MJK Thrills N Spills: September 2014

Sunday, September 21, 2014

One Last Backpacking Trip to the Uintas

Mike and I snuck one last backpacking trip in before the season disappeared on us: to Naturalist Basin in the Uinta mountains here in Utah. We left work at 3:00 on Friday so we could start hiking by 5:30 and hoped to get camp set up before the dark hit - and we were just barely successful! Joel, a new friend of ours that backpacked Bryce Canyon with us, and his friend Colleen were supposed to hike in that night to meet up with us.... but they kind of got lost on the trail in the dark, decided to call it a night, finish the hike in the morning, and ended up camping only a mile from the trail head! I'm so glad that was their circumstances and not the disastrous injuries I imagined when I heard a helicopter fly overhead in the middle of the night. Then Mike's really good friends, Jordan and Julie, hiked in Saturday as well.

Mike and I laughed that his 0-degree bag that I borrowed was nearly as big as my pack.

Mike and I at the trail head

Mike and I hung out around camp for a bit hoping Joel and Colleen would arrive in time to hike Spread Eagle Peak with us, but they were an hour behind us so we went ahead and headed up to the peak. It was pretty fun! We took our time and explored by Jordan Lake and a waterfall that dumps into it, then we made our own trail across a pretty barren moon scape of grass and rocks and passed two other lakes on our way to the peak. Hiking the peak was pretty nuts - there was no trail! We had to scale up a pretty steep slope to the saddle/ridge, then after that attaining the peak wasn't too bad. This was definitely the highest peak I've climbed so far! Its elevation is 12,540 feet above sea level. Coming down from the peak, we practically slid down the slope the whole way because it was so steep and loose. Then we explored, and Mike fished, some more lakes, including a very beautiful Blue Lake where we happened to run into Joel and Colleen!

Jordan Lake

Mike and the waterfall

Pointing where Spread Eagle Peak is

Mike leading the charge to the peak

On top of Spread Eagle Peak

Mike's tiger trout he caught

Blue Lake

Mike fishing at Blue Lake

Mike's colorful fish out of Blue Lake

Colleen, Joel, and me at Morat Lakes

In camp with Jordan, Julie, Colleen, Joel, Mike, and me (left to right)

We hiked back down to camp and met up with Jordan and Julie there, built a fire, made some dinner, chatted, gazed at the stars, and went to bed. And then.... we woke up to rain Sunday morning. But I was kind of excited! For two reasons: I wanted to try out my new rain jacket to see how water proof it was, and it would save me from having to hike Agassiz Peak with Mike since he wanted to maybe hike a second peak on Sunday. Ah! I could barely walk as it was from hiking Spread Eagle Peak - I was that sore.... in fact it took me three more days to recover from my sore muscles. :) So we hiked the five miles back to the trail head in the rain. But my new boots and rain jacket kept me nice and dry and warm.

Mike - hiking out in the rain and clouds

Me, Colleen, and Joel in the rain

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Our Big Blast of a Weekend in Bryce Canyon National Park

Mike and I took a few extra days off work leading up to Labor Day weekend to head down to Bryce Canyon National Park to do the backpacking trip and biking we wanted to do earlier this year but was canceled due to bear attacks. (Yeah, I was okay with it being canceled under those circumstances.) The bears were relocated and the trail was re-opened so we headed down for try number two.

Thursday we took a quick stroll around the Navajo Loop in Bryce Canyon National Park. Then we biked Thunder Mountain, which is normally done as a shuttle to avoid the seven or so miles on a paved bike path and the couple miles on a dirt road, but since it was just us and my one little Subaru, Ruby, we biked all that for a total of 15.6 miles. Thunder is so fun. It's as if you are riding your bike through Bryce Canyon National Park - with red sand and dirt everywhere and even some hoodoos. Then we followed ride that up with a 4.6 mile mountain bike tour of Kodachrome State Park - where you can indeed ride your mountain bike on a couple of the hiking trails there - although they weren't wonderful trails: very loose and sandy. We were wiped out by the end of that day.

on Thunder Mountain

@ Kodachrome State Park

Friday we shot over to Brianhead ski area to catch a shuttle that would take us to the top of the 11-mile Bunker Creek trail at the top of Brianhead Peak. Thats when we discovered that we could get a single lift ride to ride one of the mountain biking trails at Brianhead Resort. It was.... fun.... and anticlimactic. Brianhead only has three trails you can ride - one beginner, one intermediate, and one advanced. We were down the advanced trail in 20 minutes and that includes the 15 minutes it took us to ride the lift to the top. But hey, it was free so we did it. Bunker Creek was a blast. Awesome views. Some technical spots. One split in the trail where you can choose your own adventure - one side was steeper and more technical, the other more "flowy" and less technical.... ha ha ha! We took the more "flowy" route and it was okay on flowiness but still quite technical. I kept repeating the whole time we were going down it, "I'd hate to see the other side!" It was challenging for sure. Then the trail ended on a dirt road that connected us to our car. We made our lunch there at the car and ate on a grassy spot by a little creek.

Friday evening we hiked down a one-mile connector trail from the main road in Bryce Canyon National Park to our campsite on the Under-the-Rim trail to cache 5 gallons of water for us and our three friends that would be backpacking on that trail for the next 48 hours. We had heard that there was very little water down along the trail so Mike had the brilliant idea to stow some water in some bushes just off the trail by our campsite. And he ended up stowing our tent down there too! Then our other three friends, Steve, Tessa, and Joel, joined us that night.

caching the water

cairns to remind us where we cached the water

Saturday morning we started our backpacking trip on the 23-mile-long Under-the-Rim trail in Bryce Canyon National Park. Interestingly, when Mike and I were getting the permit to do the hike the park ranger was surprised we planned to do the whole thing! So maybe the whole trail doesn't get hiked all that often.... which became apparent on our first day when we saw how many trees were down across the trail and how many landslides/washes had taken out the trail. And we laughed at the elevation profile that the park provides because they do not show you all the ups and downs between the different points, they just give you the point elevations and draw a straight line between them. The trail, on both Saturday and Sunday, was up and down and up and down and up and down. So it was a challenging 23 miles. We camped at Right Fork Swamp Canyon, which was perfect because we had some views of the canyon walls above and it was just a little over halfway - oh and we started at Rainbow Point and finished at Bryce Point. Every campsite had signs about bear and cougar sightings.... scary! But lucky for us, we didn't see any bears or cougars. On our second day, we actually did see some clear water! We had a big climb to get back up on top of the canyon wall but it ended up not being too bad.