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Category: Outdoors

  • Red Baldy Again

    With some travel coming up and hot weather rapidly eroding our epic snowpack, I decided to sneak in a quick snow climb on July 1. Since I couldn’t convince anyone else to go along, I made a conservative choice and climbed Red Baldy, whose northwest slopes present one of the easier and safer routes found…

  • Lake Blanche

    Incredible to see so much snow at the end of June; these pictures show what Lake Blanche (at 8900′) more commonly looks like on Memorial Day. [nggallery id=44]

  • SLC Sunset

    Near my house the other day. [nggallery id=43]

  • A Day in the West Desert

    Southern Utah is famous for its canyons and arches. Utah’s West Desert, on the other hand, is not as well-known and is perhaps not as easy to appreciate. It encompasses a large area, containing entire mountain ranges that are virtually unknown (ever heard of the Confusion Range or the Wah Wahs?). It is also very…

  • Polar Bears 2011

    My work life, as readers of this blog have probably gathered, seems to mainly involve trying to keep funding agencies happy, teaching concepts like deadlock avoidance to bored undergraduates, exhorting grad students to work harder, going to pointless meetings, and spending any remaining time responding to emails. Of course I have a blog where I…

  • Antelope Island

    The boys had no school today, so I took them and a friend to Antelope Island, one of the more accessible islands in the Great Salt Lake. Despite the odd weather (it snowed, got sunny, and snowed again about eleven times during the day) we had a fun trip. I brought my backpacking stove and…

  • Goblin Valley and Capitol Reef

    Family trip to Southern Utah. [nggallery id=36]

  • One Day of Winter and Three Days of Spring in the Fins

    Bill and I had already made two attempts to backpack into the Fins area, which is part of Ernie’s Country in the Maze District of Canyonlands NP. Spring 2010 was abnormally snowy and Fall 2010 featured torrential rains, both times making roads impassable. This time — Spring 2011 — the weather cooperated. Also it was…

  • Elk and Winter Light

    [nggallery id=31]

  • Gear for Getting Outside in Winter

    Since I’m not a big skier, I didn’t get out a lot in winter during my first few years in Utah. When springtime came, I would just tough it out and get into shape the hard way — go on a few long hikes and suffer appropriately. This worked because I was in my 20s.…