Thanksgiving Weekend

Jacqueline and I left for Washington on Wednesday night after she got off from work. I, still feeling sick, possibly from my tick bite, left the driving to her. On the way, we saw this crazy cloud that looked even cooler in the sunset. We stayed the night at the Circus Circus, which was not very exciting because we had an early plane flight the next day. We were up at 3:55am and on the plane for a smooth flight into Seattle. We got to hang out with my nephews Wade and Ladd, then eat a big Thanksgiving meal. It became a weekend mainly for visiting as we only went on to short hikes. One included a visit to Pack Forest to see the old living map built near the entrance. Then we went to walk down to the Alder Dam on a dirt road. It was short and sweet, but with Carl as a guide, he really entertained us with all his knowledge from growing up in the area. We checked out an old tunnel and enjoyed the fresh air in the Pacific Northwest with extremely tall trees and all the lush greenery. The weekend was more dedicated to hanging out with family and friends as I got to catch up with a lot of people that I have not seen in a while. Next up, though, would be our backpack on the Olympic Coast.

Cornville

Jacqueline and I went to visit some folks this weekend. We stayed at Jacqueline's Aunt Kris' house near Cornville, Arizona, which is near Sedona. My best friend from the GC days, Steve Klunk, came up to visit also. Steve and I are really looking a bit older then the days when we used to hang out in high school. So here is how the weekend went. Jacqueline and I left Toquerville at 9:00 am for a drive through the famed polygamous town of Colorado City. It was not that exciting, but some Navajo flag man did tell us that there was gold in them hills above Toquerville. Good information that we would not use, instead we went to go look at some of his possible ancient ancestors houses in Wupatki National Monument outside of Flagstaff. It was rather neat. If you've seen one ruin, you've seen 'em all, but in no way does that mean that there is not a reason to go see 'em all. We skipped the actual Wupatki house considering it was right next to the visitor center where they would make us pay. Forget that. We went to all the other ones which were just short hikes. Then we continued the loop on the road, which lead us to Sunset Crater. There we did a trail called the Long Trail. If you consider one mile long than it was your lucky day. For us, it was about all that we had time for. It was nice to walk around the ancient volcano, but I was mad to see that they had barred the entrance to a natural lava tube cave. Oh well, we did not have time for it anyway, but what kind of National Park site does that? Our next stop was to go through Flag and then another hour put us at Jacqueline's aunt's house. We had an excellent dinner at the Tavern Grille and then slept on the floor. The next day we headed up to Sedona to do a hike. We intended to do a different hike, but I was not in the mood for dirt road driving, so we choose the Long Canyon Trail. It was nice, reminded me of Taylor Creek. We were on the trail for 'bout an hour and a half each way. Sedona is not much when you compare it to Zion, but it does have a lot of trails to explore at some point in time. Jacqueline enjoyed the area and I was even able to talk her into possibly moving down to this part of Arizona some day. It really still feels like home to me. Then we were back at the house for a visit from Steven. It was great to see him. I have not seen Steve since last April, but boy we just picked up where we left off. At dinner, we were all laughing and having a good time. It makes me really appreciate my good friends that are out there and family also, as having a fiance doubles my family size as staying with Kris was wonderful. We played three handed Euchre and the evening. Having won the last game makes me reigning champion until the next visit. The following day we watched some football and went our separate directions back to our homes. I definitely look forward to one of my home states, good ol' AZ.

I Got Bit

So my buddy Austin bailed on me for this week, thus I had to come up with an alternative plan. So I set out for the Pine Valley Wilderness on Monday. I hiked up a seldom used ATV track along Wet Sandy Creek. It was mostly uphill and took me about three hours to get to my campsite. I set up camp right near the creek so that I would have a water source. With a couple hours of daylight left, I took off in search of one of the three trails that left from this area. I did not find them. Instead, I ended up walking up the creek for a couple hours. It was kind of cool as it narrowed out into a canyon. It was just that the walls were made of alluvial deposits rather than hard rock walls. There were some small waterfalls, but nothing much more exciting than a ten foot drop or so. So I headed back to camp to make dinner and spend the rest of the evening chilling in my tent. I forget how much time is spent in darkness during late fall/winter backpacking. I got a lot of good reading in and sleeping, but I was happy to see the sun come out the next day at seven. I started out on the pseudo trail I found the previous day coming back to camp. All it was for a trail were some rock cairns with not much visible sign of boot treads beating down upon the trail. The Wet Sandy Trail was supposed to access the peaks above, but when I went for it, all I got was frustration. The common scene was a fallen over rock cairn leading into a bunch of flesh tearing scrub oak. I dealt with this for some time, thinking that the trail should open up at some point. After a while, I bagged the idea thinking that maybe a dozen people have hiked here in the past dozen years meaning that this trail is not much of a trail anymore. Across the creek, I could see another trail heading up the side of the hill, so I decided to take that one as my alternative. That one turned out better, although I never seemed to get away from all the bushed ripping at my flesh. Unfortunately, it was too hot to wear pants even in the middle of November. So I just had to take the blows and go with them. I made it to the junction of the loop and thought that I might as well undertake it. The first trail I hit was the highline trail, which went at the very base of the peaks. It was okay, very overgrown with not too many good views. About the coolest thing I saw were the spires rising up. I hustled through this trail getting to the road from Leeds at 12:40pm. I then went down the road and met up with the continuation of the Cottonwood-Harmon Trail. This one was rather similar and it looped back a little bit lower providing for some excellent view of the peaks and Zion beyond. I even found one of those balloons that kids release to litter the wild places, so I carried that out. Right after that was when I found the tick burrowing into the area right near my armpit. (I found another one once I got home) I continued to pick my way through these "trails", although I thought about it during and was happy with all the wilderness experience that I had because this is not an area for inexperienced people to spend time in. I finished the loop and finally finished making it back to camp at 3:50pm. My original plan was to stay the night and do another hike the next day. After my brutal day of tearing flesh and difficult route finding, I decided not to give the Pine Valley Wilderness any more of my time. So I quickly shoved some food down my face and packed my tent and gear up as quick as possible. I was on the ATV trail by 4:30pm and I really put the hustle on. I was able to make it to my truck by 6:15pm, which showed me that I am really not putting my best foot forward on the uphill when I can do it in only about 60% of the time on the downhill. Oh well, I was happy to be out of there, so I could spend the evening with my beautiful fiance instead.

Five Canyons in a Day

Yes, I was able to go into five canyons in one day in Zion. Here is how I did it: First, I picked non-technical routes, so all you canyoneering folks can stop reading now. Then I went up from the bottom rather than going down from the top. I also decided to try not to put myself in a position of possible death. I also decided to stay away from all possible scenarios to get out of the canyons including crazy slickrock scrambles and just let myself end up either getting cliffed out or running out of canyon. The first canyon I picked was upper Clear Creek. This one was as basic as possible. I did the lower part of Clear Creek, which is actually rather neat even though it hangs near the road, last summer. This was finishing it out and there was absolutely nothing to it except for a drainage.I took the East Rim trail and jumped off where I felt like to just follow the drainage up. I turned around when I started running into the housing area. Upon turning around, I ran into Cave Canyon. This one was at least a bit more entertaining with some narrows and features to it that I had to scramble around. There was one cave that I found which was within the canyon created by some flash flood debris that went back only about five feet. There is probably some better cave in there than that. I also found the hide of a dead deer. I originally thought possibly a mountain lion, but after checking it out, it definitely looked like a human kill, outside the park of course. Reading Ron Kay's book, I knew that there were some ruins of a sawmill up at the head of the canyon. I had to do a really loose dirt scramble to get to it, but it was neat to check out. After that there was not much to see as just around the corner, a house appeared. So I wandered back down the canyon to the East Rim Trail and then to my truck. Still with much time left before Jacqueline got off work, for which I was needed to pick her up, I headed down the road to Petroglyph Canyon. I ran into the only people that I saw on the day. They were entering Petroglyph Canyon when I was. I helped them find the petroglyphs after they wandered up canyon running into me. In not too much time, the route cliffed out. There was a nice slickrock slope up to the upper part that I was able to take though, which went for a ways until it cliffed out again. Finding an easy way to the right around that, I was able to access the narrowest part of the canyon. It was very neat, but did not last for long. I had to scramble up some slightly tricky stuff until I came to a spot that I did not like doing by myself, so I forced myself to turn around from there. I looked at the thing at least five times and each time I thought, I should just go for it, but I wanted to make it back safely. If anyone has been farther, let me know what I missed by wussing out. I headed back down with still plenty of time. I took a short break to check out the petroglyphs. My definite feeling on why these things ended up here is the boredom of waiting out a storm. If you saw where the petroglyphs are with snow coming down or rain, you would realize that it is the only dry place around. Prehistoric vandalism. Well, next stop was going to be at the tunnel to check out the canyon that Jacqueline, David, and I were above last east side hike. The only problem was that SAR training was going on which kept me from parking there. Feeling a little bit shunned because the SAR team did not think of me, I had to turn around and park a ways up the road. I walked down Clear Creek until it met up with my fourth canyon. I call this canyon Small Tunnel Canyon. It was really neat. It started out narrow and stayed that way. I also saw this enormous nest in there, which if anyone could tell me what it is, I would be glad to know. The narrowness was cut short by a rockfall that jammed up the canyon. There looked to be a good scrambling route to the right, but not having a companion, I decided against trying it. I was also getting hungry, so I sat down and had some lunch and enjoyed my book. I am reading On the Wild Edge by David Petersen. It is a very good book about breaking away from civilization and living a natural life. He lives in a cabin in the woods outside of Durango, Colorado and all his stories are about the things he does in the backcountry. His writing style is very entertaining. Well, I did that for a while and I reckoned that I still had a couple hours before it was time to pick Jacqueline up from work, so I tried the canyon across from Small Tunnel Canyon. It was great in an entirely different way. It was nearly all slickrock. There were numerous potholes filled with water. The slickrock was all easy walking too, not any death defying scrambles. I went back a good half hour in the canyon until I ended up somehow on this rock island. The canyon split into two and I was in between the two canyons high above. That is why I am naming this canyon Rock Island Canyon. 

I got bushed out by some class five bushwhacking, so I turned around. By the time I got back off the rock island, it was time to go pick my honey up, so I never got to explore the two side canyons. I thought on the way down about what I had accomplished. The east side of Zion is so unique because there is no real wrong way you can go. Around you on every side would be that finishing point for a hike, that so called destination of lake, river, arch, waterfall, etc... with the slickrock that abounds on every side. There is so much joy to be found by taking even an hour stroll on some slickrock. I felt good about my day not knowing how many miles I had tread or not establishing some new crazy route. Sometimes it is just good to be wandering amongst the slickrock.

I Caught a Fish and it was this Big

This week was spent in a couple places, the first of which was Yellowstone, mainly fishing. I helped my buddy from high school, John Hender, move up to Mammoth in Yellowstone. He came and crashed at my pad on Saturday night and we were off early Sunday morning. The drive took about twelve hours for us to get to Mammoth, where we stayed with his aunt, uncle, and cousins. I helped John move into their basement, which took up most of Monday. On Tuesday, we were set to spend the day fishing, but a snowstorm got in our way, so we decided instead to spend the day hiking. 

First we went out to Wraith Falls. It was a short hike, only a half mile from the road, but it was rather neat with all the snow that was coming down. We continued the drive up the road to another good hike. We took a trail that first crossed the Yellowstone River. Then it continued across until we ran into Hellroaring Creek. This was a rather short hike being only about four miles round trip. I was hoping for a bit more, but you take what you can get, ya know. It was a good choice, because we were able to drop out of the snow on the way down and by the time that we went back up, it stopped snowing.

The next day we went out on the Gardiner River to fish. John tried fly fishing and caught nothing. His girlfriend, Mindy, caught one fish, while I had the high fish count of two, including the fish above, using spinners. It was a cold day, but we had a good time just being out there on the river. 

The following day, we got to do something that I would really enjoy doing again. We hiked to a lake to fish. The lake was called Trout Lake, so we figured that would be a good bet to get some fish. I was the lucky one as I struck within the first five casts. Then I went on a dry spell where John caught six fish before I caught another one. He caught some rather large ones, too, this picture being one of the smallest ones that he caught. It took me a while to catch my next fish, as we fished all the way around the lake before I caught my second one at the same place I caught my first. Then I caught my big one for the day in a place where all I was catching earlier was algae. I was happy that I was able to catch this fish, it just seems like if you are going to put a fish through that much torture, you should at least eat the dang thing. John was into catch and release, though, so that is what we did. We fished pretty much all day long and John beat me with eight fish to four. 

The next day, I had to say goodbye to Yellowstone. John drove me down to Idaho Falls where I was supposed to catch the Greyhound bus. Instead a whole series of irritating events followed. It took us half an hour to find the unmarked door to the bus depot, where I got a ticket at 11:30am for the 12:30pm bus. We went over for lunch at Pizza Hut and I came back at 12:20 to be informed that my bus was already gone. Upset, I told the ticket agent to call the bus driver and have him wait for me at the next stop in Pocatello, fifty miles away. John drove me as fast as he could to Pocatello, where the bus driver informed me there were no seats on his bus. 

Angry, I stated, "What do you mean you have no seats, I have a ticket right here?" He basically told me to shove off, cause he did not care. I went to the Pocatello ticket agent with my outrage and she managed to get me on the next bus that took off from a gas station. I had no choice but to agree, so John dropped me off at a gas station, where I sat for an hour and a half waiting for the next bus. When that bus showed up, they informed me once again that they had no seats. I said, "Oh yes you do! You are going to have to find some way to put me on this bus!" I talked to and he talked to the manager, where I was able to ride sitting on a cooler between the driver's seat and the passenger seat on this sixteen passenger van. 

This was not particularly safe as any wreck meant that I was ground beef on the pavement. I rode the three and a half hours to Salt Lake City just like this. When I got to Salt Lake, I informed the bus company of my story and got my money back. That made me happy. Then I was off to enjoy the weekend hanging out with Jacqueline and her bro, Paul, and also some of my old buddies, Brian Hays and Jessie Dudley. Jessie hung out with Jacqueline and I, but unfortunately we were not able to do anything more than eat. She went with Jacqueline to check out wedding dresses, while I went for a short hike with Brian. I was a little disappointed by the brevity of the hike with Brian, because I always expect to do something a bit crazy with Brian. When I heard that his wedding was back on for the next Saturday, I understood. We took a short hike out to Silver Lake up in American Fork Canyon. His fiancé, Angela, was supposed to come with us, but she was tired so she slept in the woods off the trail. Her friend's dog, Kona, came with us though as we took a six mile roundtrip hike. We were able to both talk about the excitement of getting married and our future lives, while we enjoyed a pleasant November 3rd. There was some rock skipping and some Ritz eating, but mainly it was a rather dull hike as far as a Brian and Pete expedition is concerned. Oh well, I guess you need those occasionally. The rest of the weekend was spent watching some football, while Jacqueline did homework and then the long drive back to Toquerville to begin planning the next adventure.