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I can check another thing off my to-do list. Since looking at topo maps of the Box Flat area a few years ago, I’ve wanted to hike to the survey marker on top of Nate’s Peak. I enjoy visiting remote survey markers, especially those which were set by a survey crew via helicopter like this one. Mark had Saturday off work and we made plans to try summiting Nate’s Peak, then hike a few more miles south-southwest to Point 6,648′. We left Price at 8:00AM, and I was so used to driving to the San Rafael Reef on weekends that I started heading toward US-6 before I realized my mistake and turned around toward UT-10. I brought my ATV so I didn’t have to take the truck across the rough road to Box Flat. We parked near the head of Big Hole Wash, unloaded the ATV, and rode brokeback to the south end of Box Flat and parked at the wilderness study area boundary. It was just under a mile and a half to the base of Nate’s Peak from there, and the hike was relatively uninteresting along an old 4WD route. We occasionally caught scant glimpses of something interesting in the East Fork of Red Canyon, but we were too far from the rim to see much.

The cliffs surrounding the top of Nate’s Peak looked impossible to breach from the bottom. There were several breaks in the cliffs but they looked nearly vertical and too tall to scale. The scramble to the base of the cliffs was steep, rocky, and loose. Once at the base, we started feeling around for any weakness that would lead to the top. We circled around to the southwest end of the peak and couldn’t go further that direction, then circled back around to the east end and couldn’t go any further. Along the way we’d seen only one spot that looked remotely within our abilities to climb, so we returned and looked at it more closely. I left Torrey below with her leash attached to a tree, and just as I was about to start climbing up to feel out the first pitch my phone rang. It was Joane, as she’d said she might make it there on horseback to watch us attempt the climb. She has a grazing permit in the area and wanted to see some photos taken from the peak of the surrounding land. She and her friend, Larry, were only about a third of a mile away and approaching us from the north. I told her where we were, then continued the climb. I was more worried about coming back down than getting up in the first place, so I climbed past the worst looking part and then descended again while Mark remained below just in case I needed help getting down. The climb went smoothly, though, so I went back up, Mark handed our packs up to me and then followed. There was one final but easier climb to get to the very top of the cliffs, then we were on top!

I was satisfied enough at that point that I could have turned around and went home and still considered the day a success. I took a lot of photos from the top of the peak and placed a geocache near the survey marker. I was surprised to find the survey marker and both reference marks unstamped. The National Geodetic Survey datasheet for the marker shows that it should read “NATES 1952,” but it was blank. Maybe the surveyors figured nobody would go up there, so why bother? Mark and I climbed back down, then descended the rocky hillside to where Joane and Larry were waiting. Here are the photos Joane took of Mark and I on Nate’s Peak. We talked for a while, then Mark and I set off for the second part of our hike. We stopped for lunch at the south end of Nate’s Peak and enjoyed the view into the head of Nate’s Canyon before continuing.

Much of the rest of the hike still followed the old 4WD route, though since the fence was put up at the WSA boundary, it appeared that mostly horses and cattle use the trail now. We did follow a single set of fresh footprints that I assume belonged to the owner of an old Chevy Blazer parked at Box Flat, but we never did encounter the owner. We enjoyed a nice view into the head of Spring Canyon to the west, and nicer views to the east over Red Canyon and Devil’s Hole. We got to a steep ridge that we descended, after which all signs of vehicular use ceased. In fact, there was no trail at all past that point, not even a horse trail. After descending the ridge there was a gentle ascent to Point 6,648′. We crossed some slickrock and saw lithic flakes on the ground, which surprised me given that we weren’t near any accessible canyons or water sources. We reached Point 6,648′ (so named because of its elevation and lack of an official name on the USGS topo map) and found a large cairn nearby. The view was just incredible.

Mark and I spent quite a bit of time there. We rested, ate and drank a bit, and I let Torrey finish off the rest of the water she’d been carrying in her pack–I still had plenty for both of us in my pack. I placed another geocache in the cairn, then we headed back for what would be a shorter and faster hike back to the ATV. In the slickrock area just north of the point we took some time to look near the lithic flakes for arrowheads, and Mark found a nice broken point. We looked around futilely for the other half, then moved along. It had taken about 4.5 hours to reach the point, including the climb up Nate’s Peak, but it took about two hours to return. We rested again at the ATV, then rode a short distance north and checked out Box Flat Cave.

It was my second visit to the cave, and Mark’s first. The cave was carved by water runoff from Jackass Flat, and there was evidence of a large flash flood since the last time I was there. Flood debris on the cave walls reached about five feet high. This time I checked out the middle section of the cave where large sections have fallen out of the roof. I found, at perhaps the highest point in the center of the cave, a hand print that baffled me. It was on the ceiling, in a spot not too difficult to reach but hidden from view unless you looked at it from below at the right angle. I climbed up to look at it, at first thinking it was drawn with charcoal. Instead, it appeared to be some dark pigment applied directly from somebody’s hand, almost like a thin, dark mud, but it didn’t rub off like mud should. I didn’t get a good photo of it because I left my camera on the tripod while I climbed up to see the hand print, and now I regret not bringing it up there with me. I know I’ll eventually go back to see it again. Mark and I left the cave and reached the truck where we had cold beverages waiting for us. It felt great after eight hours and about 10.5 miles of hiking.

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.

I drove to Provo today for a work meeting, and on my way home I had planned to drive up Diamond Fork Canyon and hike up to the Fifth Water hot springs. There is a geocache there which has sat unfound since it was placed last May. I was irritated by (presumably) the Forest Service when I got to within a few miles of the trailhead and found a gate blocking the road. Apparently it’s often closed during the winter so that they don’t have to plow the road, but this winter there isn’t enough snow to warrant the closure. On my way back down Diamond Fork Canyon toward US-6, I tried thinking of a Plan B. There were three things I’ve long wanted to do in the area: climb up to the Thistle Junction benchmark, explore an abandoned train tunnel, or scramble around on the Navajo Sandstone above the Utah County Sheriff’s firing range. After stopping on the highway to check out the snow situation near the benchmark, I chose the first option.

I wanted to climb up the north ridge of the mountain, but the snow was too deep. Instead, I hiked up from the east. There was what appeared to be a road cut into the eastern slope, with several switchbacks leading to near the top of the road cut. Once I got up onto the “road,” however, it was clear that it had been filled in after the highway construction and the slope was just as steep as the natural hillside. It turned out to be easier to scramble straight up the hillside rather than follow the old road. It took me about 35 minutes to get from the truck to the summit ridge, a horizontal distance of only 0.29 miles, but with 500 feet of elevation gain.

The summit ridge runs north-south, with the highway cut on the north side and the benchmark on the south. I topped out 100 feet south of the road cut, so I followed the ridge north to get a glimpse down into the road cut. The ridge was razor thin, with a very steep slope to the east and a purely vertical drop to the west. That, combined with the snow piled up places, made for a scary 100 feet of ridge walking. After peering into the road cut, I hiked south along the ridge until I came to the high point. It took me several minutes to find the benchmark. I assumed it was buried under the snow and I wasted a few minutes digging through it, but I eventually found the benchmark under a thin layer of dirt and pebbles.

It had gotten cloudier while I hiked up the mountain, and there were heavy winds at the top of the ridge that cut through my clothes and froze the sweat that had accumulated during the ascent. I quickly hid a geocache in a tree about 100 feet from the benchmark, then hurried down off the ridge to get out of the cold wind. I tried to stick to the rocky scree slopes on the way down, and I was able to make large, bounding steps. It only took 15 minutes to get down the hillside. This small peak has always been in the back of my mind, and it felt great to check it off my list.

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 took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather last Saturday and did some ATV riding and hiking in the Coal Wash area. It’s been a favorite place of mine in the winter months, though with the lack of snow on the ground and the warm days I wasn’t sure whether I’d see any ice like I’ve seen in the past. I staged at the north end of Coal Wash and took a quick side trip to the degree confluence at N 39° W 110°. It was cold enough that early in the morning that I stopped a couple of times to warm my hands on the ATV exhaust. Although (judging from the tire tracks) many people have driven up the wash from the road to the confluence, I parked the ATV on the side of the road and walked in. That warmed me up a bit, then I did a little hiking around on the rocks near the confluence.

After that, I rode back past where the truck was parked and started up Coal Wash. I was pleased to find plenty of ice at the Drips. At the fork in the canyon I took the north fork and then stopped to hike up a side canyon. There are a lot of interesting side canyons in Coal Wash, but this one was relatively short and I only spent about 20 minutes hiking. I then rode to the Devil’s Racetrack turnoff and started searching for some old cowboy inscriptions that I heard about. I didn’t have coordinates, just a verbal description, but I found the spot easily. There was an undated “L. Swasey” inscription and another from Joseph Swasey from 1875. I found huge amounts of chert flakes scattered over an area hundreds of feet in every direction from the inscriptions. I wandered around hoping to find a complete arrowhead or maybe some rock art, but the chert flakes were all the evidence I saw of native Americans.

From there I reversed course and started toward Cow Canyon, but along the way I had to do some donuts on the sheet of ice formed by a natural spring in the bottom of Coal Wash. Torrey merely tolerated it, while I actually had fun. I parked the ATV at the fence where Cow Canyon joins Coal Wash and began hiking. As I hiked along the main Cow Canyon I searched for rock art along the cliffs, but found none. I took the first right fork in the canyon and hiked to its end. The side canyon started out with a flat, sandy bottom, but the higher I got the gnarlier and rockier it became. At the head of the canyon was a large ice-covered pool, with natural springs creating huge icicles above the pool. This would be an amazing place to be during summertime. I spent more time exploring the side canyon than I’d planned, so when I returned to the main canyon I headed back to the ATV. I took a quick lunch break, though it was nearing 3:00PM so when I finished my snack I just headed back toward the truck and then home. I didn’t take the time to ride up the South Fork of Coal Wash to look for some rock art I heard about, so I have a good excuse to return another day.

It’s been a few months since I had a really fun day. Yesterday was just such a day. For the past few weeks I had been wanting to go camping and hiking, but things kept coming up that prevented me from going (not the least of which was my aversion to camping in the cold). On Christmas day I finally decided that I would just go for a nice long hike the following day, and after opening presents with my family that morning, I got all my gear ready for the hike the next day. I might have been persuaded to camp on Christmas night but I wouldn’t allow myself to miss Christmas dinner at my mom’s. I awoke early on Monday morning and left Price before 7:00 AM on my way to the San Rafael Reef near Ernie Canyon, where I’d wanted to hike since I became aware of the benchmark at the top of the Reef several years ago.

By 8:50 AM I was already hiking up the San Rafael Reef. The dirt road from UT-24 was in the best shape I’d ever seen it in. In October 2008 the Iron Wash crossing was rocky and rough, and in October 2010 it was wet, sandy, gravely, and still required 4WD, but yesterday I drove the whole road in 2WD. After parking my truck at the end of trail 921, I hiked slightly out of my way to see the rusty old truck/drilling rig that I’d seen the past two times I was in the area. After that, everything was new to me.

From the drilling rig I hiked northwest until reaching the crest of a ridge of Navajo Sandstone, which then dropped down into a small, sandy valley. This became the theme of the day–up a hill, over a ridge, then back down into a valley or canyon. I should note here that it took quite a bit of planning using Google Earth and USGS topo maps to plan my route. I created a series of waypoints in Google Earth that I uploaded to my GPS, which I then followed very closely in order to get to my destination, which was the “Ernie” benchmark at the top of the San Rafael Reef about 2.6 miles (as the raven flies) from where I parked the truck.

In the sandy valley I found a frozen waterhole (which would have made for the perfect swimming hole in the summertime) and had to bypass a slot canyon-like feature that I wasn’t expecting. I followed the bottom of a wash for a while and saw some relatively recent human footprints in the sand. It became time to climb out of that canyon, over a ridge, and into the next canyon to the north. That up-and-down wasn’t too bad, but before I reached the bottom of the next canyon, I realized that on the other side was a boulder field that I would have to cross. It looked rugged and daunting from the opposite side of the canyon, but when I was working my way through the boulder field it wasn’t too bad.

I crossed the boulder field and continued gaining elevation until I reached a saddle on the ridge above me. From the saddle I hiked along the top of the ridge without dropping down the other side into the next canyon. I saw some bobcat tracks in the snow along this ridge, which made me glad I was keeping Torrey on her leash. This was one of only a couple of areas along the hike where there was little elevation gain/loss, even if only for a short while. I was basically hiking along the rim of the next canyon to the north, but eventually I was going to have to cross that canyon. The cliffs on the opposite rim looked too tall for me to cross the canyon, and I started getting discouraged. Eventually the canyon floor rose to meet the ridge I was hiking along and I found a place to cross it and scramble up the other side through a weakness in the cliffs.

It was about 11:30 AM by then and I stopped to rest and eat a small lunch. I was relieved to be across the last large drainage along my route. Once I started moving again I encountered the steepest terrain on the entire hike. I kept a slow and stead pace until the terrain leveled out after a while. From that point on there were only some small ups and downs until I got close to the benchmark. I’d seen a lot of bighorn sheep tracks in the dirt before then, but within a quarter-mile of the benchmark I saw the first sheep tracks in the snow–it was surprising to see that at least one sheep was up in the high elevations during the winter.

I was a tenth of a mile from the benchmark before I could see the hill on which it sits. This is where I really started getting anxious. I’d been able to find no information on whether the benchmark was reachable by hiking, though I knew it had been placed by surveyors who landed there in a helicopter in the 1950s. Upon seeing the sandstone knoll where the benchmark resided, I still wasn’t confident that it could be climbed easily. I skirted around the knoll to the southwest and took in the view all along the San Rafael Reef. It was breathtaking and already totally worth the hike up there. I then steeled myself for a possibly difficult and dangerous scramble up the last short but very vertical section before reaching the benchmark. I could already hear my wife admonishing me not to do anything dangerous.

The scramble to the top turned out to be a piece of cake. Perhaps my eyes were playing a trick on my brain, but the height of the vertical portion before the relatively flat top was a lot shorter than it appeared from a distance away. I found the benchmark and two reference markers easily, and there was even a summit register in a small glass jar that had been placed there exactly one month earlier by some Colorado hikers. I spent a lot of time soaking in the view and reveling in the accomplishment of successfully planning a route to the top. I placed a geocache there, right next to the summit register, then started the hike back down.

On the return trip I mostly had to closely follow my GPS tracklog because there had been so many small cliffs where there was only one easy place to climb past them. On the relatively flat areas where I could stray from the GPS track, I saw a few footprints that looked recent enough that they must have been from the Colorado guys who placed the summit register. I figured they must have taken almost the exact same route as I did, but the abundance of slickrock left a dearth of tracks to see along the way. Since there was a lot more downhill and a lot less photo taking during the hike down the Reef, I made excellent time.

While following a sandy, gravely wash about two-thirds of the way back to the truck, by chance I spotted what looked like a common flake of chert half-buried in the sand. I picked it up and it turned out to be a nicely formed arrowhead with a small break on one side that is probably what caused it to be discarded. I searched the immediate area on one side of the wash for more chert flakes or arrowheads, but found nothing. It must have washed there from farther up the wash. I was feeling great for having accomplished my goal, and finding the arrowhead gave me the push I needed to explore the area a little more, rather than hiking straight back to the truck. I took a side-trip up a nearby canyon while searching for other signs of Native Americans, and to my surprise I found a nice pictograph panel. Icing on the cake, baby. The rest of the hike back to the truck was a bit of a trudge. At the end of the hike I’d covered 8.1 miles, taking about four hours to get to the benchmark and less than 2.5 hours to get back to the truck. What a way to end 2011.