For my first and (so far) only car camp of the pandemic, I went with Stanley and Paul to a remote area: the Confusion Range of west-central Utah. We achieved success with social distancing — we didn't meet another soul on any of the hikes.

We did 5 smaller hikes rather than the usual monster hike, mostly because I'm out of shape from staying at home. It worked out pretty well, since we got to see a number of different areas.

On Friday afternoon, we met at a turn-off about a mile and a half west of the summit of US 6 / 50 in Kings Canyon in the Confusion Range. After setting up camp, we hiked up to the knoll that overlooks the road. The ledgy terrain makes you work to find routes that succeed. We lucked out, and managed to reach the top by following alternating ramps on the back side. It's pretty spot, with plenty of cactus just going into bloom, elaborately twisted juniper trees and a broad view over to Wheeler Peak to the west.

go to the Confusion Range knoll gallery

On Saturday morning, we hiked up Cat Canyon to the end of the narrows, about 4 mi round trip. Cat Canyon is a long drainage that runs south from Kings Canyon toward King Top, the high point of the range. Most of Cat Canyon is undulating and grassy, but the first couple of miles are cliffy and scenic.

The old road in the canyon can still be followed on foot, but you have to search for it in several places. We saw tire marks from ATVs that came down the canyon part way from above the narrows. That's too bad, because the road is officially closed, as part of the King Top WSA.

I didn't realize that stink bugs lived in burrows until this hike. None of us were brave or stupid enough to pick one up.

go to the Cat Canyon gallery

Crystal Peak is a landmark of the West Desert. It was roughly 30 mi from our Friday campsite, going south on well-maintained county roads on the west side of the Confusion Range. Crystal Peak is nominally the northern tip of the Wah Wah Range, but it sits just across a valley from the southern end of the Confusion Range.

I was able to spot the big X that marks the route to the top. If you follow the left side of the X and cut over to the right above the X, you can keep the challenge down to hard class 2 or low class 3. The major difficulty is the loose crap that lies on top of the bright white tuff; you really don't want to slip on it.

The tuff contains chunks of country rock sprinkled through it like chocolate chips. Paul found a cool piece of Kanosh Shale that had brachiopods and echinoderms (starfish).

Crystal Peak is a very pleasant place to camp because it has a PJ forest with good shade. There are also a handful of ponderosa pines, still hanging in there after the climate dried out along with Lake Bonneville.

go to the Crystal Peak gallery

On Sunday morning, we visited the mother lode of the Kanosh Shale: Fossil Mountain. This area is on the west side of the Confusion Range at its south end. A bumpy spur road heads west from the main Blind Valley road into a draw. As we walked up the draw, we found slabs of shale that were solid brachiopod fossils (this kind of rock is called a coquina). Brachiopods are two-shelled creatures that look a bit like clams but are not actually molluscs; most of the brachiopods at Fossil Mountain are fairly small ribbed shells, 5mm to 15mm. We also found the occasional trilobite fragment, a few gastropods (snails), bryozoans, crinoids and very sporadic echinoderms. Apparently different spots in this general area have different concentrations of fossils; one spot to the south is supposed to have very nice ammonites (cephalopods).

Further up the canyon is a huge pinkish-gray sand dune. The sand has been eroded out of the Needles Range tuff that forms the south rim of the upper canyon. It looks like the wind blows the sand over the rim of the canyon and it piles up in the less-windy valley. Certain plants, such as lupines, thrive in the sand. We slogged up the dune to get the view of the Eureka Quartzite crags on the north rim.

go to the Fossil Mountain gallery

I had never been to Ibex, Jack Watson's abandoned ranch site just a mile east of Fossil Mountain, so I led us over there to check it out. The Ibex area is known to climbers for its outcrops of the Eureka Quartzite. Close up, the rock is bizarre: white to red-orange, mottled and intensely ledgy. It actually reminded me of red-rock country around Moab. It's a blast to scramble on, and we took the invitation to climb up to an overlook with three big, dark limestone boulders perched on an overhanging ledge. We descended to the north into the Horse Pasture, a canyon that has a slickrock floor in the quartzite before emerging into a broad, grassy limestone basin. Heading back down canyon, we ran into a minor pour-off and slot that Jack Watson had dammed to collect water for stock. It surprised me to see that there was still some water in the streambed below the waterworks, given our extremely dry April.

go to the Ibex gallery

Jerry Hatch and I scheduled an October trip to Notch Peak again this year, but no one else showed up at the meeting place, so we took the opportunity to try some new things.

I had worked out a loop hike in the granite country in Miller Canyon, just north of Sawtooth Canyon where the Notch Peak hike starts. I wanted to go back to the area that had defeated our group in 2017, and try a different route. I've decided to call the area Utopia Canyon, after the “Utopia” mining claims posted along the (very faint) trail. The route starts on a steep and rocky dirt road at the Klondike Mine in Contact Canyon. The road ascends the north slope from an adit across from the mine's headframe. At the top of the ridge, go west (left) to a beat-up mining claim sign just below a granite outcrop. Look carefully for a trail tread that sidles around the outcrop on the north (right) slope. The trail continues to the west, first losing a bit of altitude, then angling up the slope into a little draw, where a “Utopia” claim is posted on a tree. The trail is never very distinct, and it fades away completely in this draw, but if you angle your way up to the ridge on the south / left side, you'll pick it up again on the ridge top. Go west along the ridge top until you run into another outcrop, at which point the trail breaks off the ridge to the south / left. Follow it up a west-trending draw. At the head of the draw, there are broken boards that may be the remains of a lean-to, and a broken wooden table, along with another claim sign.

This is the end of the trail. It's a pretty spot, in a forest that mixes piñon pine with aspen and a few white firs. A stream magically runs all year round in the valley on the far (north) side, just 30 yards down the hill. From here onward, it's cross-country travel.

In 2017 our group tried heading upstream, staying on the north side of the stream. This route soon enters a thicket of head-high rose bushes (ouch) and other brush. We made an attempt to climb up to the ridge to the north, in the hope that we'd escape the brush, but that just put us on a steep scramble over big granite boulders, which wasn't any better. We turned tail without reaching the ridge.

This year, I did some research with Google Maps' satellite view, and I realized that the USGS map is wrong — if you head downstream, the stream goes northeast over a waterfall, rather than southeast into Contact Canyon. You can contour into a side canyon that leads west from the waterfall, and I thought that it might just provide a route up to the big granite domes that sit between Utopia Canyon and Water Canyon.

Alas, it turns out that the side canyon is just as brutal a bushwhack and scramble as the main canyon. It's filled with a jumble of boulders that range in size from sedans to school buses, with brush in between them (including more wild rose). If we had been (much) more ambitious about scrambling, I think we could have made it up to the ridgeline, but it would have taken hours. We beat a retreat.

With time left in the day, I took Jerry to see the locally-famous sinkhole on the alluvial fan in North Canyon, just a few miles north of Miller Canyon. It's still very startling — the gravel at the edge looks like it ought to just crumble and send you flying into the hole, but it's actually fairly well cemented. The hole is supposed to be 90 feet deep, but it looks bottomless until your eyes adjust to the light.

We headed back to Delta, where we spent 2 hours in the amazing Topaz Museum. I highly recommend the experience, which is disturbing and inspiring in equal measure.

go to the House Range gallery

Nance and I took two tours at Hearst Castle on our trip to Santa Barbara at the end of last month. It's an over-the-top example of conspicuous consumption, but there are a lot of pretty features to admire. I couldn't stop taking pictures.

go to the Hearst Castle gallery

I told folks that we would meet at the Mt Wheeler Mine on the Friday before Labor Day, so that we could get an early start on the Mt Washington [sic] trail. My memory of the road turned out to be a little dated (say, 25 years or so); it could use a good blading. Michelle was able to get up the road with her lightweight teardrop trailer behind her Subaru, but Jen's more substantial trailer wasn't going to make it. She ended up spending the night in the heat down in Spring Valley, while Michelle, Stanley, Dave and I stayed at the mine.

The twilight was lovely, and the night was spectacularly star-filled. Friday was the new moon, and the Milky Way was the big show. We saw plenty of bats fly out of the mine tunnel. There was a substantial stream of water coming out of the mine, but bugs were minimal.

go to the Mt Wheeler Mine gallery

In the morning, I drove down to Jen's camp and picked her up. We then all piled into my 4Runner and I drove it up the steep narrow switchbacks to the first saddle on the Mt Washington road. It was an “exciting” drive, and I was happy to park just past the saddle.

We hiked up the rocky old road, admiring the view over the huge limestone cliffs to the west. This section is full of tall, healthy bristlecone pines; the only gnarled ones are perched at the cliff edge. When we reached the point where the road bent eastward to the St Lawrence Mine, crossing a burned area, we decided to go cross-country up the slope directly toward the peak. We picked up the road again as it neared treeline and got steeper.

The summit is broad and bare. We could look over the northwest and northeast cliffs, and across to Mt Lincoln (due south) and imposing Wheeler Peak (due north). Stanley and I identified the enormous “Chinese Wall” feature in the north fork of Big Wash, which we had seen from below 10 years ago.

We followed the road down to the St Lawrence Mine. It's in a pretty forest on the east side of the burned area. We found an adit and a collapsed log building. There may be more buildings down toward the southwest cliffs, but we decided to head back to the 4Runner instead of checking them out. The ride back down to the Mt Wheeler Mine was even more “exciting” than the ride up, and I had to back up on a number of hairpin turns because the way that vehicle slid downhill.

I dropped off the other folks, then took Jen back to her trailer. We made sure that her truck started, and I headed back to the mine. When I got there, I realized that I still had Jen's pack in the back (!). Fortunately she drove up shortly to retrieve it.

As she was driving away, I realized that the 4Runner had a flat tire. Yikes — we were very lucky that the tire had survived until that point. I wondered why I had gotten a flat; that mystery was soon solved as we all began finding rusty nails all over the parking area. Evidently campers had been burning boards torn out of the mine buildings, and cars had subsequently driven through the fire rings and distributed the nails around the parking area. I weighed my treasure when I got home — 2 lbs 10 oz of nasty iron fragments.

go to the Mt Washington gallery

Stanley made the persuasive argument that I should stay near pavement after mounting my spare tire, so that AAA would actually send a tow if I got another flat. Stanley and Michelle had also never been to Wheeler Peak. It was a fine reason to rearrange my schedule, so we drove to the Wheeler Peak trailhead.

The parking lot was jammed. We decided to check out the campground. That turned out to be a great idea, because we managed to score three sites as people left early for home on Sunday morning. We walked from the campground to the Wheeler Peak trailhead and started up through the forest.

The Wheeler Peak trail doesn't have any of the famous bristlecone pines, but it does have a great view of the cirques around the peak. The wind was blowing ferociously at 12,000 ft, enough to discourage Michelle, but Dave and Stanley and I plowed onward. Oddly, there was just a light breeze at the summit. The trail is much improved from the last time I was there many years ago — while it's still steep and rocky, there are actual switchbacks now, and a consistent tread to follow.

go to the Wheeler Peak gallery

For our last day, we decided to do the classic 90-minute Lehman Caves tour. We arrived at the caves' visitor center just after they opened, but most of the tour slots were booked already (!). We managed to slip in on the 10 AM tour. One slot opened up on the earliest tour, and Stanley seized it, so that he could get home a little earlier.

The caves are even more amazing than I had remembered. My digital camera actually was able to take available-light photos in the the caves using the recessed illumination, with help from flashlights. The amount of “decoration” in Lehman Caves is totally insane; we all had a great time there.

go to the Lehman Caves gallery

For this year's July 4th trip, we went to the southern end of Skyline Drive in the Wasatch Plateau, north of I-70 and east of Salina. The turnout was much smaller than it was for my Memorial Day trip — Stanley, Beth, Giulia, Tony and my dog Toby. However, the weather was great, the scenery was delightful, and we all had a wonderful time.

We stayed at the fairly primitive Salina Creek Second Crossing campground. We were the only people there the entire weekend, which was great, if somewhat shocking. There are 20-odd bulldozed pull-outs plus a pit toilet, but no water, picnic tables or fire rings (and no fees).

Stanley, Beth, Toby and I arrived on Wednesday evening. On Thursday, we drove up Skyline Drive to the point where it was blocked by snow, then got out and hiked. The slushy snowdrift was at 10100 ft, about 2 road miles below the saddle where the road crosses the White Mountain ridge. White Mountain extends in a long arc to the southeast and forms the south wall of the upper Muddy Creek basin. It looks from a distance like it's as flat as a board on top, which isn't quite true, but it sure is hard to tell where the highest point is. There is a long strike valley that runs near the crest on the west side, in which are nestled the lovely Three Lakes.

I noticed a crag at the north end of the ridge and suggested that we hike to the top. We crossed some snow patches and ascended a short but steep rocky slope, and we were greeted by a fantastic view. To the north we could see Island Lake and the green basin of Twelvemile Creek, while off to west Molly's Nipple towered over the landscape. Stanley and I both checked the elevation with our GPSes and came up with 11093 ft, which is a little higher than the 11071 ft on the USGS map. For some reason, this bump is not considered to be the high point of White Mountain — that honor is bestowed on a 10804-ft bump toward the other end of the ridge.

We decided to walk down the White Mountain ridge to see what it had to offer. We followed Forest Road 13 for a while, crossing some wide and soft snow patches. When that road bent north to drop over the rim, we stayed high and followed the plateau. Eventually the plateau pinched out at a crag above broad Baseball Flat. I wasn't sure that we were going to get down, but Beth found a route and pretty soon we were down at FR 161 in the Three Lakes valley. We tried to follow the road back up to the saddle, but it was mostly under snow. Eventually we crossed a snowbank west to the next ridge, and came back out on Skyline Drive.

go to the White Mountain Ridge gallery

Tony and Giulia arrived at the campground on Thursday evening, after driving far up the sketchy road in their Honda Civic, looking for us. They joined us for the Friday hike to Mary's Nipple. Some maps refer to this 10984-ft peak as Molly's Nipple — the names appear to be interchangeable. Wikipedia says: “Mollie's Nipple or Molly's Nipple is the name given to as many as seven peaks, at least one butte, at least one well, and some other geological features in Utah. Some sources claim there are eleven geological features in Utah that bear this name. At least some of those names are attributed to John Kitchen — a pioneer of an early exploration of Utah, who named them to commemorate a nipple of his wife Molly.”

The trail starts as a muddy ATV track along Skyline Drive among glorious fields of larkspur, and contours up in fits and starts to Nipple Ridge. The ridge leads south to a plateau upon which the summit is perched like a flat-topped slab of cake.

The trail went up the right side of a long snowfield and led to a crack in the cliff band. The crack provides a number of class-3 routes above the cliff band, none of which were suitable for a dog. As the other folks moved on to the summit, Toby and I moved south across really crappy footing, looking for a better approach. Beth had gone up a series of gravel-covered shelves on this section, but the treacherous crud was too tough for poor Toby. We dropped down the ridge at the southeast corner and circled back to the crack so that I could at least recover my pack, which I had handed up to Stanley. When Toby and I arrived at the crack, Beth was there, and she offered to hang on to Toby while I went to the summit, which turned out to be just a hundred yards away. We had to wait for Stanley to haul my pack back down from the summit so that I could give Beth the dog leash and dog treats, but it was worth it — I was on top quickly and admiring the awesome view.

On the way down, the snowfield was easy to plunge-step, and we made great time. We hung out at the vehicles for a while enjoying the shade and the pleasant breeze, and checked my flower book to identify the flowers we'd seen.

We stopped on the way down at the point where the Great Western Trail branches off of Skyline Drive, and spent about 40 minutes walking along Dead Horse Ridge. The aroma of the chokecherry blooms was wonderful, and we saw plenty more interesting flowers.

go to the Mary's Nipple gallery

On Saturday, we drove east to the rim of Quitchupah Canyon. On the way, we stopped at the Jack Addley Monument. It's a mile down a rough and sandy side road, in a forest of ponderosa pines. A lightning bolt struck one of those pines in 1938 and killed both Jack and his horse, Old Star, who were under it. The people of Emery built a monument to Jack, which is quite touching. We walked the road past the monument to the rim of Convulsion Canyon, where we looked down on the noisy and dirty Sufco coal mine.

The meadows of flowers continued to be amazing as we drove further north and east. We took another side road through fields of paintbrush, flax, larkspur, globemallow and vetch, with sego lilies scattered widely. We parked in the shade of a forest of ponderosas, aspens, white firs and mountain mahogany. It appeared to me that the forest was recovering from a heavy cut (a clear cut?) — there were stumps of 170-year-old ponderosas, and many cut trees left on the ground. I'm guessing that the cut occurred some time around Jack's death.

We found an ATV track that wandered through thick manzanita brush to the rim. The rim is a big surprise when you reach it — the land drops off abruptly and falls 1500 feet over a series of cliff bands to Quitchupah Creek. I was pleased to see bristlecone pines, which I hadn't spotted on the previous days' hikes. We walked south along the rim, admiring the forest and the view. The manzanita and the mahogany made for some awkward bushwhacking in places, but it wasn't too bad as these things go. We worked our way up to a high point on the rim where there were some old boards from a survey marker. A mysterious hole in the ground opens up very near this high point, seemingly bottomless. We wondered what planet you'd end up on if you fell into the wormhole.

We found another ATV track that led away from the rim and back to the dirt road, so the return to the cars was pleasantly quick and devoid of mahogany thrashing. We continued to see interesting flowers, and I'm still scratching my head over some of them. Beth has encyclopedic knowledge of flowers and shrubs, and I learned a lot by following her around.

Toby was very tired at the end of the day, so I left early, as did Stanley and Beth. The poor overstimulated dog slept most of Sunday, but he seems to have recovered well.

go to the Quitchupah Creek Rim gallery

My Memorial Day trip for the WMC this year set a personal record — 25 participants! That's much more like classic WMC outings from 50 years ago, and we don't even have a Club bus any more. Only a few people cancelled, in spite of the wet weather in SLC.

Because of all of the snow in the high country, I decided to go to a lower elevation this year. I remembered a wonderful visit to Cathedral Gorge State Park in Nevada over Thanksgiving 2017, and I decided to put Cathedral Gorge on the schedule. I was thinking that only a handful of people would register; it is, after all, in Nevada.

Nevada hasn't escaped the wet weather. On the Wednesday before the trip, there was a big rainstorm that left the Cathedral Gorge campground a big mess, with flooding and mud everywhere. Fortunately we had some folks in our group who came down to the campground on Thursday and who were able to improvise — hence we made a last-minute call to switch our campground to Kershaw-Ryan State Park, about 20 minutes to the south. Kershaw-Ryan has better drainage and nice tent sites, and (like Cathedral Gorge) it features (ahem) the critically important amenity of hot showers. After getting a call from Susan Allen, I was able to put out a last-minute e-mail announcing the campground switch, and all but 2 people got the message. (They caught up with us later.)

I arrived at noon on Friday. It's Nevada, so there wasn't that much competition for camp sites — at one point we were occupying six campsites, mostly adjacent. The campground charges by the vehicle rather than by the site, so it didn't make sense to economize on the number of sites.

Not long after I arrived, the Thursday group returned from a trip to see the Elgin Schoolhouse State Park at the south end of Rainbow Canyon. I joined them for a trip into Caliente to check out the free Memorial Day customer-appreciation lunch at the Nevada Bank and Trust. I used the opportunity to try taking photos with my new cell phone; my regular camera is in the shop, and this was the first time that I'd used the cell phone for trip photos. (I'm still adjusting, as you can tell by the occasional fingertip in the picture...)

After lunch, we headed over to the BLM office on the south side of town. They have a number of well-produced flyers describing activities in the area. We decided to visit Rainbow Canyon rock art sites for the afternoon.

There was substantial evidence of flooding on the (paved) Rainbow Canyon road. My Thanksgiving trip had led me to believe that Meadow Valley Wash hardly ever flows in Rainbow Canyon, much less floods. That was an eye-opener. (In fact, I learned later that NV 317 in Rainbow Canyon was massively washed out by floods in January 2005, and was only fully re-opened in the last few years.)

I had been to the first two rock art sites at Etna and Grapevine Canyon. The Etna site is fun because you access it through a tunnel built by the railroad to divert water from the canyon that holds the pictographs. (Watch your head!) Just up the canyon from the pictographs and up a steep hillside are a couple of deep alcoves that apparently served as living quarters for local people. They are now inhabited by bees (hornets?), and swallows — the roof of the first alcove has several mud nests built into the ceiling. We saw plenty of flowers, an indication of how wet the weather has been.

Grapevine Canyon is a pretty place, but the rock art is a bit of a downer because it has been vandalized. It looks like people have tried to remove pictographs by chiseling them off the wall, and they have “improved” some of the petroglyphs by deepening them, and adding graffiti. On the plus side, Hummingbird Spring is a pretty area, with big cliffs and tangled masses of grapevines.

We checked out the other two rock art sites, but they were somewhat underwhelming. We returned to the campground and found that other people had arrived. Over the course of the late afternoon and evening, all but two people showed up. I thought that was amazing.

go to the Rainbow Canyon gallery

Caliente is surrounded by massive amounts of volcanic rocks. Its location was formerly a huge volcanic caldera 36 - 18 million years ago that burped up vast amounts of ash and lava. The landscape was buried in hot ash deposits, which melted together to form a rock called tuff. Tuff tends to be brittle and crumbly, and it often erodes into bizarre shapes.

On my trip to southeastern Nevada in 2017, I visited a very special canyon in tuff that has no name; I decided to call it Tuff Towers Canyon, just so that I could talk about it. The hike starts at the Rainbow Canyon Road, 8 miles south of Caliente on NV 317. We parked there and hiked east up the canyon. Recent flooding has repaved the canyon bottom, so in the lower section, the going is easier than it was in 2017. We saw lots of flowers, including cactus and cliffrose.

I was looking for the turn-off to the Towers, but I missed it and we hiked further up the main canyon. It turns out that the main fork is also spectacular. It's a garden-like area with manzanita and pinyon, surrounded by bizarre beehives of tuff. The tuff is creamy-colored, speckled with ejecta; we found quartz crystals in it. We explored an upper bench area, then came back down.

As we descended, I finally recognized the turn-off to the Tuff Towers. The wash bottom is quite bouldery and rugged — no repaving happened here! The wash bed climbs steadily to the base of the Towers, passing through a gate with tall, creamy walls on both sides.

The main wash is quite brushy at this point, and it is blocked by a pour-off in a couple hundred feet. However, a narrow canyon takes off to the south just after the gates, and I wanted to explore it some more. We scrambled over boulder piles and bashed through thickets, getting very familiar with Fremont's barberry, a small tree with spiny holly-like leaves. The canyon has vertical walls and is maybe 20 feet wide in the upper part. One awkward boulder was a minor scrambling challenge, but several of us squeezed past. 50 yards later, an overhanging chockstone put an emphatic end to the hike.

If I ever get out here again, I'd love to see if there is a way around the pour-off onto the next level above the gates...

go to the Tuff Towers gallery

We had lunch back at camp, then drove north to Cathedral Gorge. After a day and a half of sunny weather, the park still had muddy sections, especially at the bottom of the deep slots and crevices, but it was generally fine for hiking. That's a huge difference from Thursday, when the landscape had turned to slippery mud and the rangers warned of people breaking their legs. The formations at Cathedral Gorge are made from montmorillonite, a major component of bentonite clay; it's used in lubricating mud for oil drilling, and for cat litter.

Cathedral Gorge is a very cool place, and I was happy to see that our big group was having fun there. I had a goal of showing off two places — a cavern that I call the Cathedral, and a bizarre series of natural bridges that I call the Tunnel. I found the Cathedral in 2017, but I hadn't see the Tunnel since my first visit to the park in 1990.

Of course I walked by the Cathedral, and I had to backtrack to pick it up. It's a bit a of a scramble to get up to the entrance, which is covered by a slab and is tall enough to stand up in. Alas, this time the inside was far too slippery to visit, so we had to settle for the view down to the chambers from above.

I had an idea of how I had gone wrong while looking for the Tunnel last time, and I thought that I'd found it on the Google Maps satellite view. We hiked up the draw, but we were disappointed at the end, where there was a tunnel suitable only for crouching dwarves. We started walking back down the draw, but I wasn't willing to quit right away. I tried to get people to join me to check out a side drainage; I managed to convince 6 folks to come with me.

We hit the jackpot. Not only was the Tunnel still in existence, it was navigable, with some mud but no pools of water or significant rockfall. As I had remembered, the Tunnel goes on for at least a few hundred yards, with open and closed-over sections. Some sections required a bit of ingenuity to get through, but it kept going and going. There are some spots where a headlamp is very useful. The formations in Cathedral Gorge are so soft and erodable that a natural bridge can be up to 20 yards long. It's unbelievably fun, although it's also a really terrible place for claustrophobes (or arachnophobes).

When we got back to camp, we found that yet more people had arrived. It was really amazing to me how well dinnertime worked with 5 adjacent campsites. It was also nice to have hot showers to wash the mud off!

One interesting feature of Kershaw-Ryan State Park is that large trains go up or down Rainbow Canyon every hour or so. You can hear the thrum of the diesel engines from far away; it's a bit eerie in the middle of the night. The railroad was built by the Union Pacific between 1901 and 1905, and it carries freight between Las Vegas and Salt Lake. Caliente was a busy service town for the railroad until the UP converted from steam to diesel engines. It's still the only incorporated town in Lincoln County. (Thank you, Google.)

go to the Cathedral Gorge gallery

Sunday started out dry, cool and breezy. I thought it would be fun to drive west on US 93 from Caliente to check out the Oak Springs trilobite beds. The BLM has built a small parking lot and a trail that takes you a quarter mile or so to beds of the sedimentary Pioche Formation. They encourage collecting, so we grabbed hammers and pry bars and set off to find us some trilobites.

The trail peters out in a shallow draw filled with zillions of platy fragments of shale. We started turning over the pieces, and indeed, there were lots and lots of trilobites. Most of the critters were disarticulated, with heads separated from thorax segments and tails, but the heads were easy to find and were quite popular. There was one concentrated area that had most of the fossils — apparently there was a major extinction event 520 million years ago that wiped out the family of trilobites that are prevalent here, and the strata that are higher than the trilobite patch are barren.

go to the Oak Springs Trilobites gallery

I had planned to continue west to the Big Rocks Wilderness Area, where we could check out some rock art and hike to a high point with a view of some crazy rock formations. We drove to Pahroc Spring and spread out looking for petroglyphs in the mouth of the gorge. The wind cranked up another notch, and we could see black rain clouds in the distance. We found no petroglyphs, although there were lots of pretty flowers, and a huge Great Basin gopher snake.

Someone mentioned to me that they had seen a plaque off to the side of the road. I had walked up the road to look for it, but I didn't spot it. After we had spent 20 minutes searching for rock art, someone mentioned that the plaque was not actually on the road, but up the hill a little ways on a spur. We backtracked and found the plaque, and indeed, up a rocky slope, there was a gigantic boulder with a cavity underneath; the outside was decorated with petroglyphs, while the cavity contained pictographs. Pretty nice.

By this time, the wind was really getting fierce. I decided that a hike in these conditions was not going to be fun — we'd be on our hands and knees crawling to the summit. I made the call that we would instead drive out to the White River Narrows rock art site, which is north on NV 318 from US 93 at Hiko. I had been to the site one time before, and I knew that its rock art blows away all of the rock art that we'd seen up to that point in the trip.

The White River Narrows are a series of incised meanders in tuff and lava that the White River left behind back in the Pleistocene when its flow was much greater. The White River drains much of central Nevada, flowing down to the Colorado River, and it provides critical water to the wildlife areas and farms of the Pahranagat Valley. The Narrows are part of the new Basin and Range National Monument, and I was pleased to see a plaque on the side of the road promoting it.

We had a pretty color pamphlet describing the rock art areas, and I recognized them as we visited them. There is only a small amount of vandalism, and there are large numbers of really nice petroglyphs. We stopped first at the southern sites, where you drive up the narrows to two large groups of panels on the west side. We then drove back out to pavement and over to the north site. The north site is amazing, both for its density and its quality. We wandered back and forth admiring the art, but the cold wind and sprinkles motivated us to leave after a short while.

On the way back, we stopped to enjoy the kitschy UFO-related signs and businesses at the intersection with NV 375, the “Extraterrestrial Highway”. The 50-foot-tall alien statue was great, but I wasn't willing to shell out $160 for a big bottle of Alien brand tequila.

Back at Kershaw-Ryan, we had pleasant weather for dinner, and we had another fine social hour. About 9 PM, the rain started and continued through about 7 AM. In the morning, no one was motivated to go hiking, so we split up and went our various ways. Some of us visited the little town of Pioche, north of Cathedral Gorge on US 93. Snow had fallen in town overnight. There are lots of fine old buildings and mining artifacts, but I wasn't motivated to get out of the car when it was wet and just barely above freezing. Still, the snow and fog banks made for a pretty drive north to Wendover, and I got home in time to mow the lawn...

go to the White River Narrows gallery

Bob Grant invited me to come along on a backpack to the White Crack Trail in Canyonlands. The White Crack is one of the few places on the White Rim where you can pass through the Rim's sandstone caprock down into the twisted canyon country below. I had never been to the White Rim before, so I was eager to get there.

Dave Rumbellow joined me on the drive down to Canyonlands. It took an hour for us to drive the 17 miles down the Shafer Trail to the White Rim Trail, then over bumpy slickrock to the Airport B campsite. There we found Bob and Craig McCarthy huddled in Bob's pickup, with the wind blasting away. The wind had already smashed Craig's tent, and it was completely impossible to set up any other tents in the conditions. In the end, Bob slept in the driver's seat of his truck, while Craig slept in a bivy bag in the bed; Dave and I crammed into the back of my 4Runner.

By morning, the wind had completely ceased, allowing us to find missing gear and eat a little breakfast. We packed up the vehicles and drove the remaining 20 miles to the White Crack trailhead. Since I had never been to the White Rim, I took lots of photos on the way.

We had a little time to play before we needed to start backpacking, so Bob took us out to the White Crack proper and then west to a precarious isthmus between a block of White Rim and the main plateau. When we got back, we discovered that a chatty crowd of mountain bikers and their support vehicles had plopped down at the trailhead. They were the last other people we saw before we literally dropped off the cliff down the White Crack.

One of the first things that I noticed after getting down the switchbacks was that the ground was littered with big chunks of pretty red chert or chalcedony. I had been finding zillions of worked chert flakes near the trailhead, but I had told everyone that I thought it was chalcedony of volcanic origin, similar to what I'd seen in Death Hollow. Oops — rarely have I been proven so wrong so quickly! After I got home I found a document titled Cultural Resource Investigations Near White Crack, Island-in-the-Sky District, Canyonlands National Park, Utah that talks about the chert: “The relatively high density of sites in the White Crack Area may be related to (1) the abundant availability of Cedar Mesa Chert and Chalcedony, and (2) the existence of an access route between the White Rim and the subrim canyons and benchlands. The Cedar Mesa Formation is only exposed on the southern end of Island-in-the-Sky (Huntoon et al. 1982), limiting the potential availability of Cedar Mesa Chert and Chalcedony to this part of the district.”

The flowers were lovely after a relatively wet winter. We saw notch-leaved phacelia, fishhook cactus, brilliant red Indian paintbrush, desert evening primrose, claret cup cactus, Mojave asters, and last but not least, the very spicy-smelling cliffrose in bloom. We also saw blackbrush in bloom, as well as scattered juniper trees that served as nice landmarks on the otherwise featureless plateau country. (I never saw a single piñon pine.)

We had an equipment failure after just a mile or so — one of Bob's pack straps broke. Bob repaired it by using a knife to punch a hole through the remaining part of the packstrap and pushing the retaining screw through the hole. He then secured the strap with plenty of duct tape. Of course, the other pack strap broke just 15 minutes later, and Bob repaired it the same way. We had more success with the Craig McCarthy Certified Appendage Protocol (TM) for using foam pads to augment backpacks' hip belts. We suggested that Craig could go into business with this feature — look for his booth at the next OR show.

Friday night was such a disaster that I was unable to find an opportunity to share the lovely bottle of Hook & Ladder Russian River Zinfandel that I had brought to celebrate. Instead, I jammed it into my pack and produced it at camp on Saturday night. Much taste-testing was performed, and before you know it, the bottle was empty!

go to the White Crack day 1 gallery

The next day, we hiked to the confluence of the Colorado and Green Rivers.

We left camp around 8 AM. The old White Crack bulldozer track continued its wiggly path across the landscape, eventually reaching an old uranium miners' camp complete with some old bedsteads and a rusty stove. There is a pretty view of the Green River gorge from the camp. Shortly after the camp, the track followed a ramp up to a wide sandy plateau. I was wondering whether we would have to navigate by GPS after this point, but it turns out that someone has generously cairned the route, and you can follow the tread and cairns all the way to the viewpoint. I personally think that this is great — it may reduce the wilderness experience slightly, but it also keeps bigfooted visitors from tromping randomly all over the delicate landscape.

The trail has fantastic views of the Needles and the Dollhouse across the rivers, and it's tough to avoid stumbling when the scenery is so amazing. The route ended at a notch between two rocky knobs, where we came out onto a flat viewing platform high above the Colorado River gorge. After planting our feet carefully so that we wouldn't get blasted away by the wind, we looked down on the mighty confluence.

It was a great view, but the wind was so nasty that we shortly backed off to an overhang out of the breeze to have some lunch. After lunch, we backtracked a bit and then worked our way on slickrock toward the prominence above the confluence, hoping to get a view into the Green River gorge. The topography was rough and the wind was fierce, and after a while we gave up and turned around. We did get some nice views, but the Green River remained elusive.

The weather became cloudy on the return trip, and we could see big thunderstorms on either side of us. We were a bit worried that our camp might have blown away, but it was intact when we got back. We hung out beneath a rock overhang that blocked the wind and the occasional sprinkles, and enjoyed dinner and libations. (I had brought a flask of 12-year Glenlivet as a treat.)

go to the White Crack day 2 gallery

The next day started out cloudy and got stormier as we packed back to the White Crack. We didn't get rained on, but the temperatures were cool. Bob's improvised backpack straps magically held up. It was Bob's [redacted]th birthday and we all congratulated him. He rewarded us by telling funny stories about the times when he was afraid that he wouldn't make it to his next birthday.

The weather report on Bob's weather radio at the trailhead did not sound at all promising, so we decided to head straight home, going back up the Shafer Trail. Dave and I made one side trip so that I could see the unique Musselman Arch.

A wonderful trip — many thanks to Bob for organizing it and inviting me!

go to the White Crack day 3 gallery

I organized a reprise of last fall's Fisher Creek / Onion Creek trip, this time as an official WMC car camp for April 13th-14th. This time, the side canyon had running water and the obstacles were more annoying, but we still managed to get as far as I did the previous time. Four of us (not including me!) were able to scramble up a narrow opening and ascend to the base of the Titan. We also checked out the upper part of the main fork of this canyon; we turned around at some obstacles that might have been less difficult if they hadn't been so wet. I guess fall is a more appropriate time to visit. We had plenty of fun anyway!

go to the Onion Creek gallery

On Sunday, we realized that over half of the group had never hiked the official Fisher Towers trail, so we introduced them to its glory (along with a few dozen Boy Scouts from Ogden). I already have lots of photos from that trail, so didn't take any more, which was foolish — every visit is different.

Instead, I took photos at the Sego Canyon ancient art site outside of Thompson Springs, which Steve D had alerted us to. I'm really glad that Steve mentioned it, because it's truly awesome: one of the best rock art sites that I've seen in Utah.

Many thanks to Paul, Stanley, Steven H, Kathy, Leslie and Steve D for making the trip extra enjoyable!

go to the Sego Canyon gallery