Truly an historic hike for Elizabeth, Michael and Brandt. It turns out that potential significant others (where the significant other ranges from friend to fiancee) for each of the three people mentioned attended this hike, and it turns out that all three mentioned people--as well as some of the potential significant others--are presently happily married to other people!
This hike was also historic because Jennifer came. This was jennifer's first Utah Desert wilderness experience. I don't know if she was more amazed by the cows that didn't have any fences ("what keeps them here?") or the canyon. She seemed to have fun, though I still hear about how I forced her to bring only granola bars for lunch while liz and ephraim brought bagels, avacado, tomatoes and sprouts.
Dawn, Kent, Angela and I loaded in the car for a classic early winter san raphael canyon hike in a new canyon--Little Holes. We arrived in one piece and got moving down the trail on a cold morning. Being very excited to be in the desert in the winter (one of my favorite things), I decided to crawl through an opening in a slickrock wall.
Not far into the day, Angela got sick and the canyon got difficult. Rather than force the issue, we got out of there before the situation got worse. Ok, it was a hard decision for me in my newly-married and excited to be in the desert state, but looking back it was the obvious right choice. Later that spring, we dragged the 4th year overnighter girls from our ward down the canyon and it was very fun for us and them.
Feeling empowered by my expert driving on the Gemini Bridges trail the year before, I decided to take angela down the lockhart basin road to Canyonlands NP near Moab. The Lockhart basin road is much more technical than Gemini bridges (well, at least what we thought wsa the Lockhart basin road...) so we turned around at a 16 inch step we didn't feel comfortable driving alone in the parent's truck.
We turned around and camped along the road a few miles back (before Harrah pass). It seemed crowded for a BLM dirt road, but we figured it was just the Moab affect. We got out the steaks and grill to get ready for a yummy dinner only to find that we had forgotten the regulator thus rendering the grill useless. That left us with pan-fried steaks on the WhisperLite or ramen. In our first blow of good luck that trip, we discovered a way to put the whisperLite into bbq mode given the grill parts we did have (see picture below). The steak was tremendously good. We slept well with our 100 neighbors.
On the way back to moab early the next morning, we discovered that our road was to be the course for a mountain bike race starting in about an hour. Thus explaining the crowds and the numerous bikes we almost hit on the way out. We decided to save canyonlands for another day and went for arches instead.
I dragged angela around the fin canyon trail near landscape arch. She found one slick rock section fairly intimidating.
Since then, her slickrock skills have improved dramaticaly but its a funny set of pictures.
On the way out of arches, we were followed by a thunderstorm that forced us along the road trying to outrun the hail and rain. It was alot like twister.
Spring in Utah means one thing, well two things: desert hiking and spring skiing. Last year, we tried to get a permit to backpack in the Needles district, but you have to request your permit like 2 weeks in advance. We didn't decide on canyonlands till one week in advance. We decided to to a truck tour in Moab instead (see previous section). This year, we faxed our application in about 2 months in advance. We didn't get the weekend we wanted, but we got the right campsite.
Because we had to get our permit 2 months in advance, we didn't know what the weather would do. The closer we got to our canyonlands weekend, the worse the weather looked. This time, the forecasters were right and a late storm nailed us on the way down and on the way in. It was quite blizzardy just south of Moab, but we persevered and started our hike (after seeing a bobcat at the trailhead ?!) in cold wind and snow showers.
We toiled 2 miles into camp carrying way too much water for the wintery conditions, but it was only 2 miles so we survived. This being angela's first backpack, I think it was a good introduction. That evening, as we sat in our tent waiting out a snow shower before cooking dinner, we were glad we chose to rent a 3 person tent at REI the night before we left. We were going to put 2 people in the tent and one outside.
The next day, we woke to a cold icy morning. I tried to photograph the unique situation but camera batteries were cold and dead. Fustrating, but beautiful. One the way out, with plenty of water left. We hiked into Chesler park to see what the big deal was. Day 2 turned out to be a typical spring day in the desert, sunny, warm and beautiful.
Coming out of Chesler park, I noticed a guy hiking with a tripod like I do. Except both his camera and tripod were nicer. Odd. I noticed another hiker a little later struggling to get her heavy camera equipment up the trail. Also had a tripod, also nicer than my stuff. As we descended out of chesler park, there were at least 5 tripod-carrying landscape photographers heading in with at least one Leica. Must have been a landscape photography class up the trail somewhere. But, I was quietly smug knowing I'd gotten there in time for the early morning light before the sun burned out the colors.
We picked our large, heavy packs back up and headed for the car and cold water. We ended up leapfrogging a family also headed out. They were fairly amazed that we'd survived the previous day and night's snows. Not only did we survive, we enjoyed them in a tent rather than a motor-home. they were faster because they had no load, we were still carrying alot of water. We kept passing them though because they couldn't find the trail. So we'd lumber along huffing and puffing while they'd speed off the trail at the next turn only to pass us again when they refound it. Good fun.
Next time, we'll not backpack in all our water, but stay at the campground and do lots of dayhikes.