Moab & Beyond 2011
Finally back to civilization! Actually I arrived back in Texas yesterday but it has been a whirlwind getting caught up with life again. I was able to get through all 980 of my pictures yesterday and pick the top 25% and do a bit of post on them. You can see the full gallery below, or see it here in the gallery section.
The trip was spectacular and a great way to finish off the winter ski season. My “End of the Season” post you can read all about my last few days of training.
Day 1
The first day of the trip we headed out to Moab and had a nice picnic along the Colorado River. Then we headed about an hour west of Moab out to Little Cotton Wood Canyon area (just outside Goblin Valley State Park). This area is known to have a lot of slot canyons. The reason they are called slot canyons is because that is exactly what they are, a small slot hundreds or thousands of feet deep in the sandstone. The way they are made is by water, usually flashfloods, rushing through the sandstone eroding away at the rock. What makes them so neat is that at points in the slot it can be so thin that you almost need a flashlight to see at high noon. Hundreds of feet up the slots are only two or three feet wide so the sunlight doesn’t quite make it all the way down to the bottom. There are also points where someone with a few extra pounds around the waist wouldn’t be able to make it though.
The slots can also be quite dangerous because they are all low points, meaning that anytime there is rain in the area it drains into these canyons. Anytime you are out in the wilderness like that one must be very aware of the weather conditions and always have two planned escape routes.
After we were done in Little Wild Horse (which took the better part of a day) we headed over to Goblin Valley State Park. This place is wild due to all the unique sandstone sculptures. As you can see in the pictures below, the reason they call it goblin valley is because it looks like a bunch of little goblins all over the ground. I actually thought some of them looked more like mushrooms myself, but to each their own. One interesting fact is the sculptures are all made in the “Entrada” layer of rock. As you can see in some of the pictures of Eric and me, on one side of the valley there are all the funny looking goblin structures and on the other it is completely flat. I can only imagine the early explorers probably passed right by this place and had no idea it was just on the other side of the ridge.
Day 2
After camping in a spectacular location the first night (with a magnificent view of the stars) we headed up to hike Ding & Dang Canyons which are more technical slot canyons. It was a cool change of pace from the first day. Even though slot canyons are called the same each one of them is completely different then the next. This hike had a lot more bouldering (free climbing large 10-20 foot boulders) and more large descents associated with it. Once we got up to the top it began to drizzle. We knew it was supposed to rain that day so we knew that at any point we were going to have to run back to the car (as the car was in a river bead too!). At that point we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of flashfloods so we headed over to Arches National Park and finish the day out with hiking.
Arches was fantastic and a great way to finish off the hiking. As you can see from the pictures, the grey skies added a beauty to the landscape that I couldn’t have imagined better.
That night we camped at the beginning of the Grand Canyon right along the Colorado River. The colors the next morning are truly indescribable. As great as the pictures are they do not even do it justice. I highly recommend going camping in Utah to get away from it all. There isn’t much better to calm a mind then being out of cell service and under a blanket of stars.
I hope everyone has been having a great week. Remember to always live life to the fullest and be kind to everyone.
The plan is for me to be in the Fort Worth area until mid-June (except a week or so trip to NYC in May). For those of you who have been asking, the updates ought to be frequent from here on out.
Peace and Love,
Mark Brown
