and old charcoal on the floor. After passing up several promising cliff faces and finding no rock art, I mostly gave up any hope of finding any.

Farther up the canyon I encountered several pools full of water. Torrey was using her new dog pack and carrying enough food and water for a moderate day-hike, but with all the water in the canyon she probably didn’t need any of the water she was carrying. I eventually came to a large but mostly empty pool that was full of ice covered in sand. Beyond the pool was a dryfall that looked difficult or impossible to climb, but I found a way around it on the right side that I had to shove Torrey up. Beyond that was a pretty side canyon that slotted up and was full of water, but I couldn’t go far up it because of the water. In the main canyon there was one pothole and dryfall that I could climb around, but past that was another that just couldn’t be bypassed. I tried to get Torrey to climb out of the canyon with me up a very steep sandstone slope, but it was almost too much for me and certainly too much for her, so I reversed my route down the canyon and looked for another way out to the rim.

While I was backtracking down the canyon, I found an arrowhead that was only a few feet from where I’d passed by on my way up the canyon. That’s pretty typical of me when I’m hiking–I keep my eyes on the canyon walls when in a new area, but I watch the ground when covering a familiar route. After backtracking more than half a mile down from the dryfall, I found a place to scramble out of the canyon to the north and worked my way into an adjacent canyon. This canyon held some promise for rock art as well, but despite sticking to the north canyon wall and even climbing some rock fall to check out some cliffs, I didn’t find any.

A nice ramp along the north side of the canyon diverged from the floor, and I followed the ramp up to the canyon’s rim. I stuck to the canyon rim as much as possible, but the canyon’s upper drainage was small and I crossed it without realizing it. After routefinding and bushwhacking through some fins and cracks, I found myself at a nice spot overlooking the canyon that I’d originally started hiking up that morning. I took a break there and ate lunch while soaking in the view. I’m not sure why, but after lunch I didn’t feel like continuing the 2.5 miles farther up to the top of the Reef. Instead, I skirted a little farther up the ridge I’d been following, then circled around to a smaller drainage that led back down the Reef.

Despite having a GPS telling me exactly which direction to go, I kept feeling like west was south. I ended up following some fins nearly to the rim of Iron Wash once, but got turned in the right direction and crossed my previous tracks while following a slightly different route back down the San Rafael Reef. Once I hit the bottom of the canyon that I’d used to access this part of the Reef, I followed it all the way back to the road, then hiked along the road to where my camp was set up. I was all funned out for the weekend, so I packed up camp and headed home. I’m not sure whether it was the thought of spending another lonely night in the same spot, or just being disappointed in not finding any rock art, but I was glad to be on my way home. The Reef will be there the next time I return.

This weekend I did an overnight trip with Chris G. (not the usual Chris I hike with) to the San Rafael Reef and we hiked up Old Woman Wash to look for some rock art. Two of the rock art panels, the Barnes Panel and the High Alcove Panel, I knew were in the canyon proper. I’d seen enough of the surrounding terrain in some friends’ Flickr photos that I was confident I’d find both panels. The third, the Ekker Panel, I wasn’t so sure about. I could only find this one photo showing the surroundings, but using that I panned around in Google Earth and, looking at the historical imagery from 1997, I found what looked like a faint trail leading from an old mining road to the base of a cliff. That seemed likely enough to me, so armed with a few waypoints in my GPS, I set off to look for it all.

Chris met me at my house on Friday afternoon and, after loading his gear into my truck, we drove south to the Temple Mountain area. After taking the dirt road turnoff toward our planned camp site, I decided to take a side trip up North Temple Wash to find a geocache. I’d ridden my ATV up the canyon before but never my pig of a truck. I needed 4WD to get past a couple of rough spots that I didn’t remember from the last time I was there. We found the cache then drove back down the canyon, and stopped once for a short hike to check out what I thought was some rock art but turned out to be an iron oxide stain on the canyon wall. Back on the main dirt road toward camp, we watched a nice sunset behind us. We got to our camp spot at Garvin’s Chimney after the sun had gone down, but it was still plenty light enough to set up camp. It was a quiet and relaxing evening around the camp fire, and we turned in around 11:30. The temperature hovered around 20° all night, and inside my tent it stayed at around 28°.

I slept fitfully through the night–the usual for any camping trip. I couldn’t sleep any longer after the sun came up. I reluctantly got out of my sleeping bag and got dressed, then got the fire going again and took a short walk around camp while taking photos. Chris got up a while later and we ate breakfast, then packed up most of our stuff but left the tents out to thaw and dry out. By 9:30 we were hiking up Old Woman Wash. I expected it to take us a while to find any rock art, but about half an hour after starting the hike we rounded a bend in the canyon and found the Barnes Panel. There was a lot more rock art there than I was aware of. Chris and I kept following the base of the cliff as the talus slope grew higher above the canyon floor, finding both prehistoric rock art and some more modern stuff from the 1920s. As we got nearer to the top of the talus slope, I recognized the overhang where the High Alcove pictographs were. We reached the alcove and took a break there while we checked out the rock art. I was pretty happy that we’d found two of the panels I was looking for and it was still early in the day.

We scrambled down to the canyon floor and decided to hike up the canyon as far as we could. I knew there were a couple of impassible dryfalls up there, but I didn’t know how far up they were. As we ascended the canyon we had to climb out and around a few small dryfalls. We went much farther than I thought we’d be able to. We got to a large boulder that choked off the entire bottom of the canyon, but it could be climbed around on either side with a little effort. I had to lift Torrey past that part, then I had a difficult time getting myself up until I finally removed my backpack and made it up easily. Just beyond the boulder we reached a large, impassible dryfall with a pool of water at the bottom. We rested there for a while. Chris climbed around on the cliffs and I placed a geocache just above the large boulder, and then we hiked back down the canyon.

After passing the rock art again, we took a side canyon that I had hoped would bring us out of Old Woman Wash and to the old mining road that winds up the San Rafael Reef. Just barely after leaving the main water course in Old Woman Wash, we saw many sets of footprints leading up to a cliff that had a couple of bighorn sheep petroglyphs on it. From there we descended a small hill and entered the bottom of the side canyon, where there were also several sets of footprints. I found it reassuring that others had been through this canyon–maybe we were on the right track toward finding the Ekker Panel.

The climb out of Old Woman Wash didn’t take too long. It was cold in the shade of the side canyon, but after reaching the top it was warm in the sun. It felt more like April than February. We worked our way along some cliffs while looking for any rock art while slowly approaching the coordinates where I expected to find the Ekker Panel. The rock art was right where I’d hoped it might be, and the variety was amazing. There were many pictographs, including one huge figure that was at least eight feet tall, and a smaller panel of three figures with some interesting snake and dot designs. There were also petroglyphs and incised figures. The direct sunlight made it difficult to get good photos there, and the huge figure was partially shaded which made a good shot impossible.

I was elated that we’d found all of the rock art I’d hoped to. Once I finished checking out the cliff face for more rock art, Chris and I hiked over to the mining road and walked out of the Reef toward camp. We finished packing up our stuff and then drove back home. Since returning home I found out about some more rock art near the Ekker Panel, so I’m planning another trip to see it within the next month or so. I’d also like to follow the old mining road to its end to see the Ekker Mine. I can’t wait to get back out there.

On Sunday and Monday of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, I camped and hiked solo in the San Rafael Reef. The plan was to hike Farnsworth Canyon, then camp overnight nearby and hike the following day to the high point of the Reef between Farnsworth Canyon and North Temple Wash. I packed a little of my gear on Saturday, then Sunday morning finished loading up the truck and set out from home. I was parked at the Farnsworth Canyon trailhead and hiking by 1:00PM. The sky was overcast and the lighting wasn’t great for photos, but temperatures were perfect for hiking. The canyon was an easy stroll and I took my time, especially enjoying the textures in the short narrows section. After the narrows was a bouldery section, then the canyon opened up wide before narrowing just a bit. In the wide section was a part of the wash that’s perpetually shaded this time of year and the snow from mid-December hadn’t yet melted. There was a single set of footprints through the snow, going up the canyon, so it appears that only one other person has been there in the last month. He must have exited another way because I didn’t see any footprints leading back down the canyon.

I knew there were some pictographs somewhere in the canyon, but I didn’t know the exact location and had only seen closeup photos of the rock art. I kept my eye out for it as I hiked, and it still came as a surprise when I spotted it. The pictographs consist of two panels, one more sheltered than the other, so one is faded while the other is darker. In the bottom of the pictograph alcove was more rodent crap than I’ve ever seen (or walked in)! After admiring the rock art I continued up the canyon until I reached the second of two capped drill holes. This last drill hole is at the mouth of a small fork in the canyon that contains three natural arches, which I had hiked above in October 2010 during our fall geocaching camping trip. The hike up Farnsworth Canyon had taken about two hours, and it took a little less than an hour to get back to the truck.

I drove just over a mile southwest on the dirt road until I came to a place to camp near where I planned to start my hike the next morning. I set up camp and started a fire as the sun went down. Sunset was pretty nice, but a short while after the sun disappeared behind the horizon, the clouds had an amazing pink glow on them. I heated a can of chili-mac over the fire for dinner, then settled into my camp chair and kept warm in front of the fire for the rest of the evening. Camping alone is boring. I read a book for a while, then attempted some night photography, then read the book some more, then stood close to the fire and alternated between roasting my front and back sides while trying to keep warm. It was breezy earlier in the evening but it calmed down by the time I went to bed at 10:00. My toothpaste was frozen, and I learned that a memory foam pillow turns into a brick in freezing temperatures. I slept well for a couple of hours, then some heavy winds woke me up at midnight. I kept very warm using two sleeping bags–they were so effective against the cold that I had to try finding the fine line between sweating and freezing my ass off, since opening the zipper let in a lot of cold air. It stayed windy all night, but I still had one of the most comfortable nights sleeping in a tent that I’ve ever had.

I was awake a little before the sun rose. It was still breezy, and I got the fire going again to warm up. I had oatmeal and coffee for breakfast, then took down camp and loaded everything into the truck. I started hiking up the San Rafael Reef right from camp. I’d planned on starting to hike in the next canyon to the northeast, so eventually I had to cross over the ridge between the canyons. After descending into the correct canyon, some bighorn sheep surprised me as they ran along the canyon rim above me. When they noticed me they stopped to stare, and I stared back for a while before moving on. The canyon was a fairly easy hike with steady elevation gain. There were a few large potholes–most filled with sand, but some with ice–that could be walked around or climbed through. I was unable to climb through one series of deep potholes, so I had to scramble out of the canyon and take a wide detour.

Near the upper reaches of the canyon I started hiking across several small drainages to get to a long, shallow canyon that formed along a fault line. After following the fault line canyon for a third of a mile I climbed out and started hiking up a wide ridge between two box canyons. This was the steepest part of the hike but it wasn’t too bad. After the initial steep part of the ridge the elevation gain became more gradual. I was surprised to see a couple of cairns closer to the top of the Reef. If anyone had navigated that far, finding the high point would be a piece of cake–I guess I just don’t understand why people build cairns. The high point was a small round knoll and it was an easy scramble to the top. I was half-expecting to find a summit register there (after having found one at the Ernie benchmark a few weeks earlier), but the top of the knoll was bare. There was another shorter knoll just north of the high point that had a pile of rocks on top, and though I wanted to scramble up it to check for a summit register, it looked a little dicey and I decided against climbing it.

I followed pretty much the same route down the Reef, and it went much more quickly since I’d done all my exploring on the way up. Somewhere along the way I spotted a shallow cave that looked interesting, and as I approached it I saw some pictographs inside. However, as I got close I could smell the strong odor of a skunk. Crap! I really wanted to check out the alcove, but I was very wary about running into its occupant. I slowly creeped my way into the alcove, stopping often to listen and look for the skunk. Luckily I never did see it, but I also didn’t spend as much time in there as I’d have liked. The pictographs were very interesting. One figure was abstract and unrecognizable, but the other was snake-like with small fins or spikes protruding from its back, almost like a dragon. High above the pictographs were some fingerprints on an overhang that must have required a ladder of sorts to reach. There was another very faint figure scratched into a boulder with some painted squiggly lines across the body. After standing there a while just looking around, I realized I was standing right next to two metates that had been stacked one on top of the other. I laid them side-by-side to take a photo, but otherwise left them alone. There were also a few chert flakes in the alcove, but I found no other artifacts. This place alone made the entire trip worthwhile. I continued the hike out of the Reef, this time following the main canyon out to the road and then walking along the road back to the truck. All told I hiked 12 miles during the two days–five in Farnsworth Canyon and seven up and back down the San Rafael Reef.

I spent six days and five nights camped at the Wedge in the San Rafael Swell this past week. I had a really nice, laid back time, and the weather turned out to be perfect. Dave had a golf tournament in Moab the weekend before the San Rafael campout, so he pulled his camp trailer to Price on Thursday and parked it in my driveway while he spent two days in Moab. He returned Saturday and spent the night here, then on Sunday pulled his trailer down to the Wedge. The campsite we wanted was taken, so he set up in the next nearest spot. I had my trailer ready so that as soon as I got off work on Tuesday, I hopped in the truck and pulled it down to meet up with Dave. After setting up camp and fixing some dinner, it was dark and there wasn’t much to do, so I turned in early and read a book for a while before going to bed.

On Wednesday, Dave and I went for a 4-wheeler ride down Buckhorn Wash, then back out to the Green River Cutoff Road to check out a part of the abandoned railroad grade. We found a few geocaches along the way, but one of them along the railroad grade eluded us. Some friends from the Logan area showed up that afternoon, and they brought with them another couple who I hadn’t met before. That evening Dave and I rode up to the Wedge Overlook at sunset and took some photos, then stuck around until full dark so we could take some long-exposure shots.

Traci was planning on coming down with the kids on Thursday, but in the morning before they arrived I went for a hike in Good Water Canyon just below camp. I’d done this same hike before with Traci and the kids, and we ended up at a pool of water with a large dryfall below it. The pool was full of cattails back then, but now it had been scoured out by flash floods and most of the vegetation was gone. The hike took me less time than I expected, and I ended up back at camp before Traci got there. After she arrived, we didn’t do much for the rest of the day, which felt great.

After breakfast on Friday, Dave, Traci, and I, along with the kids, went for a ride on the west side of the Wedge. It had been about eight years since I’d been out that way, and this time we saw some new country as well. We stopped at a couple of nice overlooks of the Little Grand Canyon. While heading back toward camp Traci wasn’t feeling well, so Dave and I decided to explore a little more while Traci took the kids back to camp. We took some old mining roads that would sometimes disappear completely, though if we kept heading in the general direction the road had been going, we would eventually pick it up again.

After getting back to camp, a few more people showed up throughout the evening. Several of us went out and found a night geocache before returning to camp and hanging out around the camp fire. Chris surprised everybody by showing up. He originally had to work that weekend, but managed to work extra earlier in the week and made it to camp late Friday night. As usual it ended up being just Chris and me around the fire late at night, and we decided to ride my 4-wheeler over to the night cache so that Chris could find it. We followed the reflectors through the trees and stopped at the final location, and while Chris was signing the logbook, we heard what sounded like a coyote yipping just a couple hundred feet from us. Chris yelled something like, “Watch out coyote, we’ve got a gun,” and a voice answered back, “So do I.” WTF?! We were more than a little freaked out, so we just walked away quickly, got on the 4-wheeler, and hauled ass outta there. The next day we went back and looked at the area where the voice came from, and there were tire tracks from a full-sized vehicle off the road into the trees, and two sets of footprints. I’m still not sure what the hell was going on, but it was a bit freaky.

On Saturday a group of us went up to Cedar Mountain and found all the geocaches along the way. There were a few ATVs, a UTV, and a Jeep. Most of the geocaches were drive-bys, and we did a couple of nice hikes as well. That evening back at camp we had a big potluck dinner and another nice evening around the fire. Everybody pulled out on Sunday, but before we left, Chris and I decided we needed to get some rappelling in. We hiked down Good Water Canyon looking for the perfect cliff, but didn’t find anything nice, so we drove down Buckhorn Wash. We were looking for a cliff with a ledge or hole halfway down where we could leave a geocache, and we found a nice spot, but I already had a geocache that I’d placed a while back that was too close. I decided to take that cache and leave it on the cliff. There were some bolts at the top of the cliff, but my rope wouldn’t reach the bottom from there. After some figuring, we found that we could anchor Chris’ rope on the bolts, then downclimb about 20 feet and connect our ropes with some carabiners. We rappelled down to a ledge where we hid the geocache, then had to do a swinging rappel off one side of the fin we were on ’cause that’s the only side where the rope reached the bottom. After getting back to camp, we headed home and ended a great week.

I’m at the end of a very lazy three-day weekend, but last weekend I had Friday and Monday off and crammed a lot into the four-day weekend. I was invited by Nick to do Three Canyon, which was a relatively easy hike with a bit of technical canyoneering at the beginning. Nick and Tim, who I’d never met, were planning on arriving late in the day Friday (and their friend Jake would meet us on Saturday morning), but I had the entire day off and spent it tooling around the Green River area. There are a number of carbon dioxide-powered geysers around Green River that were originally drilled while exploring for oil. When the drill holes intersected the water table and a CO₂ aquifer, they either turned into geysers or bubbling mineral springs. I visited four of them on Friday, starting with one just off the eastern I-70 interchange. This one had been capped, but still a small trickle of water bubbled out of it and there was a small amount of mineral buildup from the heavily-mineralized water. The small amount of water was enough to support a small army of mosquitoes, but luckily I didn’t encounter any more the rest of the weekend.

My next destination was Crystal Geyser, which I’d been to several times previously. On the way I stopped to see a natural oil seep that I’d seen a photo of in Google Earth. I had never smelled crude oil before, but it smelled a lot like asphalt. At Crystal Geyser, I met a couple of guys who were spending seven days rafting from Green River to Lake Powell. They had a small motor on the raft to facilitate the 20-miles of still water to get to their takeout on Lake Powell, which is normally not such an issue, but with the big water year it was necessary. It was only noon and they were already a few beers into their trip–I have got to get a canoe! We all took note of the odor coming from the geyser, which smelled a lot like the oil seep I had just been to–perhaps some gas from the oil reserve is seeping into the drill hole. Here is a short video I shot showing the visible fumes of the gas bubbling up with the geyser water.

I checked out a few buildings on the abandoned missile base while I was in the area. I had never dared to enter them before, but I’ve become more comfortable in such places lately. There are many more buildings that I haven’t been into, and I’ll save them for the next time I’m there. I stopped at another drill hole near the Green River airport, and this one was constantly bubbling. The minerals had built up a mound that must have been 10 or 12 feet above the surrounding ground, and there was a lot of tamarisk and other plants thriving on the small flow of water. After hitting the gravel road heading south into the San Rafael Desert, I also stopped at Chaffin Geyser. There was no flow at all when I arrived, but after walking around for about five minutes, the geyser erupted quickly. I snapped a few photos of the eruption, then headed farther south into the desert to the spot where I had planned on meeting up with Nick.

On my way down I took a short detour to look at the exit for Three Canyon that we’d be climbing out the next day. From what I could see from there, there was plenty of water in the canyon (ruh-roh!). I arrived at our planned campsite at around 5:00PM, and before doing anything else I hiked a short distance to the rim of Labyrinth Canyon to check out the incredible view. Wow! I set up my tent and had a few beers before Nick and Tim arrived. When they pulled up, PBRs in hand, I immediately felt like I was hanging out with old friends. We spent some time on the canyon rim enjoying the amazing light after sunset, then they set up their camp and we had a great (and late) evening around the fire.

Saturday morning, it was time to get down to business. We all took down camp, then drove to the Three Canyon exit to fix a rope at the difficult climb out. From the top it didn’t look terribly difficult, but I would find out otherwise later. We left Nick’s truck at the exit and piled into my truck and met up with Jake at the trailhead at the Saucer Basin turnoff. I’d done the hike to the first rappel with my sons earlier in the year, and it went just as quickly this time. Nick set up his rope on the anchors that were already in place at the top, and we all donned our harnesses and took turns rappelling the drop. We did the rappel in two stages. The first was pretty easy, and the second a little awkward. There was a water-filled pothole near the bottom of the second drop, and we all tried to get around it on-rope without getting muddy. After completing the rappels, we were done with the technical part. We stowed our rappelling gear and started the easy hike down the canyon.

I was taking up the rear as we hiked down the canyon–as usual. I could hardly put away my camera, ’cause each time I did I’d soon see something else worth getting it back out for. After a little more than half a mile, water began to flow in the bottom of the canyon, but that disappeared after another mile or so, only to reappear again later. The canyon was very pretty, but not as much so as most technical canyons. It was only relatively narrow early on, then widened up considerably lower down. We stopped for lunch at a small water hole where everybody but me dived in–I was wishing I hadn’t worn cotton shorts and a leather belt, but that was better than the pants I’d planned on wearing before I learned how much water would be in the canyon. We found another, much larger water hole farther down the canyon, and the guys played in that while I rested in the shade, still recovering from the effects of the night before.

Only three and a half hours after reaching the first rappel, we were at the northwest fork of Three Canyon where we needed to hike out of the main canyon and begin working our way toward the exit crack. A short distance up the northwest fork, we reached a large pool and dryfall above. We couldn’t climb up the dryfall (actually, Jake could and did–he’s got some mad climbing skills). The rest of us backtracked down the canyon and found a way to get above the dryfall, and that put us at the bottom of the exit crack. It wasn’t too difficult a scramble up most of the crack, but at the steepest spot we had to use the rope to handline up. I was the last one up, and it was much more difficult than I imagined. Once up, however, we completed the scramble to the canyon’s rim, then had a flat walk back to Nick’s truck. Some cold beverages were passed around, then we drove back to the trailhead where I said my goodbyes and headed for home, wrapping up the first half of what would be a pretty epic weekend.

I had a great time at the Potter’s Ponds geocaching campout this year, despite (or perhaps because of) the low turnout. It was a relaxing trip, and for once I didn’t feel like I needed time to recover from my vacation before returning to work. I had Friday off work, and my family and I left Price late Friday morning and arrived at campsite #5 at Potter’s Ponds early in the afternoon. As soon as we got camp set up, I hopped on my ATV and rode up to Skyline Drive because I’d heard it was closed by a landslide just south of where the Potter’s Canyon road tops out. Sure enough, there was a “Road Closed” sign and a small laminated paper warning of a fine for ignoring the closure, so I didn’t venture south to check out the landslide. That put a damper on my plans to hike North and South Tent Mountains the following day, which would now have required at least 40 miles of detouring to get to the trailhead.

Back at camp people were beginning to show up, and by nightfall there was a group of close friends staying at my campsite, and a few others at nearby sites. We sat around the campfire and had a few drinks, then a few of us hopped in Jeremy’s truck and drove to a few geocaches. I had been taking some night shots and at some point I dropped my camera and got a big scratch on the lens, which I didn’t notice until the next day. A few of us froze our tails off in the back of Jeremy’s truck, but we had fun wandering through the trees in the dark and trying to find Jeremy’s keys at one of our stops.

On Saturday we hiked the Left Fork of Huntington Creek Trail. It was a little longer than the North/South Tent Mountain hike I’d planned, but there was an actual trail and less elevation gain, so it was easier overall. Michael and Bradley came with me while Torrey stayed at camp with Traci because her foot still hadn’t healed. Chris, Kim, Jeremy, and an older gentleman from Fountain Green also went on the hike. We found three geocaches along the trail, the first of which was near a nice waterfall in Miller Flat Creek. We took a break at the last cache, then turned around and hiked back up the trail to our vehicles. The hike was about 6.5 miles and took us three hours to complete. We returned to camp and had a very nice potluck dinner with several others who had arrived during the day, then had a quiet night around the campfire.

It rained a bit during the night, which is probably why fewer people camped Saturday night than Friday. Sunday morning things were a little damp, and we had a few light showers. I hiked up to the old sawmill at the top of Fly Canyon with Chris, Terry, and Kim, and we got rained on, but it was a fun hike. We dodged mud holes while riding ATVs on the Lowry Water Road heading south from camp and parked under some pine trees at the Fly Canyon trailhead. The “trail” is actually an old logging road which would be perfectly rideable if the Forest Service hadn’t torn it up and closed it to motorized vehicles. Or, I should say, it would be rideable if it weren’t for all the new deadfall since I last hiked up there five years ago. It took us almost two hours to get to my geocache near the old sawmill, and about 40 minutes to get back down to the ATVs, totaling about 3.6 miles. When we arrived back at camp, everybody started packing things up while it rained, and Terry and I were the last ones to pull out. I got home early enough in the day to get the trailer unloaded, and I even had some time to mow the lawn and relax in front of the computer in the evening.

I went on my first backpacking trip this past weekend. Chris invited me to hike a portion of the Uinta Highline Trail with him, along which were more than 150 geocaches, and most of them hadn’t yet been found. We didn’t start making plans until Wednesday evening, and by Thursday night I was all ready to go. My pack weighed in at a little over 40 pounds, and that included a little extra water and some food for Torrey. Chris and I met in Duchesne on Friday morning at 8:00AM, then went about setting up a car shuttle. We dropped Chris’ car off at the Chepeta Lake parking lot, and although it was only 13 miles as the crow flies from there to the starting point of the hike, it took 89 road miles to get there. There aren’t many roads that get close enough to the higher elevations in the eastern Uintas. We parked my truck and started the hike at 1:30PM at the first geocache in the series, located near Summit Park, about four miles east-northeast of Leidy Peak.

It took us a while to find the first geocache, and it made me worry that many of the remaining caches would be difficult to find. My worries were unfounded though, since most of them were hidden in such a manner as to be obvious when we got within 20 or 30 feet. Most often the containers were hidden against either a large rock or the base of a tree, with small rocks stacked over the geocache container. The caches closest to each trailhead had already been found, but in the middle of the trail there were a lot that nobody had touched since being placed last year. Chris and I worked our way west, getting the hang of finding the caches and hoping to make good time. It didn’t take long before I realized that I wouldn’t make it the entire distance with my pack. I bought my backpack many years ago, and it was dirt cheap–now I know why. It was ill-fitting, but I’d never tried it with weight over any significant distance. Not only is Chris in much better shape than me, but his pack fit him well, so he volunteered to carry my sleeping bag and tent, which lightened my load by almost 10 pounds. After that it was merely uncomfortable for me, but bearable. He really saved my ass by carrying some of my stuff.

We continued west, hoping to make it to the treeline, but knowing that above the treeline there likely wouldn’t be water. We found a nice level spot just below the treeline at about 11,000 feet to set up camp. There was a small stream running nearby, and Chris used his water pump/filter and we refilled our hydration packs and water bottles. We ate dinner and killed some time before turning in a bit early. I slept poorly, waking often and tossing and turning. I was wide awake at 6:10 on Saturday morning, and eventually I crawled out of the warmth of my sleeping bag and wandered the area around camp. Chris got up and we made breakfast, pumped more water to replenish our supply, then packed up and started up toward Leidy Peak. The trail crossed over a stream of water flowing directly out of a snow drift just before we reached the final steep ridge leading to the peak. Leidy Peak is a typical Uinta peak–steep, with mixed rocky and grassy sections. It reminded me a lot of Marsh Peak. At the top of the peak, we removed our packs and rested for a bit, enjoying the view of the western Uintas where we could see several peaks, including King’s Peak.

From Leidy Peak, we continued west and lost several hundred feet of elevation on the way to Mt. Untermann. We stopped for lunch in the saddle between Leidy and Untermann, and the wind was howling there. We took refuge behind a large boulder while we ate. After lunch we started climbing up to Gabbro Pass, and as we approached the pass we noticed that the trail went right through a huge snow drift. We’d earlier seen a group of hikers when we were closer to Leidy Peak who were heading the same direction but were about a mile ahead of us. Now, we watched them drop down to Lake Wilde, then climb up a steep slope and eventually cross the snow drift near its thickest point. We weren’t about to lose and then regain a lot of elevation, so we stuck to the trail and hoped the drift would be crossable when we reached it. As we approached the drift, we saw three mountain goats above us crossing a band of snow. The snow turned out to be pretty stable. Instead of crossing the drift right where the trail intersected it, we scrambled up the slope above the trail and crossed the drift where it was thinner. Chris went first and kicked in some footholds, and I followed in his footsteps while Torrey just made her own path and made it look easy.

Once up to Gabbro Pass, I was pretty beat. We rested again there, and decided to split up–Chris hiked up and back down Mt. Untermann and found a few geocaches on the way, and I stayed at about the same elevation and started finding the caches farther along our route. Chris caught up to me and we talked about how to proceed. We had been hoping to make it to his car at Chepeta Lake that day, but I really didn’t think I had it in me to push that hard and hike that much distance. After some thought, however, I said, “Fuck it, let’s just go.” And that we did. I didn’t care if we had to hike in the dark, I just wanted to put some real distance behind us. Up until that point the physical demands had put me in a worsening mood–I kept wondering what I’d gotten myself into–but as we hiked along, I started feeling better.

We made good time across the relatively flat section across the ridge north of Lightning Park, then descended toward Whiterocks Lake. Past the lake we had several miles of forest with intermittent meadows, and a lot of the open areas were marshy. In the largest meadow that we crossed there was a herd of about 30 elk, and they initially had their backs to us so we were able to just sit and watch them for a while. Finally one cow spotted us and alerted the rest of the herd, and they galloped off over the next rise. We stopped nearby to rest one last time, then donned our packs again and made a big push to get to Chepeta. There were several stream crossings, and although my shoes were waterproof, I got my feet wet a couple of times when the water was deep enough to go over the tops. It got dark enough that we had to use headlamps, and by the time we entered the last clearing about a mile away from Chepeta Lake, we were both exhausted and feeling stupid-silly. We reached the parking lot, set up our tents and enjoyed a small campfire while we fixed dinner. I conked out and slept through the night, not even waking when Chris was slapping the side of his tent to scare off the deer grazing just outside.

I was really sore and stiff Sunday morning, but I worked my joints loose by walking down the road and gathering some firewood (since the area around the parking lot was picked clean). We ate breakfast and refilled our water from the stream running out of the reservoir. Torrey’s left-rear foot was bothering her enough that she was reluctant to put any weight on it. Two weeks earlier she got what looked like a spider bite–it was a large, swollen area just above her paw with a crater-like hole in the middle. Though it was very slowly getting better before the backpacking trip, I think the long distance and swampy water from the day before aggravated it. Her paw was badly swollen, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to continue the geocache trail up to Eccentric Peak and back down. I wasn’t sure I could make it myself, but despite the slight urge to, I couldn’t give up. I decided to leave Torrey in the tent while we hiked the eight miles round-trip to Eccentric Peak. I was reluctant to do so, not just because I was worried it would get hot inside, but also because I feared that somebody would come along and decide she needed to be let out.

I pushed myself pretty hard going to Eccentric–I wanted it to be done, and I wanted to get back to Torrey as quickly as possible. There was 1,700′ of elevation gain to the peak, but the first mile and a half was pretty level, so the elevation gain was definitely not gradual closer to the peak. We passed Moccasin Lake and skirted around the north end of Papoose Lake where we did a lot of boulder hopping and bushwhacking. From that point to the peak it was steep and more steep. I took a lot of small rest breaks, and the rest of the time I trudged higher and higher. Almost to the top of the peak the ground levels out for a few hundred yards, and it was a relief to be moving quickly and not gaining elevation. We spent a while at the peak reading the logs in the geocache and the summit register. We marched quickly downhill after that. This was the first time on the trip that we’d covered the same ground twice, and since we’d already found all the geocaches on the way up, there were no stops going down. I had a small mishap at Papoose Lake. We’d walked along the muddy shore and started the mandatory boulder hopping section when I found out that muddy shoes and boulder hopping were a bad mix. I slipped off a boulder and headed face-first toward the wet ground below. I tried catching myself on a tall boulder beside me but I only managed to get a large scrape and bruise on my forearm. I landed on both hands and one knee, hurting one of my palms. My adrenaline was pumping though, and suddenly the pain in my right knee that had been bothering me the entire descent was gone. Once I took a minute and realized that I was ok, I decided to take advantage of the adrenaline and make really good time back to camp. When I arrived, my GPS said I’d hiked 26.1 miles in the past 48 hours. I was relieved that it was over, and elated that I’d done it.

Chris and I packed up camp and loaded our gear into his car, then made the long drive back to where my truck was parked. We parted ways there, with him heading home a different way than we’d come and me retracing the same roads to home. I got home after dark, and I was wishing I’d have also taken Monday off just to have a chance to recover before going back to work. I took Torrey to the vet on Monday afternoon and the doctor decided to open up her wound and let it drain, and put a drain tube in it. They kept her overnight, and boy was she happy to see me the next morning. She’ll be grounded for the next week while her foot heals, but the swelling in her paw has already completely disappeared and she’s walking better on it. I’ve also recovered well, with the sore muscles and joints no longer bothering me. This weekend is the annual Potter’s Ponds geocaching campout, and I’m planning on hiking a couple of easy peaks just to keep this momentum going.