Week 26 Feb. 27 - Dark Canyon

Again, more to come but a quick cell phone update.

Sunday was day 6 of a 7 day 6 night backpacking trip in Dark Canyon. We set up camp Saturday where Lost Canyon runs into Dark Canyon. Sunday morning we followed Dark Canyon 5 miles down to where it runs into the Colorado River.

I have hiked every weekend for half a year! Only 26 hikes left. How will I top this one?

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Total Distance: Approximately 9.5 miles
Elevation Gain: Approximately 1000 ft. 

Time: 10:15 am - 4:30 pm.
Weather: Cold, mostly cloudy, a little rain and a few sun breaks.

There is not much else to say.  I love this wild place.  It is primitive.  It is untouched.  It is natural.  It is one of my favorite places in the world.  I cried on the last day out looking back into the canyon.  I will return again, but not soon enough.

Orchid: The Colorado River.

Onion: The thought of leaving this magnificent place.

Picture:

Google Map

Week 25 Feb. 20 - San Rafael Swell and Valley of the Goblins

More to come later, but a quick update from my phone.

I had an amazing hike through Little Wild Horse canyon and Bell Canyon. Came back to camp and my best friend from work, who is my co-leader, and I took a little hike to the valley of the goblins.

Great times, tomorrow I descend into dark canyon for 7 days.

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And here is more...

Total Distance: Approximately 11 miles
Elevation Gain: Approximately 1000 ft. 

Time: Forgot to check.
Weather: Brilliantly sunny and a bit cool.

This week's and the next week's hike were hikes I did with twelve students and two other teachers at the school I work at.  We have an awesome program that gives teachers a maximum of 12 days to plan unique course offerings.  The minimum is at least a 5-day classroom time experience.  Some kids do class blowing, local community service work, or building an Adirondack Chair.  Other teachers use the mid-winter break before the program starts to design trips ranging from Japan, Italy, China, The U.A.E, and backpacking trips to Southeast Utah.

We started the day at the Hanksville Inn, run by Ed, an awesome dude. If you are ever in the area of Hanksville, UT I recommend staying here.  We drove into Goblin Valley State Park and set up camp in the campgrounds there.  We spent one night car camping and taking day hikes in the area.  After getting camp all squared away, we drove about 15~20 minutes out of the park on dirt roads to the west to a the trailhead in the San Rafael Swell area that would take us into Little Wild Horse Canyon and Bell Canyon.

The hike was a little lolli-pop loop.  We walked out and hit a junction and took off to the right through the Little Wild Horse Canyon.  This was a fun walk through a slot canyon.  It was straight out of 127 Hours.  The sun in the mid morning was rarely shinning directly through the canyon, so it was a bit cold.  The water that rushes through to cut these slots has revealed layered colors in the rock that were simply beautiful.  There had been rain in the area a few days before, so some parts of the trail through the canyon were totlly submerged in two areas almost thigh deep some of the kids discovered. I did my best to climb up the sides and push against the both sides of the canyon walls with my feet and hands to move over the water.  It was totally sweet.

After a few fun slots, we did come out into more wide open parts of the canyon.  After a lengthy lunch break, we walked about another hour before we hit a dirt road and followed it back to the west. Shortly, we hit the trailhead for Bell Canyon.  At this point, I found myself in the back which became my customary position this trip.  Yes, with all the hiking I have done, I still hike like a slow old man.  The hike was good, it hit back to the junction where we went left into Little Wild Horse Canyon.  We started to see more traffic on the trail at this point.  Some older couples, then a group of about 5 young men, college aged to early 30s.

We got back in the cars and drove back to our camp.  It was about 3:30 pm, my best friend and I took off on a walk to the Valley of the Goblins.  This was great.  Just me and my best friend from work.  When we got to the valley, I was left almost speechless at the beauty of the hoodoos.  I could see how late in the night, it could look like Goblins.

Orchid: Walk to Goblin Valley.

Onion: The kid who argued about why iPods should be allowed in the backcountry.

Picture:

Google Map

Week 24 Feb. 13 - West Tiger Mountain 3, 2, and 1

Total Distance: Approximately 10 miles
Elevation Gain: Approximately 2600 ft.
     Min: 386 ft.  Max: 2806 ft.
Time: 9:30 am - 2:30 pm 
Weather: Sunny and cool, mostly cloudy.

This week was the first time in 5 weeks I was not going out to snowshoe.  It was a crazy weekend.  I flew from Tacoma down to San Francisco on Friday night, spent all day Saturday in San Fran, flew out at 7:00 am on Sunday, and had a my buddy from work, whom I have hiked with more than anyone else ever and he has been on 10 of these 24 hikes so far, pick me up and drive me straight to the trailhead.  He took me to the airport on Friday, and I left my pack and boots in his trunk, and I had packed hiking clothes to wear for the hike.  I did not want to mess with the logistics of a snowshoe trip so we planned a hike only about 30 minutes from the Sea-Tac airport.

There was a great network of trails in the West Tiger Mountain Park, so we were confident we could walk around a lot. We got to the trailhead around 9:30 am and I noticed my phone only was at about half power.  I tried to use the GPS tracking app, but my phone died on the hike.  Here is part of the track: West Tiger Mt.  I did have a full charged camera though.  Anyway, we geared up quickly and hit the trail up to the summit of West Tiger 3.  This was about a 3 to 3.5 mile hike pretty much all uphill.  Immediately, I was struck by how much I love hiking in the woods.  I love snowshoeing, but it had been awhile since I had walked on a forrest floor of dirt covered in dead leaves and being surrounded by  trees, but ferns and rhododendrons.  Hiking is magical and awesome.

We made great time and were at the peak of West Tiger 3 by 11 am.  And there were at least 30 people around here, no joke.  It was a great day, by PNW standards, for February and many people got out to enjoy it.  We sat around to eat a snack and plane what to do next.  Just about everyone else went back the way we came up, and I was almost positive there was a trail that continued to West Tiger 2.  We found the trail and continued on.  Soon we were at the next peak, which had a big power transformer or cell phone tower surrounded by chain link fence at the top.  We continued on down a dirt road for about 30 minutes and found the next trail sign confirming we were on our way to West Tiger 1.

After a short, but steep walk up another dirt road we were at the summit.  While there was another transformer/cell tower thing, the view of the valley below was spectacular.  We could see part of Rainier below the clouds, the fertile farm land of valley below, and the buildings of downtown Seattle.  There was a trail leading back into the woods just to the left of all the chain link fence surrounding the transformer, and we choose to take it and see if we could loop around the peaks.

As we descended into the woods, it got eerily dark in the tall trees.  Eventually we came across another hiker and confirmed we could loop around back to the trail.  His directions were to turn left then right then we would get back to the trailhead.  We followed, but after the right turn we felt we were heading deeper into the forrest.  We turned around and stayed left.  We came to another intersection, we went right and then the same thing happened.  It looked like we were heading back up the mountain.  We turned around and took another left.  This trail was marked the West Tiger Mountain trail and we had seen signs for this trail earlier in the day, so we were finally confident we were at least heading back to somewhere we had been before.  Sure enough, after about an hour we were back on the main thoroughfare and back among the crowds.

We walked down and spent a total of about 5 hours walking in the woods.  We took very few breaks and other than the snack break at West Tiger 3, the breaks were short and only to hydrate or take off a layer.  I am confident we did at least 10 miles.  It felt great.

Orchid: Walking in the woods with one of my best friends.

Onion: Too good of a weekend to have an onion.

Picture:

Goggle Map 

Note about the next two weeks: The next two hikes are already planned.  Next Sunday night, I will be in Goblin Valley State Park in Southeast Utah spending the night with 12 students and 2 other teachers.  On Monday, we are going into Dark Canyon in SE Utah.  We will spend the next 7 days and 6 nights backpacking in the canyon.  The next two blogs will be posted, on or before Tuesday March 1.  There is a chance that next week's blog can be posted on Monday Feb. 21, but I make no promise there.  No worries about me and my integrity, I will be hiking in the backcountry the next two weekends for hike 25 and 26.  I am so pumped to have my half year mark in one of the most remote areas of the lower 48!

Week 23 Feb. 06 - Mount Rainier, Paradise

Total Distance: 3.02 miles
Elevation Gain: 1204 ft. 
     Min: 5357ft.  Max: 6229 ft.
Time: 10:45 am - 2:00 pm 
Weather: Cold, foggy, overcast, and rainy.

Another walk in the snow this weekend, but this was a little shorter than usual and also with the Outdoor Club I helped start at the school I work for.  There were eight of us today, 5 students and 3 teachers.  We began the day early, meeting near school at 7:45 am and getting on the road by 8.  We were in Ashford by 9:30, where we picked up another teacher.  We also rented snowshoes for one kid from the nice people at Whittaker Mountaineering.  I love this store.  There are really nice, knowledgeable people who know a lot about the area, and there is a really cute woman who works there too.

We were back on the road shortly and reached Paradise with no problem on the roads at all.  We geared up and took off.  I set my phone GPS right when we began, and I remembered to end it when we were done hiking.  As we started walking the weather was really crummy.  I personally try to not complain about weather.  I have noticed that hiking every weekend means that you will get all the weather this area of the world has to offer.  The conditions did mean, limited visibility.  

The original plan was to go up past Glacier Vista, up to Panorama Point, and down onto Mazama Ridge to play.  What happened was a blind walk into the white nothingness and everything-ness ahead, finding and designing some crazy fun sled runs, and cold windy conditions the higher up on the mountain we walked.

It is always fun to be out, but this was some tough weather.  We wanted to head down and find, hopefully, better conditions below.  A lot of the students brought sleds, and on the way down they found lots of places to have fun.  We stopped on this one hill and made several runs.  It was still rainy and cold.

When we got back down, we went into the visitor's center to warm up.  It was only minutes later that we were eating and warming up inside.  After a healthy feast, we were talking about our plans.  Up at the top, we said we were going to go down to Reflection Lakes, but that was another 3~4 mile roundtrip.  It was obvious the kids didn't want to, so we made the choice to head out.

A great, albeit short, day in the backcountry.

Orchid: Sled runs on the way back down.

Onion: Crummy weather...

Picture:

Google Map

Week 22 Jan. 30 - Snow Lake (near Snoqualmie Pass)

Total Distance: 6.1 miles
Elevation Gain: 2644 ft. 
     Min: 3207ft.  Max: 4509 ft.
Time: 9:00 am - 1:15 pm 
Weather: Cold, foggy, overcast. One glorious sun break!

A great snowshoe trip again today.  I love that I get to start another blog entry with that last sentence.  There is a lot to say about this trip so let's get going...

First, I went out dancing with a friend and his roommate.  He lives up near Seattle, so I spent the night at his place, and I joined him on a snow shoe trip he had planned with his buddy.  So the three of us set out for Alpental at exit 52 on I-90.  This was such an easy drive from Seattle, so from Tacoma it would not be bad either.  I will be doing some more hikes in this area soon. I guess one reason I have avoided this area is the fact that I have no avalanche training.  The conditions today were perfect for snowshoeing, I had been checking www.nwac.us and www.noaa.gov religiously this week, hoping for safe conditions.

The second thing I want to say about this hike is I finally used my phone gps tracking app perfectly.  The first time I used it was for a hike that I did not blog about that was on Saturday Jan. 2.  The next week on the hike at Hurricane Ridge the white-out snow conditions did not allow me to get a decent signal.  The next week was the MTTA - High Hut school trip, I did not remember my phone.  I left it in the car.  And last week, I forgot to turn it off until 15 minutes after I got in the car and drove about 6 miles.  This week it was perfect and you can see the track here.

The hike started easy enough on a snowed over road, but the wide lane aburptly changed to a trail wide path through the trees along the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River.  In what seemed like no time at all, we were at Source Lake, right below the saddle between Chair Peak and Snoqualmie Mountain.  Now according to my new snowshoeing book, this trail is realtively busy in the summer, but "come winter, only a few hardy folks make the long slog through deep snow to the glorious lake basin." Now if this is referring to the slog down the saddle to Snow Lake, they were correct.  But at Source Lake and up on the saddle it was like a day in the park.  There were tons of people around.  Including an avalanche training course which put my mind at ease, knowing trained professionals were around.

The hike up to the saddle was tough.  The slope was steep, and the snow was slick in parts.  It was easy for my downhill shoe to slide a bit.  I fell twice but did not slide down far at all.  We made it up to the saddle and the clouds and fog in the valley and around Chair Peak suddenly began to dissipate. The sun came out, and the beauty of Chair Peak covered in snow fell upon our eyes.  It really is indescribable.  We walked in the saddle and while it was still clear, we caught a glimpse of Snow Lake in the basin below.  It was covered in snow and appeared frozen over.  This was confirmed only minutes later when we saw a group of cross-country skiers moving across the lake.

We also wanted to walk on the lake, so we set out down the other side of the saddle.  Except for the first few minutes, we got to make our own way mostly through untouched snow as we went down to Snow Lake.  I started sliding down and using my poles to steer.  This was so much fun.  As I went down I would accumulate snow in front of me and get about 10 feet of snow infront of me moving.  We were on the lake, literally, at 11:15 am.  We walked out a ways and had a snack.

The walk back up was the hardest part of the day.  I enjoyed the walk up, but I was definitely working.  When I\we got back up to the top, we were back in the crowd.  When I started my hikes, I remember being annoyed by the crowds, but now I like to see people in the backcountry. As one of my good hiking buddies has said, "it is good for humanity to have more people experiencing the natural world."  I couldn't agree more.  As we were walking along the saddle, visibility had dropped to almost nothing.  You could not see more than 30 to 40 feet in front of you.  The walk back down to Source Lake was also a lot tougher on the way down.  The snow was moving a lot, and it was easy to slide and slip down.  There were even more people moving up, and with limited visibility I could not see them.  So, Unfortunately, I could not choose to slide down this slope like I did to Snow Lake.

We got down soon enough though and continued walking on through the trail.  We did miss a turn and found ourselves seeing a waterfall we had missed on the way in because we were off trail now.  We walked up through the fresh snow and made it back to the trail.  It was a great day.

Orchid: The sun break in the saddle.

Onion: Forgeting my camera. (My buddy had is and he let me carry it)

Picture:

Google Map

Week 21 Jan. 22 - Reflection Lake & Mazama Ridge

Total Distance: Approximately 8 miles
Elevation Gain: Approximately 2000 ft.
Time: 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Weather: A cool but spectacularly sunny day.

A great snowshoe trip again today.  Three friends from work joined me as I went up to Paradise in Mount Rainier National Park.  This was my first visit to the park in the winter, and I know it will definitely not be my last.

We parked at Narda Falls, just below the Paradise Visitor's Center.  We then snowshoed up the most ridiculous hill.  It was crazy steep.  There is no way we could have done this except for the snow conditions today.  The snow was crunchy and icy.  This early it was especially rigid and the gripping teeth in the snowshoes made it like I was locked into the side of the hill.  It was a short, but tough climb to a nice wide snowed over road leading straight to Reflection Lake.  This was the main destination of my trip.  We were at the lake by 11:00 am, and decided we had a lot of time so we were going to take the long way back.  Right at Reflection Lake there was a trail to Paradise going along the Mazama Ridge.

The views of Mount Rainier, the Tatoosh Mountains, surrounding peaks, and the river valleys below were breath taking.  The walk was long.  The snow overall was easy to walk on, but as the day went on and the snow got warmer, it did become a bit tough in places.  

It was a great day with good friends and glorious weather.  No better way to spend a Saturday.

Orchid: Rainier is so beautiful.

Onion: Right ankle is in BAD shape.

Picture:

Google Map

Week 20 Jan. 16 - MTTA High Hut

Total Distance: 7.8 miles
Elevation Gain: 2000 ft.
Time: 10:30 am - 3:00 pm
Weather: Cool, overcast, and rainy day.

Today's hike was a great snowshoe walk up to the High Hut in the Mount Tahoma Trails System.  I was here two weeks ago for two reasons: 1) for fun, 2) to scout the route for this snowshoe trip.

This was another hike with the Outdoor Club I have been helping start at work.  This was a special hike for the club.  We had 15 students, 6 teachers (including me), a parent, and a dog.  It was by far the biggest hike in terms of preparation, amount of gear needed, and participation.  Another reason this hike was so great was the fact that it has been raining all week, and today was no exception.  It was also warming up, so the snow level was at 8000 ft. today, and avalanche danger was high just about everywhere.  There were so many places we could have just canceled, but we didn't.

We met at 7:45 this morning and hit the road.  By 9:40 we were in Ashford, and we got to chat with the great people at Whittaker Mountaineering.  We made sure there was no threat of an avalanche, and then we bombed it out to the trailhead.

It was a great hike up. The rain and warmer temps made the snow compact and icy.  The snowshoes were necessary to grip and there were some areas that you would have sunk down into without them, but the work of snowshoeing was not as rigorous as it could have been.  Although, more rigorous snowshoeing means better snow. You take what mother nature gives you.

We made it to the hut by 12:30 pm, and we spent the next hour sitting by a propane fueled gas stove, making and drinking hot chocolate, drying out, eating lunch, laughing, and enjoying being 22 deep in the High Hut.

Left at 2:02 pm and was at the car by 3:08 pm.  Great day!

Orchid: The snowball fight on the way down.

Onion: Rainy weather.

Picture:

Google Map

Week 19 Jan. 09 - Hurricane Hill

Total Distance: 6 miles
Elevation Gain: 800 ft.
Time: 11:00 am - 3:30 pm
Weather: Cold, chilly day. Snow off and on in the morning, finally clearing out a little by mid-afternoon. 

Second weekend in a row I was out snowshoeing.  I went out a week ago on Sunday, but when I got home to blog about it I was sick.  I spent all night praying to the porcelain god, and thought I would go ahead and let my Denver hike be the 18th week and I could let my trip up to the MTTA-High Hut be just for me. 

But this hike to Hurricane Hill was the hike I wanted to do last Sunday.  It was the first snowshoe hike described in my new Snowshoe Routes book. I got up early this morning, went an picked up a friend, hit the store, filled up with gas, and was on the road by 7:30 am.  We were in Port Angeles by 9:45 am and had driven through lots of weather, including snow.  Checked in at the Visitor's Center and the road was open and we went for it.  Got to the park entrance and chained-up.  The car did great with chains, but the driving up the Hurricane Ridge Road was tough.  We were driving basically in white-out conditions.   

Finally got up to Hurricane Ridge Visitor's Center, and all the stress and worries of the day melted away.  Strange considering it was so cold nothing else was melting.  My friend and I signed in with rangers and set off for the top of the hill about 3 miles away.  It was great fun.  It was better visibility on the road walking the 1.3 miles to the Hurricane Hill trailhead.

The hike from here was steep and pretty intense.  We started climbing up, and I had a tough go for about 45 minutes.  We found ourselves moving up and over hills, and the we started trailing t the left, carving out a path on the slope.  After sliding a bit too much for the steepness of the slope, we climbed back up on to the ridge.  Up among the trees, the walking got a lot easier. When we came out into the open, we began a monster walk up the slope to the top Hurricane hill. It was like straight out of some crazy climbing movie.  My friend had bombed it out there, allowing me to follow his tracks, but I could not see him in front of me.  

We got to the top and had a hot cup of tea and a snack. I warmed up my beard and cleaned off the ice.  It was a good walk up, despite being able to only see my immediate surroundings.  The Olympics are always beautiful, but the majesty of Olympus and the other peaks were hidden from my view today.  I will be back up this hill again before the end of the season.  Next time, I will try to plan so weather will be clear.

On the way down, I hit a bit of a skid, and my snowshoe was compromised.  Thankfully, I had some duct tape, and we were able to fix it, at least for the walk out.  The walk out was tough on my ankles and my feet.  As we got back to the road, the skies were beginning to clear.  It was a fantastic day.

Orchid: Walking out on the road to start the hike. I don't know why, but I felt great at that moment.

Onion: Broken snowshoe.

Picture:

Google Map