Embedded in Academia

Category: Utah

  • Maybird

    [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…

  • Harris Wash, Zebra and Tunnel Slot Canyons

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  • Happy Canyon

    [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.…

  • Bonneville Salt Flats and Silver Island Mountains

  • Mount Olympus

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

  • Black Friday on Wednesday

    Until now, my department hasn’t done any kind of formal, department-wide evaluation of our graduate students and their progress. A number of people, including me, have argued for some time that we should be doing something like CMU’s Black Friday. This semester Suresh, our current DGS, has made this happen; the meeting was today. Overall…

  • Fall

    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).

  • Chimney Canyon

    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,…

  • Mt Nebo

    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…

  • Box Elder Peak

    [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…