Ashdown Gorge

So on a Saturday I was asked the question, "Where do you want to adventure tomorrow?". There were many possibilities but I decided to go with "let's see how I feel in the morning" as there was a large celebration happening that night I felt it was a very valid response. Well when morning came I awoke and said "let's do Ashdown Gorge!". Which of course came the reply "really!?!". I answered "well yes, really". By now it was already noon and I put together a fine bagel sandwich breakfast for both my girlfriend and myself. Then we began preparing for our hike of the day. I asked fatman if he was interested but he seemed to be more interested in having a lazy day around the apt, later I find out he did go on a small hike somewhere up canyon. Ashdown Gorge is a 13 mile hike that starts up in cedar breaks national monument (approximate. 8000' elev.) and returns about 2/3 of the way back to cedar city ending at about 6000' elev. I spent a little while doing the math 13 miles at an approximate speed of 2 mph (which in backcountry hiking is a respectable speed) that meant 6.5 hours of travel so at the latest we had to begin by 2:30pm since the sun would set just a little after 9pm. Also this hike is generally done as a two car hike, one is parked at the bottom and the other is taken to the top to begin the hike. So we prep our gear including a second pair of shoes not something I usually bring but given the nature of the hike and how it transitions, I find it to be valuable enough to make space for. I will also mention that once we were ready for this hike my girlfriend looked a little apprehensive (now keep in mind she has done this hike twice and attempted it one other time, but weather did not permit.) I inquired as to why she was nervous, she said that "this is a little crazy." I replied "I know, but that's my style. "That’s what worries me." she says. I laugh for a while, then I realize she is serious. It was a little crazy given the late start in the day; if anything were to slow us down we would be hiking out in darkness. Also this hike is generally done in late summer or early fall not late spring early summer, we would have higher and colder water, the last few miles is all hiking down a river, hence the change of shoes, cause while fatman may like hiking everywhere in his sandals I prefer a quality hiking boot or shoe. Skipping all the driving we begin right on time.

Part one, a nice walk in the woods. This starts out with a well defined trail and switchbacks and a couple of small paths off to the sides and lookout points. What I noticed first is that there are no signs indicating and of these and that makes me very happy. I always feel robbed of part of my nature experience when all of the trails have been built and reinforced and there are signs every 10 feet telling me either what is a few feet farther on the path that I will see in a minute anyway. It was I delightful walk and after a few miles if that’s all it had been I would have been very content to hike back out but the lure of what laid beyond it drew me on farther.

Part two, the forest opened up into a large open plain. It felt very much like something out of a movie, like traversing the country in Lord of the Rings or something. They were beautiful expanses that many people will miss out on, in their lives.



Part 3, back in the forest, but this time the forest was different, I don’t know if hikers that had done the previous two parts had turned back or just left a lighter footprint but the trail was fainter and wound around a lot more. We had run into numerous downed trees across the paths but there were more here. which brings me to another point, there was much evidence that trees had fallen across the path in previous years, but someone had come thru and chopped them up to move them from the trail. who does this and how can I get that job, is it part of the forest service to send out a ranger with a chainsaw for a few day and hike the trail and make sure it’s clear every year? During this part of the hike i also me a very nice little creature (that i will not currently try to identify because i will be wrong about it) that stopped and posed for a minute so i could get a good picture of him or her. This section also contained a few of the smaller streams that i am now sure ran into the larger river, pictured below. I could definitely do that. We reach the end of part 3 and sit down to have a nice lunch break. We can hear the river running somewhere close but can’t actually see it. While eating I estimate we have hiked about 9 of the 134 miles and only have a little bit left to go. We pack up our belongings and get back on the trail. What do we find around the next bend?

Part 4, the river, feeling slightly silly for being so close and not realizing it, we stop and take a short break to make a shoe change into proper water footwear. I also pack away my camera, as we find that due to the snow pack still melting the river is higher than "normal" and also moving with a much faster current. We are both accustomed to hiking rivers and hop right in. IT IS COLD. We keep up a good pace and bounce in and out of the water as the way the river carved it with many twists and turns you must constantly cross it. If it were warmer, shallower, and\or slower than we would have probably just walked down it but this was not the case today. It felt like it was taking forever to make any progress. Eventually we hit a spot where we could walk on land and we both noticed how tired we were quickly becoming. I had spent some time earlier how the freezing water wasn’t helping our energy level; it is cold enough that our bodies much use extra energy to reheat our legs every time we enter the water. On top of this it’s starting to get late, still on track for my timeline but I hadn’t accounted for the fact that it is dark in the steep canyons now and therefore colder as well. After another mile we find the area where it opens up and the water level drops and shortly we see a person walking his dog up the river so we know we are very close. Around the next bend we see the car a little ways off and are on our way out.
This is a great hike and if you are every in the area and have the time to do it I highly recommend it. One of the big lessons I learned on this trip is that a hiking pole is a wonderful thing for hiking down or up a river, I had not taken one into a river with me before, but now I will every time.

"Don't get stuck on limitations, focus instead on solutions."

Playing catch up

I have noticed that while I enjoy writing this it takes me a lot of time and I have a hard time dedicating that time to it. So again we will be playing catch up on adventures. The number of adventures have been fairly small since last time I wrote but that doesn't mean their quality has diminished in the least.

First up we have a lovely camping night in a valley that I don't remember the name of. I was a great evening of many friends, lots of wonderful food, a failed attempt at night koob, and some serious star gazing. It came to my attention that the android software has a wonderful star finding app, with the help of this we saw a great many constellations. The evening passed on as many fine nights of camping do. The net morning we awake had a hearty breakfast and stared down our challenge of the day, a small mountain that we camped in the night shadow of. It took a little guess work lot find the trailq but soon fat man and I were off on a vertical journey. A mile or so in we began remembering why we call ourselves "smoker and fatman", and it is because we were huffing and puffing stopping often and gasping for air on many occasions, but we are also determined and eventually we found some semblance of a rhythm. With approximately an hour head start we thought we would easily be the first to make it to the "top". But alas others in our group are in much better shape and it did not take them very long to catch up and pass us, but we kept on anyway. Eventually we found our target area (it became our target area when we realized how far away the true peak was)th e heat was high and it was our first hike of the season. Besides this sub-peak had an excellent view and even some snow for fat man to dive into that is until he remembered that snow while wearing warm weather clothing is apparently cold. We hung around the top playing and taking photos for quite a while, and we also realized that this mountain is on the opposite side from pine valley, which you might remember from "one cow roadtrip". Pine valley is still on my list of places that needs to be explored. Overall it was a very successful adventure and a great warm up for the season.
A couple of weeks later we had another camping adventure known to many as "meatfest". A fun night out in e scrub.and again food was amazing there were several groups of pele that took to hiking in multiple directions, the amount of people that come out for this event astonished me and there were even friends that traveled a long way to return to the festivities this year. Some of us had a wee bit too much to dry and don't remember the night as well as we probably should but I do remember getting lost in the woods looking for my tent for quite some time, which btw was not entirely my fault. I did learn a down side to camping on the west side of a mountain, when night comes it takes a long time for the moon to rise over it. This is good for stars but bad for much wanted light at night.

A couple of weeks ago i went on a nice couple of mile hike around a lake in the cedar beaks area. this was a great little trip that included some great photos around a "lake", which was really more a medium sized pond that was pretty dirty. but the trails around it were great for walking and in a couple of places gave a nice view out over a very pretty valley. also i had been in a funk for a few days and found it to be a great way to get my attitude properly adjusted again. also while hiking around i found several places where there was still snow and found this remarkable as it was the middle of summer by this point. but i guess at a higher elevation in places that the sun cant get to snow can survive for a very long time.
I'm sure I am missing an adventure or two in here but the larger hikes or adventures deserve their own article. so with that I will move on and begin writing those.

"the outdoors offer limitless possibilities, find out for yourself."

The tale of the "eight dollar machete"

It was nearing the end of the fall 2009 adventuring season, and both Fatman and i were itching for some truly EPIC adventuring. we decided that since our weekends were longer now (sunday and monday) we needed to set our sights farther from "home". there was a location that fatman had visited a few years prior and was eager to get back to. after what seemed like a few long seconds of encouragement i was in. action, adventure, risk and rewards; these were the ideas that almost instantly got me to agree to go camping in the middle of a vast amount of desert in mid-late fall.

Sunday rolled around and we began our rituals that we were becoming habit on our cherished days off. sleep in, followed by making sure the gear was packed properly and the cameras were charged. since we were doing some actual camping this time we stopped at our local neighborhood "national chain store that i refuse to endorse but don't have much of a choice here". additional water and food supplies were procured and while looking over the camping/outdoors section, i noticed this devise that i have always been enamored with. some call it "machete" i will now call it my oversized multitool, but i will get into more detail about that later. the best part was it was a steal at eight dollars! i mean who doesnt love a deal, i know i do. if this thing was even relatively sharp i could find some uses for it. so we paid our bill and were on the road.

Now for any of you that have driven across the country you might have driven this section of nowhere. there is a 100 mile stretch of highway in Utah that boasts an amazing 0 exits for services. well about halfway across this expanse we made a turn to the south, and continued down another smaller highway for quite a while longer and finally we had arrived after 5 hours of being in a car.

Ok i dont currently remember the name of the place we were, but im not sure i should tell you that anyway... i will say if you are going to go wandering off in the desert far beyond any services make sure you have a rough destination and some kind of plan. adventuring may seem like all fun and games but running out of gas many, many miles away from other people or much less a fueling station, may wind up being game over for you. we took time on our journey to look over our gas mileage and how far out we were going and also checked our ability to have a return trip, because again having enough gas to get there is great! having enough gas to get back from there is even better. but we had arrived at our destination, an abandoned mining town, near a state park that we were planning on visiting, but the town was our real destination. we drove thru the early parts and i must say it was a beautiful place to put a town. as we were getting to a better selection of places to camp, we noticed another group of 2 suv's seting up camp. it goes to show it is in fact a small world. we put some distance between them and ourselves since part of the point of this was not to encounter other people. we came around a bend and up towards the top of a nice plateau. we decided this should be our spot, after some early investigating it seems someone had previously come to the same descision. but it was a great spot and they were nice enough to leave us a well constructed fire pit and a pair of benches made from large slate rocks.

We scouted around for the best place to setup tents and get prepared since it was already early evening. after finding a good place for the tents we scouted the rest of the mesa. it was an amazing view of canyons on all sides of us and across one of them was our destination not much more than a mile or 2 away. it was however very windy, enough to try to push you of the cliff edges, so we kept our distance when on the downwind side. then we proceeded to set our base camp. this is where the "eight dollar machete was first used, the ground was hard and i wanted to test its durability. so i drove my tent stakes into the ground using its handle, it broke. one corner snapped clean off revealing the rest of the handle to be hollow. i still used it to set the rest of the stakes, making sure to hit only on the center of the handle, being that the tang did run all the way thru the handle. this is also where the great tent fiasco of 09 comes in. the tent i have and brought is an ultra light shelter made by Go-Lite. it is a great little tent in a lot of conditions. this was not one of them. with the high wind and no trees to set guy-lines, it had trouble staying vertical. after several attempts, i broke down and used the spare tent fatman had in the car. Rule #11 know your gear. the first tasks were done and adventure was calling so off we went.

as we got close to the first opening i noticed something intangible in the air. it is a thing i am not soon to forget. the smell, it was something of the likes i have never smelled before, rich copper with stale dust and just a twist of a sweet tar smell. we began our investigation with the parts that had the most remnants but quickly we learned there are 3 ways to close down an abandoned mine. First is to drive steel rod deep into the stone of the entrance, then weld a wall made of steel bars onto these rods. second, brick up the opening and then cover that in a plaster/concrete mixture. third and most awesome, just blow it up! by demolishing the entrance you prevent people from entering. now im sure they had reasons why they did different methods in different tunnels, build up of gases and such. but also because bats lived in some of the mines. a lot of people fear or dislike bats. i find them to be a splendid animal, besides being unlike most other animals they also eat bugs that annoy me. and as the sun was setting we saw them take to the skies for their nights hunt. soon it was dark and we were still on the side of a mountain, some would say this is foolish when you have a choice but i would say they missed out on the astonishing appearance of the moon sneaking over the peak of the mountain. we were not foolish enought to continue up the mount into rougher terrain without proper lighting. however the walk back well lit by a full moon was excellent.

We arrived back at base camp, this is when we both realized we had made an oversight... we neglected to procure firewood. normally when camping this is not a problem and you can find plenty of fuel around, however we are in desert country. we were not looking to make a roaring fire for all to see, we were making a small fire for some cooking and to warm up by. and yes added to my potential gear list is now a couple of small logs for fire. so we set out to scavenging, finding small twigs, and tumbleweed as tinder, some larger sticks as well. but this would only last a few minutes as a fire. then we found a gold mine, a stump from a tree that had long since fallen and been removed. again the eight dollar machete would have a chance to prove its worth. again it came up short, it was able to get far enough into the stump to get stuck but not even far enough to back cut for breaking pieces off. we gained more kindling. at last we found a tree that had died and fallen some time ago and would now serve another purpose, one or two of the larger branches would be perfect, the machete was slightly helpful here in bludgeoning a fault point into the branch so we could then break it free. not long after we had a nice fire going, which was good because it began to get cold. after some hot food and some sips from our flasks, a priority on my camping list preferably filled with a good whiskey, we were comfortable. the high winds were chilling us to the bone though, this led to a new invention...

"the butt rock" i know classy right? as i said before our benches were made from large slate rocks. well if you take said rock and gently set it over a small fire for several minutes that heat will penetrate the rock and you can then remove it. Let the outermost layer cool slightly and then go back to sitting on it and your seat will be nice and toasty for a good little while. i do feel the need to tell you outside of the desert this is not the best plan. rocks naturally trap moisture inside of them, rapidly heating them can cause pockets of air or vapor to expand and the rock could explode or at least break and crumble into your fire. so know your rocks. some are much better for this than others. after a quiet night under the stars chatting with a friend it was time to retire. Oh, the machete finally found a use it was a great fire poker.

by morning the surrounding area had all become quite chilly, but the awe-inspiring sunrise warmed my soul. we both thought our best course was to grab some food and drink and pack up camp, so we did. and the effort of scambling up loose rock warmed us just like we knew it would. we re-investigated what we had examined the previous night to find exactly what we already knew. no entry. but we were not deterred. no, were were determined. we kept on climbing dangerous inclines to be dashed over and over again. there were some great moments among this including me pulling some real Indiana Jones problem solving. after a few hours we crossed the outside peaks and headed towards the center of the village. some of the vertical mining structures were still there but again the mines was closed. we crested several peaks and looked over many cliffs, but could not find what we were after. for a while we played a fun game i call find the hidden mine, as some of the underground tunnels had been marked by small markers above ground. we found our way into the core of town. unfortunately all of the building had been cleared down to their foundations. we spent a while making judgments on what building used to be on top of what foundations based on clues that had been left behind or relative location. being now mid afternoon we decided to hike out. the operation was fun so it wasn't a total bust, and we gave it the best effort we had.

we followed a washout that was taking us in the approximate correct direction. it took us south around a peak we had not paid attention to before. it took a little extra hopping and skipping to get there but we did. there we found two mine entrances the first of which had been walled up. we might have also kicked it a little out of frustration. no, it did not move. the second we held our breath in anticipation as we neared. the entrance had been demolished but at the very top there was a tiny gap. after a little effort something became very apparent. we were not getting inside without some serious excavating gear, which we did not have. so with the final loss chalked up in the column, we headed back to the car. after walking 30 feet i looked to my right. right there in front of me, almost smirking, was a small tunnel opening. what i deduced was when they demolished the original opening it inadvertently opened this passage, which would make it much less supported.

because of certain reasons i am leaving out the details of this part. now, first we did do our preflight checklist of possibilities; cave-ins, check. gas pockets, check. Hantavirus, check and check. and last but never least radation poisoning (oh did i purposely not mention what they were mining here??? uranium...yep....) check. what i will say is, yes and yes it was awesome(some things just should not be written for just anyone to read them, sorry.)

Adventure being a total success, we headed for the car knowing we had only for sure eluded the cave-ins. time would tell on the rest. and i am still alive to write this, 6 months later. we found an information center on our way out, we were right about all of the buildings. it was a long car ride back with that same smell still ground deeply into everything we had. i also thought about making a new handle for the eight dollar machete when i got back, and maybe sharpening it. i am not sure how it would stand up against a zombie as is, and that is the real test. until the next adventure...

~make sure you get your money out of every "machete"