View from Mesa Butte

Adam, Ryan, and Lisa on the trail

Ryan and Lisa

Juli works her way up the Mesa

View from Mesa Butte

Adam gaining the summit ridge

Juli gains the summit ridge

Ryan gains the summit ridge

Lisa gains the summit ridge

Sean leading a route

Peak

Rick leading a crack on G slab

Rick leading a crack on G slab

Rick leading a crack on G slab

Sean grinning while leading the same crack

Sean lead a crack on G slab

Sean lead a crack on G slab

Sean lead a crack on G slab

Sean lead a crack on G slab

At the top

Jamie, Sean, and Leigh Ann on top of Berthod Pass

Sean on top of Berthoud Pass

Jamie digging a series of interconnected tunnels like the Vietcong

How could you not be smiling huge on a day like this?

View from the top

Jamie cranking some turns

Leigh Ann tracking up fresh snow

Sean and his tele turns

Stick the tongue out, it helps!

Whew, nothing to it!

Me in front of Parker Ridge

Parker Ridge

Sean digging a snowpit

Mt Hilda and Hilda Ridge

Sean skiing towards a headwall on Parker Ridge

Climbing up Parker Ridge

Almost there

Finally on the ridge crest

Nice looking turns!

View from the top

Making the turns

Is that lift ticket?

Tele moves

Ready to ski down

Turns on Hilda Ridge

Low down on Hilda Ridge

The cook shack at Hilda Creek Hostel

Pose down!

Hilda Cr Hostel

Jon and Jamie

It’s official (c: On January 16th I proposed to Jamie and she said yes!

We went for a back country ski trip up to Guanella Pass and at 11,500 ft I surprised her with a ring and a bottle of champagne

]]> http://www.journeyingjon.com/?feed=rss2&p=741 1 http://www.journeyingjon.com/?p=737 http://www.journeyingjon.com/?p=737#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:11:19 +0000 JN http://www.journeyingjon.com/?p=737 Friday: Keystone

Saturday: Montezuma up to Sts. John

Sunday: Breckenridge

Cheers,
Jon

Turret arch seen through North Window, pre sunrise

He had described it pretty well and there was a perch on a slab of rock that afforded an amazing view. This morning was cold and I really could hardly wait for the sun to rise!

Turret arch seen through North Window, at sunrise

Turret arch seen through North Window, at sunrise

Sunrise in the desert

Turret arch seen through North Window, at sunrise

Turret arch seen through North Window, at sunrise

This was an amazing place to spend sunrise, warm rays of golden light really warmed up the colours on the rocks not to mention my own freezing skin! I took a ton of shots on my little perch and then we moved over towards South Window and around to Turret Arch.

Jamie heads for South Window

Path up to Turret Arch

Turret Arch

As a last-day on vacation this one was great! Mostly relaxing, amazing views, and scene I’ll remember forever. We had breakfast at the trailhead, an attempted picnic until the winds got to be too much and then we hit the road.

Looking down into the valley with the trail visible

The Murphy Loop is about 9miles and 1400ft of elevation gain and it’s exactly the sort of trail that I had hoped for out Canyonlands. It carries you across the tops of some huge mesas and then drops you down 1000 ft to the bottom of the canyon where you can see probably 3 more similar drops all the way down to the formative Colorado River.

Looking down into the valley with the trail visible

Me posing with the valley

Jon and Jamie pre-adventure

Choices, choices!

We started out the hike along the “hogback” and then returned via the “wash”, I would advocate this route to anyone else that is doing this trail as it starts you out nice and high and you slowly work your way down in the valley.

The gully we descended

This is a shot looking back at the start of the trail, all of the posing shots were taken at the top of this mesa and we descended along ledges down the middle of the gully! Despite how it may appear at first glance though it really is a well built, clearly marked, and overall safe trail.

Canyonlands

Canyonlands

These were exactly the kind of views I had hope for out of Canyonlands and the hike around the Murphy Loop more than made up for my disapointment the day before in both the Syncline Loop and the Moab Brewery, they were that good!  Where the trail ends and it meets the road they have 4×4 camp spots with what I swear are the worlds strongest looking outhouses. I kid you not, you could probably survive a full on desert sandstorm in one of those and probably an attack by a sandworm too.

Jamie takes in the view

That’s right, I’m a tough guy!

But I can’t touch the towers

There is a little road-walking before the trails pick up again and you’re back on the “wash” route. We were pretty engrossed in conversation and nearly missed the turn actually! I wonder how long we would have gone along the road for before noticing our mistake? The wash makes a good trail, again it follows a drainage resulting in a windy (wine-dee not win-dee) path and a sandy surface for walking on that is more tiring than you’d expect.

Right before popping out of the drainage we came across this little gem of a spot, I’ve never been so dry in the bottom of stream bed before!

I feel like I’m scuba diving 10,000 years too late!

I can still climb though

Even if just a little

Sheer cliffs

Sheer cliffs

Back up the gully

The grunt back up the gully was straightforward and easily accomplished, we kept a good pace and the well built trail took us right back up to the top.

Neat patterns

Obligatory trail sign

We arrived back at the trailhead in the middle of the afternoon and never ones to waste daylight we figured we aught to amble in to the Upheaval Dome lookout and see what all the fuss was about. We had originally planned to do so after hiking the Syncline loop but didn’t have the energy or enthusiasm for it then.

As I said in my previous post, the lookout trail is really well worth the effort and we we moseyed in to take a look.

Small figures at the overlook

Jamie takes in the view

Walking back out we both realized how incredibly relaxed we were and how nice of a vacation this had been so far. We both love mountaineering and going for summits but taking a break from that and spending some time in the desert was wonderful. Don’t get me wrong we still hiked 30+ miles and gained some elevation but there was less pressure and great weather too.

The last stop in Canyonlands was a viewpoint right before the gates. I can’t remember the name now but it was an amazing sight to see! That’s a road down there rather than a hiking trail and check out the size of the truck in the next pictures.

Looking down into a huge canyon (that’s a truck road, not a trail)

See, trucks!

Really cool! I definitely want to go back to Canyonlands and explore some more. Arches was neat, and we covered it well in day but I think Canyonlands has a lot more adventure in there still.

That night we drove back up to Arches and camped in the Devil’s Garden again one more time. I’ve always had a fascination with long shutter speeds and especially star-trails so these pictures are the best that I took that night.  This one was a 30min exposure and I’m pretty pleased with how it came out.

Night shot at camp

This next one was an hour-long exposure of our neighbours tent all lit up from the inside. Unfortunately the clouds rolled in and obscured most of the sky, but I’m still pleased with the overall effect.

1hr exposure of our neighbours tent

Mesa Arch at sunrise

The hike in to Mesa arch is really short and easy and at least 3 guys raced past Jamie and I on the trail only to bog down a few minutes later so that we could pass them. When we rounded the corner to the Mesa Arch Viewpoint this is what I saw

The gathered crowd

There were easily 20 people gathered around waiting for the sunrise, and the closest was no more than 6ft away from the arch. It made for some weird conditions and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get any great full-arch shots that didn’t have at least two people in them. When the sun finally rose though it was amazing and once again completely worth the wait (and elbowing!)

Mesa Arch at sunrise

Mesa Arch at sunrise

Desert at Sunrise

Desert at Sunrise

Once we’d had our fill of tourists, sunrise, and empty bellies we headed back to our camp for a quick breakfast and then off for a hike on the Syncline Loop around Upheaval Dome.

The long version of the trip report will follow but I’ll suffice by saying: don’t waste your time! You’ll get a good enough view from the Overlook trail and unless you’re a geologist or masochist there really isn’t a good reason to do the Syncline Loop trail.

We’re always up for a little punishment and the 8mi, 1300ft elevation gain loop sounded great on paper. The Upheaval Dome sounded really cool as well and so we set off around the loop in a counter-clockwise fashion.

Start of the Syncline Loop

The first part of the trail was easy enough to follow and took us through some really amazing geological features.

Amazing rock valley we descended through

Before long though we were in the bottom of the canyon and completely in the shade of the huge sedimentary walls. The views were interesting but the temperatures were easily 10 degrees colder than up on the rim and we blasted through a lot of the terrain that way. There really wasn’t anything very interesting to see down there either, the valley just carried us around the loop and always in the shade of the huge walls.

View of the Mesas from down in the canyon

View of the Mesas from down in the canyon

Spur to the inside of the crater

About 2/3 of the way around the loop we hopped on the spur to take us into the middle of the dome. I suppose the mistake we made here was not going to the lookout first so that we knew what we were hiking 2mi in to see!

Trail to the inside of the crater

The trail followed an dried up drainage and took a very windy course, as waterways often do. By the time we got to the middle of the crater I had completely crashed from lack of food intake and was in a very foul mood! This could be colouring my perception of the Dome but all in all I wasn’t very impressed and I don’t think it was worth the effort to get there. Realizing my crashed state, before Jamie punched me in jugular for being grumpy, I wolfed down some food and perked back up for the rest of the hike.

Desert Mesas

View of the canyon

View of the canyon

The trip out from the spur wasn’t grand, more of the same with a big climb at the end to get out of the canyon. All in all, I wouldn’t recommend this hike to anyone. It doesn’t capture the flavour of Canyonlands and there are no views to make it worthwhile. By contrast, the Murphy Loop was an excellent trail that had amazing and very worthwhile views!

That night we didn’t bother trying for sunset pictures, we bombed into Moab for a hotel night and a little Moab Brewery Action. The hotel was decent and it was a nice change from camping the whole time. The Moab Brewery on the other hand was a definite let down! The lines were long, the beer was only adequate, the food was mediocre, and the service was horrible! We were seated at a table near the door and the winter chill got us each time some one entered or exited. Jamie had a salad and I opted for the prime rib (hey, it was on special!) and while the food was good it was not nearly as great as we had hoped. I would put in on par with any chain kind of restaurant when we were really hoping for “Vine St” Level quality.

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