My friend Valerie is visiting and we just came back from a brief trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone. I’m getting more pictures than I know what to do with and going to Glacier later this week is not going to help that situation.

We saw some really excellent geothermal features around the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone yesterday. The geysers and multi-colored pools are some of my favorite things in Yellowstone National Park.

This was the last hike of our trip and we made it count.

Due to driving we didn’t get started until about 1 in the afternoon. Our plan originally was to head up the trail towards the top of Half Dome and then turn around somewhere along the way. It is a 17+ mile round trip to the summit with a decent amount of elevation gain, so we didn’t expect to reach the top starting so late. We passed two amazing waterfalls that would certainly be destinations in themselves, and indeed the crowds we encountered at the bottom disappeared after the 2nd one.

After a while we passed a sign for Half Dome in 4.5 miles. There was still a decent amount of daylight when we passed the “Half Dome: 2 miles” sign. I think it was right about there that we decided to just go for it.

We reached the top via a steep cable-assisted ascent at about 7 or so. It was excellent, there was no one else to be seen and the sun was setting all around us. We hung out, avoided mauling by the local creatures, ate a sammie, and decided it was time to descend. The downhill was fairly pleasant. Although we were in the dark for the last 2 or 3 hours, we had headlamps so it wasn’t a big deal. I did see quite a few scorpions on the trail coming down, which was a little disconcerning for someone in Chacos.

All in all it was a fitting ending to a great trip.

In Sequoia National Park there is an area called “The Giant Forest” that has some of the largest trees in the world in it. Including General Sherman, the largest tree in the world when measured by volume. It is a humbling place and one of my favorite places on our entire trip.

Back to the events before Sasquatch…….

After Zion we drove past Las Vegas and into Death Valley. I had no idea how big this park is. It is oblong in shape, and despite the fact we drove across it the short way it still took a couple hours to get through. The areas right by the road seemed extremely desolate and hostile, the vast expanse nowhere near the road must be amazing.

We turned off the main road to check out the Badwater Basin, the lowest point in the United States. I’d never seen a salt flat before. The ground is crusted and definitely very salty (I tasted a little).

After we made it out of the canyon we hitched a short ride back to our car and high-tailed it for Southern Utah. We drove past the Glen Canyon Dam and planned to camp but it was already dark, fairly cold, and actually raining so we grabbed a hotel room in Kanab, Utah.

Th next day we got a campsite at one of the 2 mega-campgrounds in Zion and did some day hiking. We did a 10 mile out and back that included Angel’s Landing.

Still to come…..Death Valley, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks….it was an action-packed trip.

Our last day in the Grand Canyon involved starting at the river and climbing up the New Hance Trail to the rim. The first half is completely open without a lot of vegetation and the last is through what constitutes a forest in the Southwest. It was also one of the more rugged trails we encountered during our entire trip, especially as you got closer to the rim. We passed a couple of parties on their way down that really seemed to be struggling. Including an older gentlemen with a decent amount of dried blood on his arm.

On a separate note, we talked with a fellow down by the river who volunteered to take our picture. He was certainly friendly, although he was convinced we were grossly unprepared for the hike out, with only 7 liters of water between the 2 of us. He said he had 5 liters just for him coming down and ran out. We showed him up by ending up on the rim with more than a liter to spare.

Aslo, Davy found his description of the hike out as “fucking brutal” quite amusing, and it became an often repeated phrase. It wasn’t that it was the easiest hike in the world, but it wasn’t the Ho Chi Minh either (I’m assuming that would be really hard) We were done around 1 in the afternoon. .

The hike from Horseshoe Mesa to the river was really excellent, as if I would have expected anything else. The Kaibab Plateau is an interesting place to hike. You see the trail far ahead winding around a bend, and then in an hour (or more) you’ll actually be there after you weave your way around this fractal pattern of trail with endless side canyons needing to be circumnavigated. All in all we probably saw 4 people that day. It was a long hike, I don’t know how long but after we got to where we were camping moving any extra really summoned some willpower.

I was wrong about how far we got the first day, we actually stayed that night in Arizona. We made it to the Grand Canyon around noon or so and went to the Backcountry Office to try to get a permit. The woman there was quite helpful and we got a permit for 2 nights.

The plan was to to hike down to Horseshoe Mesa via the Grandview Trail once we packed our bags. (I’d been to Horseshoe Mesa over spring break). The next day involved hiking down the east side of the Mesa (all new territory for me now), onto the Kaibab Plateau, upriver and down the canyon ending near the Hance Rapids on the Colorado River. The third day was planned as hiking from the river to the rim via the New Hance Trail.

Spring Break the Grandview Trail was covered in snow and ice and made for a hella scary hike. This time everything was totally dry and that made the goings quite nice. It was a mild hike to the mesa and we had time to explore some. We went into the Cave of the domes but didn’t make it to the signatures as Ghostbag hindered our progress.

Over the weekend I went with the MSU Ultimate team down to Pocatello Idaho to play in the end of season tournament for the Big Sky Section.

It is a nice drive and only having to travel 4 hours is basically nothing. We didn’t win the most games but we had fun doing it. It must have been 70 degrees on Saturday which was the warmest weather I’ve been in around here in about 6 months.

Bozeman is cold and soggy with half-melted snow so here are more pictures from spring break.

The last place we saw in the Grand Canyon was Desert View. It is the first overlook coming from the east. Stopping there was almost an afterthought as I’ve been to the Grand Canyon twice before but never considered this area interesting enough to warrant a stop. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise as the tower itself was a remarkable building and the view of the end of the widest part of canyon was nice as well. (Unlike those other cruddy Grand Canyon views.)

The last two pictures are from hiking in the canyon looking up at the tower sitting on the rim. It is easy to have no idea of scale when you are looking at giant things that are far away.

In the morning we packed up our stuff and hiked back down to the wash from our hilltop campsite. We left our big packs against a tree and followed proceeded to follow the wash upstream. It was a lovely hike with sun, sand, and water. The abundance of vegetation was rather surprising and ended up stopping us a little short of our goal. We basically hiked as far as you could go. I’m going to say we hiked to the end of the wash. My best guess was we went about 4 miles from where we had left our packs

After we got tired of navigating the spiky bushes we turned around, hiked back down and grabbed our bags where we’d left them, and continued all the way back to our car. It is interesting how walking the opposite direction things can look completely different. The hills and turns of the trail seem different. With the different light it was like another hike altogether!

Arriving at the car with a decent amount of daylight we got started on the drive back to Bozeman. About an hour north of Salt Lake we found a hotel parking lot and slept in the back of the van. This trip really made me appreciate the minivan in that it is like an RV except reasonably sized and with way better gas mileage.

The day before we obtained a permit from the backcountry office in Zion to backpack in a more northern, mountainous region of Zion, Kolob Canyon. After the hour-long drive to the trailhead, the possibility of cold nights and hiking through more snow inspired the 2nd southern migration of our trip. We got our permit changed and drove back to the area of the park where we were earlier in the morning to hike up something known as the Coal Pit Wash.

With a name like “Coal Pit Wash” I didn’t expect too much except for warmer temperatures (the area is a lot lower than Kolob canoyn and basically a desert). It turned out to be a really varied and interesting hike. There was a good-sized stream the whole way, which we felt like only occurs in the spring when the snow melts. As you hike up the wash the water becomes clearer and colder as you reduce the time the snow melt has to flow among the sand and the red rocks. Also, as you follow the wash upwards the vegetation changes gradually from a very sparse desert to almost an impassible jungle as you get higher into areas more protected from the sun by the cliffs.

We woke up right outside the Grand Canyon park limits and followed the plan we had made to drive to Bryce Canyon National Park, located a couple of hours north and east of Zion. There was a fair amount of snow in this area on the drive down and we were worried that spring hadn’t quite reached Bryce yet.

The countryside kept getting snowier and snowier as we went north and into higher elevations. Upon arrival in Bryce we were greeted with about 3 solid feet of snow covering basically everything. After a very brief stop of pulling the car into a couple of overlooks and taking a couple of pictures, the plan was made to escape the cold and the snow and drive back down to Zion.

I’m sure Bryce Canyon is an amazing place, but it was too cold and snow covered to entice us to stay around for very long. Hiking around in several feet of snow wasn’t too appealing.

Arriving in Zion with 60-something degree weather and basically zero snow made the extra driving time well worth it.

Having camped at Cottonwood Creek, we packed up and started the hike back out of the canyon. . We hiked back up to Horseshoe Mesa and back to the rim by way of the Grandview Trail.

Happy to have navigated the snow covered cliffsides we stopped at Desert View Point to watch the sunset. Not much was happening as the sun was trapped by a big mean cloud, but patience paid off and the last several minutes before it dipped below the horizon made us glad we waited around.

We drove a short ways out of the part and camped in the Kaibab National Forest. The free and solitary camping in national forests has been one of my favorite discoveries of traveling in the west.

The plan for the next day was to drive to Bryce Canyon by way of the Glen Canyon Dam.

We started the next day on top of Horseshoe Mesa. During the day we made our way off the side of the mesa down to the Kaibab Plateau. The Kaibab is home to the Tonto Trail which you can follow for 70 miles east to west in the middle of the canyon.

We camped that night at Cottonwood Creek, which was doing pretty well due to all the melting snow higher in the canyon. It was a neat place to camp and completely different from where we had stayed the night before.

These pictures are all from that day and are presented in the order they were taken.