Montana

Over the 4th of July Greg and I went to Montana for camping and peak bagging. Check out our pictures.

Idaho

Two weekends ago Greg and I took a weekend trip to Idaho to bag some peaks. We had great weather the whole weekend and Greg was successful in all the peaks that he did. The first day we hiked Redbird and then Greg traversed over to Shelly - on the way down from Redbird we had an AWESOME thousand foot glissade (descending the mountain on our butts in the snow). It was one of the best glissades that we have done together. The next day we headed to Smiley Mountain where I waited at the car for Greg to hike the peak. He had a great day on the mountain and I got a nice tan.

Redbird Mountain

Almost to the summit of Redbird

Greg on Redbird with Shelly behind him

I took this picture from Redbird of Greg on the summit of Shelly - Can you see him?

That's me glissading down Redbird

I made it down the glissade - Ski gloves in June???

Our camp spot

Smiley Mountain

Greg on Smiley by himself :-(

Who to hike with?

While Greg was gone in Georgia I had to find other people to go hiking with. Luckily I found a couple different people that were willing to go with me.

Raquel and I at Lower Bell Reservoir. Raquel's first hike!

Me, Holly and Landon at Adams Canyon

Adams Canyon Waterfall

Over the weekend I hung out with 2 legends in the hiking world.

Dean Molen and Ken Jones.

South Pequop - Nevada

Dean and Ken on Spruce Mountain - Nevada

A Memorable Memorial Day

FYI - I know in previous posts that I have done you haven't been able to enlarge the pictures. I think I fixed it now, so click on the picture to see the actual size. :-)

Ely, NV

Our first peak of the trip was Ward Mountain. There was a road that went to the top, but it was snowed in and we ended up hiking the snow covered road. The were storms brewing all around us, so we had to hurry to the top and hurry off the top. It started to hail on our way back to the car, but we didn't get too wet.

One of our many camp spots. There was a river that ran right by our camp spot, that we never expected to see in the desert.

We couldn't find very much fire wood at this spot, so Greg decided that it would be a great idea if I (because I was the one with sandals) crossed the river and got us a lot of fire wood so that we could cook our food. So me being the nice person that I am and wanting some dinner, decided that I would cross this river. The river was only about 6 inches high and 5 feet wide. So I started across the river, I was almost to the other side when all of the sudden my foot got stuck in the mud! I was yelling and worried about stepping outside the water, because I could see all the bugs and spiders crawling on the ground right outside of the water. Finally I decided to just step on the bugs with my barefoot. Then my shoe popped out of the mud and started floating down the river! I was yelling at Greg saying, "Get my shoe, get my shoe!" He just started laughing at me and told me to hurry and get it before it went down stream. Luckily for me, my shoe ended up getting stuck in some trees and I finally got it back. I also got lots of firewood on the other side of the river.

Currant Mountain - this was the hardest of all the peaks and this is the one I gave up on before the hike even started. :-) Good job Greg - I'm so proud of you!

I can't say very much about this peak since I didn't do it. I will try to hassle Greg and get him to add something to our blog. :-)

Troy Peak was another toughie. This was a very long slog up a huge mountain. When I finally got to the summit we could only stay a few minutes. At the top Greg put his hand by mine and shocked me. This is not normal for a mountain! After that we were taking summit shots and Greg looked at me and said, "Um, your hair is standing straight up." This photo was taken around 9:40 am - notice how nice the weather looks.

By noon, this is the cloud that we had above us on top of the peak. So, if you were wondering why my hair would be standing straight up, this cloud should explain it all.

We thought we were safe once we got off the summit. We started heading down the very steep slope and about 300 ft. below the summit Greg realized he had forgotten his GPS at the top. He had to ran back up and find his GPS. I felt very bad for him, because it was a steep bugger - I'm just glad it was him that forgot something and not me. ;-) Love you babe.

On our way home we stopped to see the Lunar Crater. It is about 300 ft. down and Greg decided he was going to hike it. I also passed on this hike, because I knew we still had one more peak to do before we were going to get home.

This picture was taken by Greg inside the crater, of me standing at the top of the crater - 300 ft. above him.

When Greg got back to the top he realized he had lost his expensive sunglasses somewhere along his hike. Which meant that he was going to have to do the whole hike over. The first time he hiked it, he had done a loop - he went down one spot and came up another. He headed back down into the crater and ended up finding them a little short of the bottom. It was a good work out for him. Even with him hiking the crater practically two times, he still kicked my butt up the mountain we did after visiting the Lunar Crater.

Our last peak of the trip and close to home. Becky Peak is near Wendover, NV. Greg had to hassle me to do this one, because I was being lazy and just wanted to go home. I'm really glad that I have a boyfriend that pushes me to do peaks - I wonder how many peaks I wouldn't have if I didn't have Greg there encouraging me to do them all. This turned out to be a cool, little hike. There were tons of wild horse trails all over the mountain. We didn't see any wild horses, but we have seen them around this area before.

A great memorial weekend as usual!

Just Another Weekend

This past weekend was just another weekend for Greg and I, but we had a blast. Greg got home from training in ATL on Friday. We packed our stuff on Saturday and headed to Green River. Saturday we camped on a plateau near a bunch of cliffs, just outside of Green River near a town called Thompson. Our view out of the tent looked right over the cliff. Sunday we woke up and drove to Canyonlands National Park. We drove down there to check out a route for Junction Butte - a peak that is on our list of 'to dos'. We decided to come back another time for that peak. So instead we went to Gooseberry Trail - a trail that is in Canyonlands, that goes off the cliffs that surround the White Rim and right down to the Rim. Once we got down to the White Rim, we just kept walking and walking. It was really beautiful to be down by the Rim. After all that walking we finally had to come back up and our total round trip was about 14 miles. After all that hiking and no peak to claim, we headed out of the park and stopped at a peak called The Knoll. It was a short easy hike, right off the main road. So we ran up that and got at least one peak in for the day. We had beautiful weather and the hike to the White Rim was very neat.

Greg making our delicious hamburgers On Top of the World! The top of Gooseberry Trail Colorado River
Greg on the summit of The Knoll

Awesome Weekend

This past weekend was a great one for us. Saturday we left for St. George and made reservations at the Wyndham. On the way, we made a pit stop in Cedar City to hike a peak called, Iron Mountain. That night we got into our hotel room and it was one of the nicest hotels we have stayed in. The following morning we woke up early and headed to Water Canyon near Hildale, UT (a polygamist community). Canaan Mountain was our goal - it was a 18 mile hike in some crazy terrain.

Looking from the summit of Iron Mountain.

Water Canyon - the springs were leaking through both sides of the canyon, making the walls drip with water. There was also a stream running through the middle of the canyon, making small waterfalls.

This is still part of the trail, we are now higher on the mountain and the terrain had changed quite dramatically. This is just one of the sandy river beds we had to cross.

The trail goes right next to these White Domes.

...and we finally made it to the top!!!

Catching Up

K, I've decided that I am really horrible about updating our blog - it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I will catch everyone up on the last couple weekends. These pictures are just random pictures from the last month.

Our first camping trip of 2009. Greg's friend, Zach decided

to come with us for our camping trip.

We are happy the weather is finally getting nice, so that we can do more hiking. Even with the unpredictable weather that we had, we were still able to get some new peaks.

Two of Greg's friends joined us on our 2nd camping trip - Zach and Jed

Family Visit

Greg's family came to visit a couple weeks ago. We had such a great time while they were here. It was great to see all of them and we were so happy that his sisters were able to come this year. We did lots of stuff while they were here (as always, Greg had their whole trip planned with lots to see and do). We visited Capitol Reef N.P. and went to the Diamond Fork Hot Springs, and went skiing/snowboarding lots of days.

Capitol Reef N.P.

Sara wanted to learn how to snowboard, so I taught her. She did awesome!Thanks for letting us borrow your board, Hol! :-)

Little Nelson Mountain

Yesterday, Greg and I hiked Little Nelson Mountain. The peak was near Ferron, UT - Ferron is about 10 miles south of Castle Dale. Instead of going through Price to get there, we went to Fairview and headed up Fairview Canyon. The canyon road goes to 9,600 ft, it was so awesome on the canyon road. The road is plowed all year round, so we could see how much snow we have gotten for the year. There was tons of snow and there were so many places where the snow had not been touched at all. The snow was so smooth and bright white. We also saw a wild turkey on the side of the road. Too bad it isn't closer to Thanksgiving. :-) Unfortunately we never stopped on the canyon road for pictures. We only got a couple pictures of our hike also. It was a long day and the hike was a little harder than we thought it was going to be. We didn't stop to take lots of pictures, because we didn't want to be in the dark for too long on the way down. But we did get another peak!


This was the easiest part of the hike. You don't even want to know what the rest of the hike looked like - Steep, muddy, snowy, rocky ...you name it, it was there. On the Top Greg by an old juniper on the summit.