[nggallery id=55] Over the weekend my friend Derek and I did a short backpacking trip into Maybird Gulch, a minor sub-drainage of Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City. Amazingly, on a Friday night our only company was a pack of coyotes (or perhaps this isn’t so amazing—most of Maybird is very steep and/or rocky…

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[nggallery id=51] Although Happy Canyon is a giant drainage occupying something like 90 square miles of southern Utah, it doesn’t get a lot of visitors. First, Happy is fairly remote and not in any of the national parks or recreation areas. Second, it is well-protected by cliffs, with only about five ways in or out.…

Today I got out of Salt Lake City’s stifling inversion for a little while.

Pano taken from near the alpine loop road behind Mt Timpanogos, Oct 16 2011. Here’s a high-res version suitable for printing (36 MB).

The San Rafael Swell is a large uplifted area in southeast Utah that has eroded into numerous badlands and canyon systems. The Swell is not particularly well-known outside of Utah because it contains no visitor centers, motels, restaurants, or any other services — it’s the kind of place you enter with maps, plenty of water,…

Over Labor Day weekend I climbed Mount Nebo, highest point in the Wasatch Range at 11,929′, with Dave Hanscom and Bill Stenquist. Dave has run me into the ground before and Bill came close to winning the Wasatch 100 a couple of times — so I should have known something was up when we met…

[nggallery id=46] I have a hiking book that refers to Box Elder Peak as the red-headed stepchild of the central Wasatch Range. This is true: Box Elder is a lonely 11,000′ mountain stuck right in between the big and impressive Timpanogos and Lone Peak massifs. The other day Dave Hanscom and I decided to climb…

Yesterday the local news had this story about a guy who took an uncontrolled slide down a chute in Maybird Gulch in Little Cottonwood Canyon outside of Salt Lake City. The slide took him over some rocks and he was lucky to survive — the video accompanying the story is terrifying. Video Courtesy of KSL.com…