Lake Huron

Jacqueline and I spent Christmas in Michigan and Wisconsin once again. After a lot of presents, travelling, eating, and visiting, we set aside one day to get out on the trails. The problem was that there is not much for trails in the middle of Michigan where Jacqueline grew up. I searched around and finally found us some options. Since I wanted to see the Great Lakes, we headed for the closest one which was Lake Huron. We finally found Bay City State Park, which is not far from where Jacqueline grew up and a place that she had been before; the realization coming when we arrived. We headed out to check out the beach and the lake. It did not give us much land to use as a place to hike. I did not feel like I was in the pristine zone at all as we could see smoke stacks down the lake shore. So we headed back into the car after taking the trail for a short mile long loop. We headed north from there to Tawas Point State Park. It was about an hour's drive from where we were, but the lake looked much different. There was a little point that we wanted to walk out to. We finally arrived and we took off toward the water. The wind was picking up a bit and it was definitely below freezing. We did get a decent hike out of this place. We started out hiking the beach, but we saw the trail above us, so we took that. Soon the trail turned into an old road, which headed straight out to the end of the point. Near the point, though, the trail took off back toward the parking lot. So we headed out to the point. When we got there, the end of the point was hard to tell as there were varying areas of water and beach. Jacqueline did not feel like walking across the ice, but I assured her it was safe, by even sliding across it. She had enough and we headed back through the screaming cold wind along the beach this time. We made it back to the car and it was a nice day. It made me appreciate where I live because I could get a good hike in from so many different places near where I live instead of having to search hard. We drove back in a snow storm and Jacqueline handled that with grace. She also handled the ski hills of Boyne Mountain with grace a couple days later as I struggled to stay upright. Jacqueline started skiing at five and she does not realize how much better that makes her than someone who is 22 until her dad and her were skiing like champs and I was trying not to run over eight year olds on the slopes.

Toquerville Peak

It was a dark and stormy morning in Toquerville. The temperature was in the low 40s and it was misty outside. I was going through my email inbox trying to go through my old emails because hotmail is randomly deleting them on its own. I came across one from Brian Hays from years ago that said, "Climbing mountains is so awesome. I wish I was on a snowy, windy ridge right now." So I thought, yeah, me too. So I got my things together and I was out the door. I drove out to the closest thing I could find to a snowy, windy ridge, Toquerville Peak. I drove down a dirt road until the road looked too muddy and then just started walking. I was feeling pretty good on this day as I was just hauling. I studied my route on Google Earth the day before so I knew that I had to be patient. Southern Utah does not have much for well made trails, but they seem to have quite a few well made roads that no one drives on. This was one of those as I knew that it would go most of the way to the top considering there was a cell tower up there. So I stayed patient as lots of roads split off, until finally I hit the one I thought that I wanted. It switched back a bit, but soon I was entering the mist. I could not tell how far I went, how long it was to go, or what could be around the next bend. I just kept following my road. Soon there was snow, which made it a bit more interesting. Then I saw the towers faintly through the fog and I knew I was close. From here I knew that the route to the summit was not too far away. (For a good pic of the summit, check my October blog for the highest point in the background.) Unfortunately, the road kept going except it was going straight up. The angle was rather steep and someone with an ATV decided that they were going to get to the top the easy way. That road went all the way to the summit ridge. All I had to do was traverse over a ways until I was at the true summit to chill out. The view was incredible. Actually it should have been, but there was nothing but mist. Toquerville peak is one of those peaks where if you were to climb its West Face, it would be highly technical. I should have been able to look down and see much of Southern Utah. Instead, all I saw was the fog. I snapped a couple pics and headed down, losing the trail/road in the fog for a while before finally
rediscovering it. When I got off the steep climb to the summit, the fog lifted for thirty seconds and I got a semi-decent view of the land below through the cell towers. Then I just wandered on back to my truck with nothing interesting happening except for the sighting of three deer. All and all, the trip took me a total of 3 hr 45 min round trip. It was a good hike, one that I would do again to maybe catch the views from the summit.

Snow Canyon

Neither Jacqueline or I had ever hiked in Snow Canyon before, so we thought that we would give it a shot. We were up bright and early before the Mormons were out of church, so we originally felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. We stopped first at the Lava Caves/White Rock Trailhead. We did not have a map so we just headed out on the trail. The first one ran right into some lava caves. We did not have a headlamp with us, so we did not make our attempt to go in. We continued on the trail, but it did not seem to go anywhere except down to a road. So we climbed up on some slickrock to hang out for a bit before continuing on another trail called the butterfly trail. We figured, that since it was December, we would not be seeing any butterflies on this trail, but we were mistaken. Jacqueline spotted one, probably near its last day of life since butterflies usually should not be out in December. Other than that, the butterfly trail did not have much to it until we ran into the road. So we decided to just head back to the truck leaving the White Rock trail to be done on another day. When I got back to my truck, I had a warning for me to pay my entrance fee. So I headed back up to the station and donated my $5 to Snow Canyon State Park. Next, we stopped at the Petrified Sand Dunes trail. I am not sure where it went, but since petrified sand dunes really just means rock, I figured we should just hike on the rock. Eventually, with some mediocre scrambling and bushwhacking, we ran into the Three Ponds trail. We took that one out to the Three Ponds. The trail was nothing more than an extremely sandy wash and the ponds were nothing more than potholes with seasonal run off stored within them. We snuck our way around the ponds to where we had the most scenic and interesting part of the day. There was some great slickrock walking with some excellent views. We ended our day about as far back as we felt like going. We probably could have kept scrambling from there, but since there was not much hidden, we called it a day right there. We headed back down to have our fun throwing rocks into the ponds. I snapped pictures of the ponds, but the pictures just looked like I took a picture of the rock. After giving Jacqueline a rock throwing lesson, we walked our way back until we ran into the Whiptail Trail, which we used to get back to our vehicle. The Whiptail is a paved trail which was not exciting but would be a nice short bike ride. We got back to our vehicle with about 3.5 hours of hiking under our belt. I would go back to Snow Canyon again, I would just gather some more info to see what are good off trail routes and how far those lava caves go.