TreknMike

This hike kicked my butt! First time I took a pain killer afterwards. Hope it’s not age. The hike was 22 miles long. There is no trail, but lot’s of boulder hopping and deep sand – you make your own trail (see the trail in the picture above?). In 22 miles, I did not see a single person. Got solitude?

Spring Canyon is located in the northern part of Capitol Reef National Park. The canyon begins on the east side of Thousand Lake Mountain and heads southeast to the Fremont River. One escape route exists about 2/3 of the way down canyon at Chimney Rock. Chimney Rock separates the canyon into Upper and Lower parts.

I started hiking at Cook Mesa (named after ancestors that settled in the area in the 1800′s, I’m sure). There are petrified trees on Cook Mesa. After hiking a few hours, I had to pull out my GPS and map to find the notch through the Wingate sandstone to be able to drop down into Spring Canyon. The notch is not that obvious.

The canyon is beautiful. Click this link for pictures. I ran out of water with 7 miles to go (took 2.5 liters with me). I could have filtered from a seep source, but decided to tough it out for 3 hours and drink the good Torrey water I had stashed in the car. You should have seen the smile on my face when I came out of the canyon after 9.5 hours of hard hiking and saw the Fremont River at trails end!

Tags: Utah

I’ve spent weeks (actually months) hiking in Utah – hardly ever the same place twice. My buddy, Terry, has been to Utah once or twice and hiked here and recommended it. I hiked the Bell and Little Wild Horse Canyons – a 9 mile loop – located in the southeastern part of the San Rafael Swell. Bell was not too exciting, but Little Wild Horse was very nice with about 1 mile of narrows that are about 3 to 6 feet wide. I finished the day hiking several miles around Goblin Valley State Park where the wind and water have carved fantastic and unique goblin-like sculptures out of rock. View pictures by clicking on this link.

Dad’s birthday is today. We celebrated, in part, by taking the 4WD to Cathedral Valley in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. This backcountry road was 68 miles long. We started at highway 24 and the River Ford, where we forded the Fremont River, and returned via Caineville Wash. The Bentonite Hills reminded me of what I think Mars would look like, and the desert views and Cathedral Valley, with it’s spires and monoliths of sandstone, were spectacular. Dad picked a good route. We saw two 4WDs all day – in a National Park! Blue sky with temperatures in the 60′s. What a day! See the pictures by clicking on this link.

This was my 4th climb (3rd 1-day) and 4th summit on Shasta (elev 14,162 ft.). The climb entails approx 7200 vertical feet in 7 miles (one way). I’ll post a few pictures once my climbing buddy sends them to me.

On May 9, I met Cory Sobrio at Mt. Shasta City at 7 pm. We filled up on pizza and then drove to Bunny Flat trailhead (elev approx 6800 ft.). We started climbing at 9:40 pm. The weather was clear and cold. There was a lot of snow at Bunny Flat, but the mountain was a mixture of bare ground/snow. I understand the wind this winter blew the snow off the mountain leaving late spring and summer (July) climbing conditions.

I climbed strong to elev 12,500 ft +/-; the pizza paid off here. Above this point to the summit, I struggled.

I was on the summit at 5:14 am (gained about 1000 ft/hr, on average) and saw the sunrise. It was cold in the wind, but barely OK behind rocks in a windbreak. Water in Nalgene bottles froze almost solid in 30 minutes if left out of the pack. I had a little frostnip on my left ring finger; the little bugger stung for about 30 minutes.

Cory and I had the top to ourselves. After 1.5 hours, we started our decent.

There wasn’t any rockfall during our climb, although there were signs of rockfall all around. One benefit of climbing at night!

We couldn’t glissade on the decent because the snow was still too icy. All the down stepping left my legs a little sore.

We made it back to Bunny Flat at 11:10 am on May 10 and made it home for a solid night’s sleep.

Tags: Mt. Shasta

The men of the family took off for their annual camping trip at Plinco Mine May 2 through 4. I think all we did was target practice, hike, fish, and, the real reason to get together, create fantastic meals in the dutch ovens. We ate some good ones this year, including quesadillas, omelettes, roast. See a few pictures by clicking this link.

Tags: Family