Day 3 I woke up a bit sore and anxious to get back to my baby girl. But I knew the Emerald Pools was a short trail that give us a chance to stretch before sitting in the car for 5 hours.
We hit the trail at a perfect time in my opinion, early enough that it wasn't yet too crowded or very hot. We did the whole thing, adding the upper and middle pools, still just getting in over 2.5 miles.
A peaceful morning at Zion
The Middle Emerald pool is just behind me in the picture, but I like the view with all of the greenery this way the best.
And of course when April and I found this bit of machinery we knew her boys would love to see it:
In my opinion, the Emerald pools is definitely a hike worth taking. I've done it a number of times and it honestly delivers on being short and sweet.
I already can't wait for a new adventure with April next year!
We woke early and got on the trail just after having some instant oatmeal. It was less than a mile before we starting seeing more spectacular views. And what surprised me was that I knew these canyons we were seeing were not the main Zion canyon, but numerous ones mostly unexplored, or more accurately probably too remote and inaccessible to see much traffic. I was overwhelmed thinking of all of the space and curious features of the land that I never knew about and that so few people actually see. There's so much more than I ever imagined to Zion National Park and Utah in general.
I really like the juxtaposition of the greenery on the one side and the rock walls on the other.
Here's a picture of Rim springs, looking cleaner than Potato Hollow springs did and by that time it was getting pretty warm out. We filtered a couple of bottles.
We actually came down quite a bit from the rim so that we could get on top of a different outcropping of rock. I didn't expect as much up and down as there was along the trail which would explain why I was sore a few days afterward.
Our first view of Angel's Landing: If you're not familiar with Zion National Park it's the spiny rock in the foreground, it has chains to hang on to as you hike up onto the top part that flattens out.
Closer up on Angel's Landing, another contributing factor to the soreness in my legs in the days following this hike, thought my running and stairmaster sessions would have nipped this in the bud. Other peaks haven't made me so sore, but again, probably it was the up and down with a pack that did it.
View looking up the canyon from atop Angel's Landing
Once we were headed down from Angel's Landing we knew we were home free. Just a couple more miles all downhill and we could take off our packs, get a cold drink and relax in the Virgin River for a while before setting up camp at the Watchmen campground.
Or that was the plan anyway until we accidentally stumbled upon the sweetest swimming hole ever while driving through the old tunnel. I can't say exactly where this $%#@&@# GEM OF A WATERHOLE is, because I'm going to treasure that information from this day out, but let me just show you how sweet it was:
Yes, that's right, we had it to ourselves after just a few minutes. The rock at the back was perfect for jumping off of, not high, but just enough to be tons of fun. Needless to say, it was absolutely refreshing and a complete surprise considering the number of times I've been to Zion and not known this pool was there.
So we abandoned other plans of getting in the Virgin river that day, set up camp and did the easy Riverside walk to the entrance of the Narrows. Beautiful. Yes, I forgot how beautiful that simple little paved trail is when all the plants are in their prime. Lush and beautiful.
April and I used to belt out that Tom Petty line on various road trips from Provo to Missoula when my parents were still living there. I really think it's been that long since we took a road trip together sans children.
We planned a trip to Zion National Park for a quick weekend getaway. April had been once years ago and though I'd been a number of times, I'd primarily seen the main tourist circuits at the southern end of the park, aside from my Kolob Arch hike a few years ago. So we settled on hiking the West Rim trail from Lava point, a 13 mile trail that meets up with the Angel's Landing trial at the saddle. We'd drop our packs to summit Angel's Landing and then explore some of the shorter trails.
I'd honestly been kind of burnt out on Zion having gone a few years in a row at the end of football season. The whole idea was usually that it would be a warm getaway, but late November isn't really that much warmer in St. George area than it is in Salt Lake. Warmer, but not significantly so to base a vacation around warm weather. This time was different though and I credit that to the awesome hike and it being earlier in the year so all of the greenery was still abundant. That being said, we were subject to hiking in over 100-degree weather on day 2.
We started out on Friday, September 11 driving down to the south visitor's center park and getting our backcountry passes. We met up with Tyler who was doing some work in St. George for the day and willing to be our shuttle driver to the trailhead. He dropped us off around 3:30-4 pm and we got started. It was an easy 4 miles to our campsite that night, and I wasn't expecting much as far as scenery until we got further along the trail but I've attached samples below of what we saw that first day, I was pleasantly surprised:
Endless canyons Tree graveyard in the meadow Campsite at Potato Hollow springs There we stayed our first night. The spring was not very promising, more like a little mud hole, and we only filtered 1 bottle of water, knowing we had enough to get by until we met Rim Springs the next day. But I really thought it was the best campsite after seeing all of the other sites along the trail. A friendly deer nibbled on grasses the whole time April and I were eating our dinner. We went to bed just as it got dark because it was much cooler up there than we had anticipated, but more deer joined our friendly one and we both heard them about the campsite for a long while before falling asleep.
Alene and I were hoping for a big hike on Labor day, but we failed to plan on finding a baby sitter (which would have been hard anyway) and since Alene is taking this weekend to do a backpacking trip with her sister April, we decided to do a smaller hike with Bailey (Caiden was at his mom's).
Alene found a nice little hike up Farmington Canyon at the Sunset campground. I had no idea this canyon existed and went back as far as it did. The road that takes you up the canyon actually goes up into some beautiful country and you can take it all the way into Bountiful. I was a little disturbed by all the OHV's, but they have the right to be up here too I guess. The campground (Sunset Campground) was about 5 miles up the canyon and it had a small, almost un-noticible trail leading down into the canyon bottom.
The trail didn't look very heavily traveled as the brush around it was very narrow in some spots. The campground also had about 10-15 spots, but only one person still set up for camp that day.
We hiked down about 5-10 minutes to the canyon floor. On our way down we passed a father/daughter that had been doing some geocaching and found an old abandoned gold mine. We tried to find it when we got down there, but had no luck. The creek that runs along the bottom is beautiful. As we worked our way down stream we came across a family that had backpacked down there and set up camp along the creek. We also worked our way down to a small area that bailey could play in the water. Just below that was a nice little water fall. Getting to the bottom of the waterfall was doable, but not with a baby (too steep). Bailey had a blast getting wet and soaking her face in the peach we brought for her to eat.
It was a nice little hike. Someday I'd like to go back and explore the rest of this area. I'm told there are some beautiful lakes along the way as the road brings you back to Bountiful.
Here are some pictures and video:
Mommy and Bailey all ready to go
The skinny trail
Awesome view of the Great Salt Lake
Our first sign of water
An old wrecked car. It must have been rolled down to this spot. Pretty amazing how far it must have gone
The waterfall from a distance
The only way down to the base of the waterfall
Bailey loved dipping her feet in the water
She also loved finding rocks at the bottom of the creek
Looking down from the top of the waterfall
Bailey enjoying her peach
A pool in the creek
Another picture of the Great Salt Lake from Farmington Canyon
Bailey rode home with only her diaper on as she soaked her clothes with creek water and Peach juice
Bailey and I snuck up for a night of camping in the Uintas with my sister's family last weekend. They already had plans and it wasn't too hard for me to throw some stuff together and meet them. I was excited about the impulsiveness of it and the chance to actually get out with less than a 2 hour drive. But the truth is I just don't get as excited about going to the Uintas as I do the desert. Despite growing up in Montana and still loving the beauty there, somewhere along the way I fell in love with the desert, most likely when I did my two-month dig there in 2001, but I"d had it coming long before then too.
When I first moved to Israel in 2000 I couldn't believe how brown most of it was. Just brown. Not exactly how you might have pictured "the fertile crescent." But I loved it, I never minded it, it was full for me because of all the mysteries there, all the passion there, all the godliness there. I remembered a quote from reading "the Little Prince" earlier that said: "What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well." (I'm sure I've said this somewhere before, but hey, I feel passionately about it.)
So heading to the Uintas is a nice change when the desert is too hot or when I need a quicker getaway, but doesn't quite fulfill my hunger. And I have to also confess that I couldn't stand the sense that I hadn't really escaped at all when I am driving and its as busy as a Japanese train station there. Lots of waiting behinds lines of vans, cars, trucks, campers, etc. Packed campgrounds (I'm not fond of campgrounds in general, but when you're sort of planning on doing that kind of thing it sucks when they're all full).
Lucky for me, my sister and her husband had scouted out ahead of me and decided to scrap the campgrounds altogether. They waited for me to meet up with them and we quickly found a site not much further that was off the main drag.
We set up camp and proceeded to battle the mosquitoes full force. We drove to a nearby spot and ate dinner, played in the water, and saw just how dirty the kids could get.
By bedtime Bailey had done the best she could to dirty up those jammies of hers.
I caught my nephew putting a rock in my cooler, but later on I found that he had snuck in many more than just that one. I consider his little rocks signs of endearment.
Next morning we went for a short hike. Truth was as much as I like a good hike, I was not sure I was up for carrying Bailey for another 5-miler so after having just done it the last weekend (I need to toughen up a bit), coupled with the mosquito problem, we all decided to play a little and head back. We had only done a little over mile from the parking lot to Cliff Lake and slightly beyond. A sort of reverse version of the Clyde Lake loop Tyler and I had done a few years back.
Bailey was having a good time just standing by this little log.
It started drizzling just before we reached the parking lot and then Bailey had a solid car nap the whole way home. I think she was making up for not being such a good sleeper in the tent and helping me out since nothing sucks like driving alone with a crying baby.
I would have liked it if Tyler had been able to come to, but I did enjoy the benefits of buying fig newtons instead of oreos and pastrami instead of turkey.
Bill took some great photos of the lake and all of the kids. See his set on Flickr here.
On Friday I took the day off from work to do a hike with the family and Alene's sister, April, and her kids. We endedp hiking up to Silver Lake. Now, I know there a million Silver Lakes in Utah, so to avoid any confusion, this one is located up American Fork canyon.
You start off by making your way up to Tibble Fork reservoir, then you keep driving on the switch-back road (still paved) beyond Tibble Fork. After a few miles there is a dirt road that veers off to the right (right before the Granite flat campground), and you follow that dirt road for 6 miles or so up to Silver Flat reservoir. From there the trailhead starts and you work your way up the mountain. It's a 5 mile hike round trip, but doable for families. I'd HIGHLY suggest not bringing your jog stroller on this path like a family we saw attempting to do. There are a couple of stream crossings, one of which requires rock-hopping. As you get closer to the top, it gets a bit more grueling, but it really isn't a bad hike. If you're out of shape (like me) you'll feel it when you get up there and the next day for sure.
Here are some pictures and video clips of this hike:
Heading up
A few of the 3-4 streams you cross
Bailey knows how to hike in style
Caiden's getting so big
This tree has been expecting me.....
Blue bells (lick on the large version of the picture to see the details of the inside of the flowers)
As we got closer, we could see two waterfalls cascading down from Silver Lake
Looking back down toward AF Canyon with Timp on the Right side of the picture
Finally at the lake. There were about 5-6 other groups of people up there too.
I don't have a lot of time right now, but I'm going to post links to the sets of each of these hikes. Some of these pictures are dated from previous trips. The pictures at the beginning are from this trip.
Straight Wash - This is where we camped
Goblin Valley - The first 18 pictures are from this trip
Eardley Canyon
Black Dragon Canyon - Just the pictures from inside the cave are from this trip
Also did some light painting along the I-70 and Hwy 24 junction while waiting for Russ
We did not sleep as well as we did that first night because of both the rain and because of Bailey waking up quite a bit. We woke up to more sounds of rain and hard rain. We were feeling horrible with the thought that we would have to consider leaving and leaving James here, who drove the whole 4 hrs the day before to get there. We quickly ate breakfast and decided to go see Goblin Valley, as James had never been there before.
The place was a mud-soaked mess and the rain continued, but we walked through it anyway.
The chocolate river that ran through the park
Caiden with his poncho on
Bailey just waking up from her nap. Alene was carrying her under her nursing blanket most of the time.
Me and my kids
The rain stopped on our walk back to the cars, so the ground quickly became more stable
Caiden's shoes
The trail going up to the parking lot was dangerous
When we left, it started to rain again. We got to camp to talk about our situation a bit more and decided we needed to leave. James too decided he was going to leave. We felt horrible for him because the last time we went camping with him we had to leave under critical circumstances :-).
My climbing ropes were still tied up, so after loading the truck, the last thing I had to do was climb up some sandstone rock to release them and wrap them back up. That took quite a while, but I was relieved that it didn't end up too dangerous.
My brother's and I are going to go back on the weekend of June. 12th. I hope for much better weather then. We had a great time with two excellent hikes and it was fun hanging out with the Bergeners and getting to know the Grabers some more.
On the second day we awoke to the surprise that Bailey slept through the whole night. We were shocked. Still, when she was up, she was UP. I somehow fell asleep in the tent for another 2 hrs while Alene played with Bailey and Caiden and the kids ran around on the sandstone around the campsite.
It took a while to get going, but it had been raining a little that morning, so we were trying to figure out the best thing to do. We headed to Goblin Valley, but noticed by the time we arrived, that it was raining even harder. We, as a group, decided to take our chances and go try something else and hope that Goblin Valley would be better to hike the next day (as you will see, we were wrong).
We decided to hike up to Skylight Arch, which was actually quite close to our campsite. We had previously known this hike as "San Rafael Window", or "Wild Horse Window", or "that cave thing you can see from the road". We did it about 2.5 years ago with my parents and I really enjoyed it, but Alene didn't remember it much. By the time we arrived at the trail head, the rain had stopped and the clouds actually disappeared. It was a very nice hike up and back.
This hike is cool because you get to be directly on sandstone most of the way up. When you're not, you're treking through soft sand. When you get to the Arch, you're amazed at the size. Some other cool things there are all the people that have carved their names into the ground in the area. You'll also find some fake pictographs.
Here are some pictures/video of the hike:
At the trailhead, waiting to head up
Looking back at our trucks
A water soaked cactus flower
Looking south toward Wild Horse Butte
Bailey hanging onto a flower
The group heading up
Getting closer
Some pools just before getting to the arch. This one had a bunch of tadpoles in it.
Bailey clapping
Jared, John, Kevin, and I hiked up to the top of the arch. It was SCARY being close to that drop as it is definitely a life-taker. Would be cool to rappel into it though.
I laid on my belly to get close enough to the edge to take this picture
A few more pictures of the arch from our previous trip (I never actually took pictures of the arch while we were there this time)
(older picture)
(older picture)
Thumbs down to the fake pictographs (older picture)
On our way back
After our hike, we decided to part ways for a bit with the rest of the group. They were up for a scenic drive, and we were almost out of ice, so we decided to see what Hanksville, UT was like. We knew it was the closest town to the Swell, but we didn't know it was less than 20 minutes away. It was great to get there, see the small town, and get some stuff we needed. Good to know in general that it's not too far away in the future for a REAL emergency.
Alene snapped a picture of this old church in town.
Bailey got some serious cookie face on the way back
When we got back to camp, the rest of the group had not returned from their drive yet, so I went and set up a rappel, in hopes we could all have a good time doing that. I was able to hit it once (no pictures/video), then the rain came POURING down. I quickly ran back to camp to get dinner ready, in hopes the rain would stop. It never stopped the rest of our time there.
The rest of our group returned a bit later, explaining how they ended up taking some pretty hairy roads and had to find their way back. I'm hoping they post video on their blog.
We were mostly worried, however, for our friend James, who was coming down with his girlfriend. Not only were we in a different campsite than he expected (I was able to email him earlier, but I wasn't sure if he received it), but the rain got heavier and heavier. As the evening rolled around, we sat in the truck while bailey slept. Around 9:30pm we got nervous and I decided to go driving to look for him. Within 10 minutes I had found him and guided him to our site. It must have been so horrible for him to arrive to these conditions. We quickly helped him set up his tent, then all went to bed for the night.
Well, our original plan for our 5 days of no work was to go to Capital Reef National Park, but we kind of chickened out. Our biggest worry was for Bailey and having her sleep well. We figured we would rather go somewhere we're familiar with to lessen the stress a bit. Plus, our friends the Bergeners were going to be there with their neighbors the Grabers, so we figured we would invite ourselves and join them. We had a great time (as usual) despite us leaving a day earlier due to rain.
For all of the pictures/videos of this trip, feel free to check out our flicker sets here:
Note that some of these sets are combined with previous visits to these areas. You can tell where they change by keeping an eye on the "date taken on" on the right hand side of the picture. As usual, you can enlarge each photo by clicking on "all sizes" at the top of the picture.
We got up at 4:30am on Thursday morning in order to get down to the Swell at a decent time. We were able to leave the house by 5:30am and got to the campsite around 9:30am. We ended up camping in South Temple wash, which is off the main road that runs through the Temple Mtn. Road. We quickly set up camp, made our lunches and got out there to go hike Crack Canyon. I had never done Crack Canyon, but Bill has kept telling me that Crack is an amazing canyon and he wasn't lieing. It could be one of my favorites in the swell so far.
It's fun because the drive into it was an adventure itself with a little 4x4 trail you take to the entrance (or you could hike the whole trail). The canyon has tall walls (as expected), lot's of greenery, some great narrows, an awesome "subway" of sorts, and a few drop-offs that make it challenging. I'd love to get to the end of this canyon someday. We hiked as far back as we could, until about the 4th drop-off, where we decided to not drop our kids down because it was a bit longer than the other drops.
All in all, we had a great hike. Here are some pictures from the hike below:
The opening of the canyon
Caiden and Madison climbing on the rocks
Subway looking area
Us in the subway area
The group hiking in the canyon
Greenery in the canyon
Log stuck in the canyon
Bailey getting her mineral in-take
Madison, Caiden, and Parker leading the way
Lifting and dropping kids packs down to each other
Alene waiting for us to come back up the canyon
Hiking back out
The trail going out was a little rough
Graber's truck
Jared's low-rider
When we got back we let the kids play while Jared, John, and I went shooting in North Temple wash. We set up our targets about 30' away:
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