Hiking in Utah

[Prediction? Pain.]

Spent 10 days in Utah a month ago with the family. The impetus for the trip was a family wedding in Park City, but I wasn't about to go to Utah without hitting up some of the best wilderness on the planet. So we trekked around southern Utah for four days on the front end. Doing so with a 4-year-old and 2-year-old was less than ideal, but I'm glad we did it. People, you need to experience that place. Even if you're not much of a hiker, it's well, well worth your time. The scenery is unreal. And if you are in fact up for some hikes . . . well, dude, the world is your oyster.

Alright, so I'm going to break this up into a few posts. The first two are going to be pics from sunrise hikes I did by myself in Zion and Capitol Reef. Since I couldn't just leave my wife to watch the crazies in a hotel all day, I was relegated to short hikes at dawn while my family slept. I'm actually glad it worked out that way. Hiking at sunrise in these desert dreamscapes made things that much more awe-inspiring and surreal. (Plus, at least in Zion, they kept you out of the 95-degree sun. 95 and dry felt way better than 95 and humid -- though the dry air wreaked havoc on our respiratory systems and skin -- but damn, you'd get sunburned in the blink of an eye.) Then I'll do pics from the Uinta National Forest, which is roughly 30 minutes due east of Park City. I did that one during the day with a buddy of mine that lives out there (in Park City, I was lucky enough to have extended family watch the kids for us). Totally different vibe than the south, but also very, very cool.

Ok. Here's the Watchman Trail in Zion at dawn:

















Absolutely incredible. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, the damn front lawn of our lodge in the park looked like this:

[Prediction? Pain.]

Ok, on to the Grand Wash trail at Capitol Reef. Even though this one was at dawn just like the hike at Zion, the vibe was is totally different. The "trail" is actually a creek bed that's dry except during torrential rains. It winds through the bottom of a gorge whose walls reach as high as 500 feet overhead. And at times, the gorge gets really narrow. The solitude and silence was much more palpable on this hike than the open-air trek at Zion. Other than a small murder of crows hanging out in a little gap in the rocks, I was the only thing moving. No other people, no breeze, no flowing water, no nothing. Just my echoing footsteps. It was astonishing.



















And like Zion, that's just a sample. Capitol Reef has an awesome scenic drive with photo ops and hiking trails galore. You can pick fruit in the park for $1/lb in 150-year-old orchards established by Mormon settlers (peaches were in season while we were there, and they were freaking amazing; they've got apple and pear orchards, too). And the view from our hotel balcony right on the park's border wasn't too shabby, either:

[Prediction? Pain.]

And then there was the hike in the Uinta Mountains. Started the hike at around 10,000' and topped out at about 11,115'. Way, way more elevation than I'd ever experienced on a hike. I get plenty of elevation change on my hikes in southern mountains, but most of that occurs between 1500' and 2000'. Even on the rare occasions I'm able to get out in the biggest of the Blue Ridge mountains, those hikes take me in the 5,000' to 6,000' range. I could tell as soon as we were 100 yards from the car that my lungs were working harder. Still, I was pretty proud of the fact that I didn't ever just keel over gasping for my breath. We took it easy and it was pleasant all the way around.

The lakes you see are apparently all loaded with Cutthroat and Tiger trout, by the way. My friend's a big fly fisherman and had hiked the area before for the sole purpose of fishing. We even saw a few 2' trout hanging out close to the shore of the lake we stopped at for lunch.

Oh, and about all those dead trees -- pine beetles. They're native, but apparently a combination of factors (land-use changes, temperature shifts, etc.) has led to a devastating epidemic that will at some point in our lifetimes eradicate much of the forests there. Massive bummer. (You can read more about it here if you're interested.)

On the the goodness:















We probably should've picked a less, uh, precarious route to get back to the trail from our off-trail summit scramble:



But, hey, we saw a mountain goat!

[Uncivilengineer]

That is incredible.

[BrunswickDawg]

Pain, I'm super jealous. Gorgeous landscapes and nice photography.

If there is 1 thing I really miss living where I do its hiking. It's just no fun walking around flat land. No challenge, no surprises, no views. Yeah, I can walk on a 9 mile long beach, but it's not the same.

[SpaceWranglerDawg]

Thanks for sharing this. Lived in Salt Lake for about 3.5 years and really enjoyed being out there. You hit some fun stuff.

[Prediction? Pain.]

Pain, I'm super jealous. Gorgeous landscapes and nice photography.

If there is 1 thing I really miss living where I do its hiking. It's just no fun walking around flat land. No challenge, no surprises, no views. Yeah, I can walk on a 9 mile long beach, but it's not the same.

Yeah, man, it's hard to go wrong with the national parks and forests anywhere, but Utah's are especially nuts. Just driving around some of these places is difficult to do without stopping every 10 minutes to take a picture. (And thanks for the photography compliment. I take way more pictures on hikes than I should. I figure that if I take 100, then 10 or 15 have got to be good ones. Plus, the camera on my phone makes me look like I know what I'm doing a lot more than I actually do.)

And speaking of driving, one of the highlights of the trip -- if not the highlight -- was driving State Highway 12 from Bryce Canyon to Capitol Reef. That route takes you through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. That place is indescribably gorgeous. I'll post a couple of pictures, but they don't come close to doing the place justice. Massive expanses of multicolored desert canyons and mountains in every direction. My friend up in the Park City area told me that it's his favorite part of the entire state and that in his mind, it captures better than any other area the mystery of the southern Utah. I recommend seeing all the parks I visited -- and more; we didn't even get to Canyonlands, Arches, or Lake Powell -- but I highly, highly recommend exploring Route 12. (After the desert, it also takes you up into the Dixie National Forest, which has a very classic Rocky Mountain vibe to it. Stark contrast to the surreal Martian landscapes you see in Escalante.)

This is all just random, side-of-the-road stuff in Grand Staircase-Escalante:

[Prediction? Pain.]

Thanks for sharing this. Lived in Salt Lake for about 3.5 years and really enjoyed being out there. You hit some fun stuff.

We only spent a little time in SLC, but our impression of the city was good. Massive mountains in the background and seemingly a nice variety of things to do beyond just hiking and skiing. We hit up the Natural History Museum at the University of Utah one morning and had a great time. It's a helluva museum for adults and kids alike. And the dinosaur offerings rivaled those that I saw in the UK at the Natural History Museum of London. My kids loved it.



And, dude, what's with the cheap groceries out there? Our first stop in town after getting off the plane was to a Sprouts grocery store (a chain like Whole Foods) and my wife's comment after 2 minutes of looking of groceries was this: "Did the plane take us back in time? When did it become 1992?" It wasn't across-the-board insanity or anything, but many, many products, from produce to cereal to milk to yogurt were just flat out cheaper by a solid 10 - 15%. And it wasn't just SLC -- the Wal-Mart that services Park City, Utah, a fancy-as-hell ski resort town loaded with wealth had cheaper prices than the one I shop at in Chattanooga, Tennessee. WTF?

[Political Hack]

Hiked back country in canyon lands about 15 years ago. Also did some short walks in Arches. It was amazing. Did a little 4-wheel driving outside of Moab too. It was unreal.

Those pics are unreal.

[SpaceWranglerDawg]

We only spent a little time in SLC, but our impression of the city was good. Massive mountains in the background and seemingly a nice variety of things to do beyond just hiking and skiing. We hit up the Natural History Museum at the University of Utah one morning and had a great time. It's a helluva museum for adults and kids alike. And the dinosaur offerings rivaled those that I saw in the UK at the Natural History Museum of London. My kids loved it.



And, dude, what's with the cheap groceries out there? Our first stop in town after getting off the plane was to a Sprouts grocery store (a chain like Whole Foods) and my wife's comment after 2 minutes of looking of groceries was this: "Did the plane take us back in time? When did it become 1992?" It wasn't across-the-board insanity or anything, but many, many products, from produce to cereal to milk to yogurt were just flat out cheaper by a solid 10 - 15%. And it wasn't just SLC -- the Wal-Mart that services Park City, Utah, a fancy-as-hell ski resort town loaded with wealth had cheaper prices than the one I shop at in Chattanooga, Tennessee. WTF?

Haha, oh yeah, Sprouts is super affordable. They have their run of the mill stuff like Whole Foods and other organic type groceries, but we generally stayed at Sprouts and Trader Joe's.

We enjoyed SLC, but most of the time it was just because it was the hub to everything around it. 15 minutes to go skiing at Snowbird, few hours down the road to southern Utah, tons of great golf courses, but overall, the most fun is definitely outside the city.