Saturday, January 10, 2009

Stout Canyon

Eric came back from being in Colorado and Iowa on his furlough, so we went out for a snowshoe. Jacqueline told us that Highway 14 was closed due to a rockslide, but we wanted to see for ourselves. So we drove up there and found out that it was closed at Duck Creek. Luckily, I looked at a map of the area before hand, so when we saw a sign for Stout Canyon, I knew that it was a forest service road that we could snowshoe on. It turned out to be a rather flat snowshoe. The road was easy to find as snowmobiles and cross country skiers used it previously to us. It would actually be a good road to ski as I saw later that it ends back at Highway 89. With two vehicles, it would be a steady, yet gradual downhill ski. The views were nothing spectacular, but still nice as there was much of the rock around that makes up the formations around Cedar Breaks. We also got some good views after a bit out toward the east, where the Pink Cliffs rose to become the Paunsaugunt Plateau. When we were feeling like turning back, we tried to head up a steep hill to check out the view from up top. That was where we were reminded just how hard it can be to manuever through deep, fresh snow. We made it up on the ridge, where we had our fill and turned back. There were no issues finding our way back as our tracks our clearly marked for us. We stayed out 5-6 hours, which was a good day and more than the two of us thought we would do.

1 comment:

jess said...

always an adventure to be had... even just a lil hill in fresh snow.