Fun in the Desert Sun (Memorial Day in Escalante)

Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

[This is Andrea, making my blog (typing) debut for the year]

Once or twice a year I do a desert girls trip with some of my friends. We decided to head down to the Escalante area over this past Memorial Day weekend for hiking, slot canyons, and camping fun...

Thursday

We headed down Hole in the Rock Road and settled in to a really nice campsite on the dirt road just past the Devil's Garden area.

Friday

Our first day was packed full of slot canyons. We started with Zebra and Tunnel Slots which surprised us with waist-deep water (chest deep if you are Amiee!). As their names imply, Zebra has beautiful red stripes in the rock and Tunnel resembles a dark tunnel. Both are short but unique.

We took a break at camp until our third gal arrived then headed to Spooky and Peek-A-Boo Slots. These are a MUST-DO if you are in the Escalante area!

Saturday

Just off of Highway 12 is a shortcut to access the lower canyon of Death Hollow (typically a backpacking trip). This approach requires some route finding and scrambling. It turns out that our directions were limited and we didn't know what direction we were supposed to be going :-). Eventually we found our way down to the Escalante River but were exhausted from the heat to make it up to Death Hollow (until the next day...). However, this area has fantastic views and a great place to spend the day.

In the evening, we watched the sunset at Devil's Garden and toasted to an awesome girls weekend.

Sunday

The next day I was surprised when the other two suggested we go for attempt #2 of Death Hollow. This time it only took us an hour to get to Escalante River. We headed upstream for a few minutes until the entrance to the canyon came up on the right. Although it was quite pleasant to walk in the ankle-deep water, it was quite a challenge to avoid all of the poison ivy! We walked a few miles up Death Hollow to enjoy some of the best narrows in Death Hollow, took a dip in one of the deep pools of water, and headed back the way we came.

Monday

We decided to take our last day pretty easy. After packing up all our camping stuff, we walked around Devil's Garden for a little while. Then we did a short hike to the Hundred Hands Panel from the Escalante River trailhead. There are lots of easily accessible petroglyphs in this area and even more if you are willing to go searching for them.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend and a fall trip to Escalante is definitely in the works!

Memorial Day Weekend 2017 (Finally skied Deseret Peak!)

Andrea throwing the whippet salute after skiing the SE face of Superior on Wednesday

Little Cottonwood Canyon on Memorial Day

Another fairly great week of skiing and life in general. Andrea headed south with some friends for the long weekend, and I stayed home because I'm not bored with skiing yet. This is quite a time of the year in our neck of the woods - I like to call it "every outdoor activity is in play season." Seriously - what isn't good right now? You can ski, trail run, mountain bike, hike, golf, fish, play frisbee, whatever you want to do! 

The Alta-Collins finally dropped below 100" during the afternoon of Sunday the 28th. That was a pretty good triple digit run. Now we just ride it out as long as we can...

Wednesday May 24

Another round on Superior! We parked right at the bottom and skinned the first two-thirds of the SE face, then booted the rest. What a start to the day!

Saturday May 27

Two nights in a row with a good overnight freeze meant Saturday was going to be GOOD! I finally made it out to the Stansbury Mountains and Deseret Peak. What a spectacular area... just a totally different feel than the Central Wasatch. The road was open to the upper campground, and I only walked about a mile on the summer trail before switching over to skins. The first thing you see while approaching the upper basin is this aesthetic east facing couloir, so I climbed and skied that first. Then I went back up the east couloir and wrapped around the ridge to the Deseret Peak summit. From that point there was a delicious south facing bowl which I skied a couple times (butter smooth), and finished up the day skiing the west twin couloir. Honestly it was the best corn snow I've probably ever skied in Utah.

Sunday May 28

Headed up White Pine Canyon. Continuous snow line was ~8500 feet, which meant walking the summer trail for 2 miles before transitioning to skins. The upper canyon was just beautiful as always. I had no set plan, and ended up booting up and skiing Lake Chute because it looked pretty and it was a line I had never skied before. 

Monday May 29

Went up to Mt Superior from the chapel and skied the north side / cardiac bowl. The snow was a little too slushy after several nights in a row with no solid refreeze. 

Non-skiing... fit in a couple afternoon hikes as well - usual suspects: Olympus and Grandeur. Everything that isn't snow is SO GREEN right now! And after seven years of driving past the Temple Quarry trailhead on our way up LCC, I finally stopped on my way home Monday and ran the trail. Its fantastic! Perfect apres ski trail run!

Hopefully Andrea (hint, hey Andrea!) will do a recap of her trip to Escalante...