Sun 6/5 - Extreme Offroading Aventure

     This morning Dave made good on his promise of fresh made crepes.  After an excellent breakfast courtesy of his surprising culinary skills, we heading out to meet us with Dan Mick tours for our full day off road tour.  We were met by none other than Dan Mick himself, who is extremely well known around the Moab area and whose videos I had seen on Youtube while researching this trip. 

     Dan more than lived up to his reputation and a phenomenal driver who tackled the most extreme obstacles with the utmost confidence and ability.  He also proved to have an extremely gregarious personality and a seemingly endless stream of jokes, historical facts, geological knowledge, and anecdotes.  Our tour lasted about eight hours, and he never once seemed at a loss for something interesting to tell us about.





     For the first half of the tour, we visited Hells Revenge trail.  This is one of the most popular trails in the Moab area, and is in fact the same trail that I took a Hummer tour on the very 1st time I visited Moab in 2007.  At the time I marveled at the capability of Hummer which far exceeded what I thought any vehicle could possibly due.  This time, I learned that Jeep drivers are not impressed with the Hummers, and that a well tricked out Jeep is actually an even more capable vehicle.  We tackled a numerous of obstacles that were bypassed in 2007, as well as several that no Hummers even attempt.  Once such obstacle was "The Gates of Hell".  (This video was not of our group as I cannot edit any video until we get home.  Since we were significantly less inclined to scream in terror than the girls in this video, however, it's probably more entertaining anyway.)  Despite being a well traveled trail with a number of other vehicles on it at the same time as us, it is still a very difficult trail.  I lost count of how many places Dan pointed out where he has seen vehicles roll over, and we actually ran across somebody who had done so shortly that morning and was working on their vehicle as we passed.



     After Hells Revenge we stopped by Subway for lunch and wound up heading for the Moab Rim Trail.  I later checked my guidebook and determined that it is the 4th most difficult trail in Moab out of well over a hundred established trails.  This trail rises over 1000 feet in little more than a mile of extremely challenging obstacled.  At the top we were treated to a spectacular view of the Moab valley from which we could see the entire town.  Dan again treated us to his extremely impressive knowledge of the area and was able to point out many interesting facts about the town below.  We then continued on past the lookout and around a loop trail with a number of neat obstacles before descending back down the trail (And I do use the term trail very loosely...) that we had come up.

Dinner tonight was at Pasta Jays, both because Dan recommended it highly and because I have eaten there on both of my previous visits to Moab and enjoyed it both times.  We rounded out the evening with the a half a game of Terra Mystica, and will hopefully have time to finish it tomorrow night.

Sat 6/4 - Another 365 miles done!

     Today, we got the rest of the drive to Moab out of the way.  Every trip is bound to have a few hiccups along the way, so apparently today was also apparently determined to be the day that we got some those out the way.  The first such noteworthy event was a reminder that Murphy's Law is an inviolable force of nature that cannot be denied.  Today's lesson courtesy of Murphy was that brand new cars have big red bulls-eyes on them for stray windshield cracking rocks.  With over 165,000 miles on my old car no such rock would ever find it's way into my path, but not so for a car with less than 1,000.  Replacing it under insurance won't be a big deal when we get home, but now we get to enjoy the large (and quickly propagating) crack directly in front of the drives line of sight for the entire ride home.

     The rest of the journey to Moab passed largely without incident.  I did find out that driving long distances with Eric is not like doing a long trip with kids, but not entirely dissimilar.  While kids require frequent stops for various reasons, much to our amusement we discovered that ANY stop with Eric involves a bit more time than expected.  He apparently feels guilty using a restroom without buying something,  so he feels compelled to purchase something every single time.  I've already lost track of the gas station ice creams, drinks, and snacks he's gone through......

      The scenery on the trip ran the gauntlet from vast stretches of nothingness, so absolutely spectacular.  One of the highlights was going through the enormous fields of electric windmills in North Texas.  It's nice to see just how much development has gone into clean power production. Sadly, this area is immediately followed by the equally enormous stretch of land covered in oil pumps and drill rigs....   Another highlight was seeing the snow capped mountains are we passed through Colorado, and all the way to Moab.  It's hard to imagine how large these are, but being able to see the same mountain on the horizon barely moving over several hours of driving puts it into perspective.  Staring at the snow while noticing the thermometer reads 100 degrees outside has much the same affect.

     After about 1000 miles of driving over two days, we finally arrived a the rental house.  After a couple of flights and a shorter (albeit still ~100 mile drive) Brad pulled into the driveway about 30 seconds after we did.  I'd say we doing pretty well on timing!

     I'm happy to say that the pictures on the website did not lie -- The rental property is very nice.  A far cry from the rental property we stayed in through the Lazy Lizard last time I was in Moab.  After settling in we visited the local supermarket to stock up on stuff, and Dave volunteered to make Crepes in the morning.  (I think he may have been feeling a bit of the guilt we laid on him earlier for immediately claiming the Master Suite upon arriving at the house.)

     After dropping off the groceries, we had some free time to decided to try out climbing at Wall St.  Eric wanted to stay home alone and rest because he was a bit tired from two long days of napping in the back of the car on the way here, but we convinced  him to (OK, goaded him into) come along.  After a quick stop to check out the awesome Gearheads outdoor gear store in Moab,  we headed to the wall and our second hiccup of the day.  I did a lot of research online before the trip to decide what the pack, and left out insect repellent because almost everybody online said it was unnecessary in this area.  Apparently, not everything on the Internet is true.  Who would have thought!  We forged ahead with one quick climb in the School House beginners area of Wall St, while Eric from the mosquitoes in the car.   A fun climb, but we quickly decided to come back another day more prepared with repellent and long sleeve clothes.

     One of the best restaurants I had found my last time in Moab was the Moab Brewery, so we went there for dinner.   The food was good, but not as spectacular as remembered.  Not sure if it was what we ordered, whether the restaurant has changed, or because it was our first meal in Moab and we are comparing it to food back home rather than the other restaurants in Moab which tended to be pretty disappointed my last time here.

     We had planned to round out the night with a game of Terra Mystica, but it was getting late so we settled for setting it up for tomorrow and attempting to teach Dave the rules. 

Fri 6/3. Road Trip Time!

     Nearly 6 years ago I went on a roadtrip to Moab, Utah with some friends.  Eric Johnstone was one of the people that was supposed to be on the trip, but due to some last minute back problems had to cancel shortly before we left on the trip.  For the last six years, he has steadfastly refused to read the blog entries from that trip because he didn't want to feel worse about everything that he missed out on.  Today, that is no longer an issue as the next road trip has begun!  Eric, David Pierce, and myself just arrived in Albuquerque after a full day of driving, and are continuing on to Moab tomorrow.  Brad Erickson, who was on the last trip will be flying out tomorrow and joining us there.  While we will certainly revisit some of our favorites places and activities from last time, the highlight of the trip is likely to be our five day whitewater rafting trip down Cataract Canyon on the Colorado river that starts on Tuesday.
     Today was a long day of driving (which was not shortened any by Dave's insistance on sharing his attempt at a Tuvan Throat Singing rendition of "Come Together" by the Beatles.  Keep you're day job, Dave......)  Tomorrow we should arrive in Moab by around 4:00pm and meetup with Brad, so it will be a much easier day.

Sat 8/20 - Our Last Adventure

Today we had tickets to the ranger guided walk of the Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park. We had purchased 5 tickets, since we expected Vince and Joanna to leave later in the afternoon. It wound up being only Lynn, Brad, and myself, so we had 2 extra tickets. It wound up working out well since there was another group at the trail head that had an extra person, so we were able to sell them one of our tickets. The ranger guiding the tour was friendly, and told us that she "hadn't seen anything" since that was apparently against the rules. The walk was interesting, even if a little slower than would have been ideal, but that was to be expected with a largish group of hikers who had probably never hiked through that sort of rocky terrain before.

The Fiery Furnace was definitely an interesting and confusing place. I felt very validated in my contention that we not attempt to hike in this area alone without a map, but Lynn insisted that it wasn't so bad and that we should still try to do Lomatium later in the afternoon. Brad was the swing vote, and agreed that it was a bad idea without a map or route information, and voted to head over to Zero Gravity in the afternoon.

By the time the tour ended, we were starving and wound up stopping at the Eklectic Cafe for lunch. The staff was very friendly and the food delicious (all organic), although the portions were small and the prices rather high. We were all still hungry afterwards, and wound up getting various desserts to fill up. From Moab, it was another 1.5 hours to the Zero Gravity trail head, so we hit the road. The "Good dirt road" leading the trailhead parking lot was not nearly as good as I expected, and there were definitely a few moments that I feared getting stuck in some deep sand, but we made it through. We wound up stopping about a mile short of the actual trail head because the road did become impassible, but we had expected that from the information we had gotten beforehand, so this was not a problem.

I don't think that Lynn was very excited to do this canyon, since he had voted against it and expected it to be too quick and easy. He estimated that it would only take us about and hour and a half to do the entire loop, despite the guidebook indicating that it would take approx 3-4 hours. After hiking to the trail head, we recorded the time to check (OK, make fun of) Lynn's time estimate. It was another 1.2 miles to get to the actual canyon entrance, which was not too long but no fun in the heat. Finally, we reached the down scramble into the canyon and visited the small arches (Tinky and Winky) at the canyon bottom that mark the start of the route.

Almost immediately after we began heading down canyon it became a true slot (only a couple of feet wide) with a large drop to be down climbed. I began to second guess the decision to enter the canyon due to the lateness of the day (4:30pm) and the gray skies. The biggest danger in a slot canyon is flash flooding, which can occur due to rain many miles away. We had checked the radar on the way in, and saw some small scattered showers around, but nothing very heavy. Lynn was not at all concerned and was raring to go, and we decided to continue on.

Of all the canyons that we did on this trip, I feel there can be no doubt that this was the most unique and challenging. Due to his early prediction of this being an incredibly easy canyon, Lynn continues to insist that it was not bad, but I am pretty sure it's just because he doesn't want to admit he was wrong. This canyon required EXTENSIVE use of chimneying high off the canyon floor, downclimbing, swimming and wading, and some upclimbing. Once section in particular Lynn went into first, exclaimed "Oh shit!", and told us to hold off on coming down ourselves. He quickly found a way to climb out of the 9 foot deep hole that he was in, but it was tense for a couple of moments.

The final obstacle was the one I had read about and was most worried about. As one point, the canyon becomes very narrow and drops out from below you, with a chokestone wedged in the canyon serving as a landmark for this obstacle. There are three options here. One is to climb above the stone, chimneying past it and leaving you nearly 30 feet above the canyon floor. You must then continue out until you reach a section where the canyon gets just wide enough to drop through using a rope tied to the stone to swing back into the canyon with. The second option is to get as close to the stone as possible, and make your way under it. At this point, and canyon is just barely wide enough for a skinny person turned sideways to make carefully their way down and squeeze through underneath. The 3rd option is to mess up and attempt to make your way down before getting right up against the stone. Those who come down t0o early are likely to wind up getting wedged in a narrow spot with the feet dangling 10 feet above the canyon floor. Thankfully, we all made it through without incident, although it was awkward and scary. Once you reach the floor of the canyon, still wedged into a tiny space, a long downclimb to a pool below presents itself. It is not particularly difficult, but makes extensive use of wedging your butt against the wall and walking down the other wall with your feet, as it is very steep and exposed. Though we all survived the climb, my pants really did not. Sandstone is a very coarse, gritty type of rock, and very tough on any fabric scraping across it. Brad also messed up his pants, but did not develop the large hole that mine did, much to Lynn's amusement. ("Hey Mike, your ass cheek is hanging out of your pants! Haha!")

Back at the trail head, a check of the clock revealed our total round trip time to be just under 3 hours. Lynn continued to insist that we could have done it quicker, though the only stop we made the entire time was about 15 minutes to check out the arches at the top of the canyon. You have to admire his ability to stick to his guns, no matter what happens! Once again we tackled the dirt road back to the pavement, and the Prius made it through. (Prius Power!) The last adventure of the day was stopping at an Arbys on the way back for a bathroom break and to grab some food. I call it an adventure since I spent the whole time trying (and failing) to keep the hole in my pants covered, much to the amusement of one of the other patrons who got a good laugh out of the whole thing.

Back in Moab, I started packing up while Lynn and Brad drove downtown to hunt for souvenirs. We plan on getting up at 5:00am to drop Brad off at the airport and get started on the 18 hour drive back to Austin, so I was happy to get all packed up and into bed as early as possible.

Fri 8/19 : Entrajo Canyon

Today was planned as a canyoneering day, but we did not start the day with a firm decision in mind as to what canyon we would be going to. We got off to a slow start since George was flying out of the Moab airport, and Brad had to go along in order to pick up his luggage which the airline promised to deliver to the rental house, but never did. Finally, it was time to pick out the days adventure, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge. Lynn had turned against the original plan of going down Zero Gravity canyon, since it had no rappels and he thought that it would be too easy and over too quickly. (An assessment I disagreed with) Instead, he had heard about Lomatium Canyon from one of the clerks in the outdoor outfitters store that we bought some climbing gear from, and decided he wanted to do that. I was very opposed to this idea, because while not technically difficult, that canyon resides within the Fiery Furnace section of Arches national park. This area is usually described as a labyrinth of twisting canyons, and there is no map available. Also, a permit (easily obtained) is required in order to enter that area without a ranger guided tour.

Thankfully, during the Pleides trip we were on yesterday we discussed some of the possible plans with Dave (the guide), which told us that without somebody who knew their way around that area, it would not be a very good idea to go in on our own. While this was exactly what I had been saying for the last couple of days, it seemed to have more impact coming from him. He suggested a couple of other canyons that we could also consider, including Entrajo and Eardley canyons. Entrajo had the advantage of being close by to Moab, but being rather short with only a couple of small rappels and some potholes. Eardley was much further away, required a 3 mile hike from the parking lot to the trail head each way, and was listed as a 7 to 8 hour canyon starting from the trail head.

Naturally, Lynn's vote was to do Eardley, and then Zero gravity since they were right next to one another. I was also opposed to this, since Eardley alone would be a completely full day, and I had no interest in doing such a long hike. We put it to a vote, which Brad abstained from, leaving Vince and Joanna to decide. They were planning on beginning their drive home early the next morning and wanted to pack up tonight, so they decided to go to Entrajo in order to be back on time.

We grabbed some sandwiches at the grocery store and headed to the trail head, where we stopped for lunch before heading up canyon. We had an interesting time finding our way up the canyon, using Vince's and Brad's GPS to attempt to find the waypoints listed in the route guide. After another hike that I can once again describe as a forced death march (Lynn hikes much faster than I do, and never seems to get winded), we found our way into the canyon bottom. We're pretty sure we messed up somewhere since we wound up not quite as far up in the canyon as we were supposed to be, but I don't think we missed much except for possibly some pothole obstacles. The canyon was pretty easy and fun. Due to a lack of recent rain, the water levels in the potholes was low enough that we didn't get very wet, and the rappels were easy and fun. There was a couple of narrow slot sections, so it was a pretty canyon.


Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip was getting the Prius back up the steep, loose gravel road we had parked at the bottom of. We had to get up a bit of momentum and floor it the entire way up so that the traction control did not stop us, but we made it up in a single attempt.

We had considered climbing on Wall street later that evening, but with all the packing going on and our collective exhaustion, we wound up staying in and playing a couple of rounds of Carcasonne, which everybody seemed to enjoy.

Thu 8/18 : Pleides Canyon

Today was Pleiades Canyon, guided by Desert Highlights. While we did not expect there to be any technical obstacles that we could not overcome in that canyon, I didn't want to attempt on it on our own for several reasons. First, the canyon had flowing water in it, and all of the rappels would be off of waterfalls. Secondly, the water in Pleiades is very cold, and we did not have any of the proper gear for staying warm. The guide service provided us with Dry Suits, fleece jackets and vests, neoprene socks and gloves. It's a good thing we had these, because even with all that on, it was STILL pretty cold. I had thought it was a spring fed canyon, hence the cold water. As it turned out, it was fed by melting snow pack from the Lasal Mountains to the east, making it even colder than spring water would have been.

After spending nearly an hour at the guide service office getting all our gear selected and packed, it was about a 45 minute drive into the mountains (elevation approx 8800 feet) on gravel roads. It was nice to leave the sweltering heat of Moab behind for awhile and get some cooler mountain air, although it contributed both to the cold of the canyon and the difficulty of breathing.

A 45 minute hike through a heavily forested area brought us to the entrance of Pleiades, where we got all of our gear on and began hiking down river into the slot canyon. It was a pretty quick walk before we reached our first rappel. There were seven rappels through the canyon, which remained a narrow slot throughout, and constantly echoed with the roar of running water. Mostly we were able to stay on dry ground, except during the rappels when the water was pouring down over our heads. We all had a great time, but were happy to make it to the top of the final rappel where we finally encountered a small patch of sunlight that we could stand in to warm up.

At the bottom of the final rappel we encountered the final and most unique obstacle of the canyon. A large tree had been washed into the canyon, and formed an angled bridge to the canyon exit. The idea was to straddle the log facing upwards, and inch our way backwards over the chasm below. For safety, we all did this simultaneously so that we could grab the person in front of us if they started to slip.

As is almost always the case with canyons, those who go down must now come up. The hike back to the top was not particularly long, but it was very steep and the thin air had me gasping for breath quite quickly. I have lost count of the number of hikes on this trip that I would choose to describe as a forced death march, but this definitely added another to the total.

When we reached the starting point where we had left our lunches, we encountered another group just about to begin their descent of the canyon. They were minimally dressed in short sleeve wetsuits, and were definitely going to freeze their butts off in the canyon. After lunch, another forced death march brought us back to the van for the return trip to Moab.

Since George was leaving first thing Friday morning and had not yet visited arches, we decided to do a quick trip to the vicinity of double arch, which is an extremely impressive area of the park. Not everybody was overly enthusiastic about the trip, but everybody changed their mind and were happy that they had come when we arrived and they saw how impressive the area was.

Afterwards, George said he would treat us all to dinner for serving as his guides during the week. We drove to a few places that were closed, and eventually wound up at the Moab Brewery. I had eaten here in 2007 and was not impressed with whatever I ate that time, but this time around the food was phenomenal. Everybody loved their meals, and finished with some excellent gelato.

Wed 8/17 : Ancient Art & Mill Creek

Brad was supposed to arrive last night, but due to a delayed flight out of Austin was not going to make his connection into Moab. Instead of arriving in Moab at 9:00pm, he would instead be arriving around 11:30 in Grand Junction CO, nearly 2 hours away. We were supposed to be at the climbing trail head at 8:00 in the morning, so we were not too keen on driving over there to pick him up. We spent awhile on the phone last night trying to find him a reasonably priced shuttle, but to no avail. Finally, I had the idea to call the rock climbing guides, as they were going to be driving from Grand Junction in the morning. They were willing to pick him him in Grand Junction without charge, so we found Brad a cheap room at the Motel 6 by the Grand Junction airport.

While Brad did get in successfully and make it to the climb with us, his luggage was not so fortunate. We lent him the needed clothes and supplies so everything worked out well, but it certainly did not sound like a pleasant travel experience. That was quickly out of our minds, though, as Ancient art loomed ahead! Our guides turned out to be quite a bit older than we expected, and I would never have expected them to be the excellent climbers that they were. I can only hope that I am in as good of shape when I get to that age. (Hell, I wish I was in as good of shape today.....) The entire hike to base camp had me huffing and puffing away as walked uphill, and they didn't even appear to be breathing heavy.

We all got geared up as Jim, one of the guides, lead the first pitch. This was a pretty easy pitch, and served as a nice confidence builder. By the time that Lynn, Brad, and me had reached the top of the first pitch, Jim had already lead the 2nd one. It was "the chimney", which is basically a 3 sided slot in the rock which is largely climbed by stemming. Stemming is a maneuver in which one hand & foot is placed on the left side of the slot, the others on the right side, and you just hold yourself using pressure from one wall to the other. It is nothing like the climbing we are used to where you can frequently find excellent hand holds that give you great security. After a long climb through that, we came to a "ceiling", where the rock is directly above our heads and we needed to stem backwards away from the inside of the chimney (Freaky!) in order to get around it. I thought for sure that once I managed to get around that I would be at the end of the pitch, but it just kept going! It was a LONG ways up to the next belay station, and got very tricky in several places. At one point it got so narrow that my Camelback kept wedging into the the rock and getting me hung up. Eventually, I reached the large rock shelf that served as the 2nd belay station, which was a relief. Thankfully, I had a long wait on the ledge while Kris and Brad climbed up the chimney and Lynn ascended the 3rd short pitch. I was probably there a half hour, which was just about the right amount of time to feel ready to move on.

Since the 3rd and final belay station was very small, only one guide and 2 of us could be up there at a time. Lynn and Brad went up the short 3rd pitch so that Brad could film Lynn on the final summit. Ancient art is famous for the final pitch, which is EXTREMELY exposed to a 500 foot drop on all sides, and absolutely terrifying. After the guide set the rope, Lynn was the first to attempt it. Despite being visibly (and audibly) nervous, he managed to climb to the very top and stand up for about 3 seconds. (Later described by him as feeling like an eternity.) Brad likewise climbed to the top and stood up, but clearly was struggling and even slipped at one point during the climb.

Despite the others both going, I decided against it. I was very exhausted from the climb to that point, and just simply had no desire to go any further. That, and I just didn't feel like being any more terrified than I already had been up to that point. We had long enough ropes to rappel all the way to the ground from the 2nd belay station, which gave us a rappel length of over 200 feet. Awesome as it was, it is hard work to rappel from that height simply because the weight of the rope below you acts as a brake, and must be lifted up in order to slide down the rope.

After Ancient Art, we planned to meet up with the others at a swimming hole on Mill Creek. Unfortunately, we did not pay enough attention to the map and wound up in the south fork of the canyon instead of the north fork. It was a very pleasant area, but we were hiking hard to try to find the rest of our group, which we never did. The real disaster came, though, because Brad was wearing flip flops he borrowed from Lynn. (Lost luggage = no good gear) Shortly into the hike, one of them broke. He carried on quite awhile, until the other broke as well, and he could not walk anymore. Lynn lent him his shoes, but quickly decided he could not walk barefoot either. Since it was a long hike to the car, he proposed that one of us run back to the car and fetch some sneakers that were there. I suggested that 2 of us go, one of us slowly and one quickly, so that the faster person could bring the shoes back up canyon and meet the slower person. Lynn stayed behind and rested at the waterfall (Good plan, Lynn!), while I ran back to the car and Brad followed slowly. Well, was SUPPOSED to follow slowly, but wound up walking pretty quickly himself. Once I reached the car and headed back upstream, I ran into him pretty quickly, so he wound up with a really long hike.

I returned to the car and tried to recover from the hike. The rest of the group who had been in the correct fork of the canyon returned, and I told them what had happened. Eventually Lynn and Brad made it back out of the canyon, and we returned to the house to clean up for dinner at Sing Ha Thai. While it was rated as one of the best restaurants in Moab, we all found it pretty mediocre and overpriced.