Dillon Pinnacles

When I drive out west to go hiking out where the scenery is really something, (which so far has mostly been in either Utah or Colorado, although Wyoming has tempted me a lot too—and one of these days I'll go even a little further and explore New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California) I always try to find a way to get as far out of the Great Lakes region as possible on the first day so I can take my time and enjoy the western scenery a bit more leisurely the second day of driving.  For instance, on two trips to the Uintas, I've made sure that I got as far as either North Platte or even Ogallala Nebraska, and then went and spent a couple of hours at Chimney Rock and Scotts Bluff National Monument, hiking and messing around, before then enjoying scenic drives over the Medicine Bow mountains and the Flaming Gorge area.  (The interstate drive across the red desert isn't nearly as bad as a lot of commuters I talk to claim it is, but interstate drives are never as good as little country roads if leisurely enjoying the scenery is your goal.)  Sadly, my sister-in-law doesn't live in Vernal anymore, so that option isn't really a very good one anymore, but with a different destination and a different route, I have some new opportunities this time around.

If I'm going to start hiking in the Needles district, for instance, then I'll want to spend my second night on the road—right before I hike—in Monticello Utah, I think.  It's closer to the Needles area than Moab.  And that gives me an opportunity to still have the same first day of driving, but then cut through Colorado instead of Wyoming, and drive through Gunnison and some other areas that are quite on the way to where I'm going anyway.

So for my Sunday afternoon stop driving and hike around for a little while pit stop, I'm thinking of the Blue Mesa Reservoir near Gunnison with it's fabulous Dillon Pinnacles rock formation.  There's a four mile round trip trail (although I think it's actually just a point to point that you backtrack on with maybe a little lollipop like loop at the end) and it's not very far out of the way at all, if it is even out of the way.  And, although the season isn't as exciting as if it were summer or fall, I'll also be driving right by Mount Sneffels, which will be fun.

It always helps that I gain two time zones heading west, and also that daylight savings time will have started by the time I'm making this trip, but assuming I get to Ogallala the first day, I've only got 10½ driving hours.  With the extra time zone crossing and plenty of daylight, if I get a nice early start, and have easy like Sunday morning traffic (on Sunday morning) then I should easily have a couple of hours in the early to mid-afternoon to check out the Pinnacles, hike the little trail, and just have a nice drive around the area.

Which is nice.  I actually really like Scotts Bluff and Chimney Rock, but I've seen them twice already, and I'd like to see something else this time.

Next time I do southern Utah, which I'm sure I will do because I'm only seeing a fraction of the red rock paradise that I'd like to see, I may even make a couple nights stop in Grand Junction and see Colorado National Monument, camp there, and hike for a couple of days before crossing the border into Utah again.  But for now, this'll be a nice way to get psyched up for the hiking trip while still driving.

April Desert hiking

Well, it looks like I'm going.  I'll be gone the same time my wife has planned to take the boys during their spring break to Utah and Idaho, ostensibly to pick up my daughter's stuff from storage in Rexburg, visit her sister (and see her first Tabernacle Choir concert) and see General Conference while they're out there.  It'll be the week before General Conference, and the plan is that I'll meet up with them on Friday sometime and go to the first Saturday morning session with them before we hit the road for home together.  I'm a little disappointed that neither of the boys will be with me, and honestly, I think maybe they are too—or at least, they'd rather do that then go back to Rexburg, which for whatever reason they kinda felt was a depressing place, at least during Spring Break when it's still cold, windy, brown, etc.  Maybe we'll talk about that, but I really think I can handle being on my own better than my wife can, even though I'd like to have the boys hike with me.

Anyway, as I said earlier, sadly, I have to use the weekend to travel, because that's the only thing that works out from a timing perspective, so I'll be driving Saturday and Sunday and arrive in... Monticello, I think, on Sunday evening sometime.  Let's do a day by day break-down of my plans

• Saturday March 30—Drive to mid-Nebraska; stay in hotel
• Sunday March 31—Drive to Monticello; stay in hotel
• Monday April 1—Go to Needles District of Canyonlands and hike into Chessler Park.  Camp overnight
• Tuesday April 2—Explore Chessler Park, Druid Arch, etc. Continue camping in same place.
• Wednesday April 3—Hike out, drive to Dead Horse Point State Park, set up camp
• Thursday April 4—Explore Dead Horse Point State Park, whatever I wasn't able to see the day before.  Drive to Goblin Valley State Park, set up camp
• Friday April 5—Explore Goblin Valley State Park and Little Wild Horse and Bell slot canyons.  Drive to Stansbury Park, or wherever my wife is staying Friday night.
• Saturday April 6—General Conference morning session, and start driving home
• Sunday April 7—Finish driving home.

I do feel like the Dead Horse Point and Goblin Valley State parks are a little rushed, and I wish I had another day (maybe even another day each) to explore them more, but I'll probably be OK.  I don't need to literally hike every single trail at each location.

Needles and Moab

I'm still trying to decide what I'm doing for my solo hiking trip this year.  As February comes to a close, my chances of making it to Moab during the Spring season start to diminish; I still don't have a date, or even a serious plan, so how likely is it really that I'll actually be putting boots to ground in a month or even two or heck—even three?  And three is already starting to lean into weather that's likely to be too hot, honestly.  If I'm really serious about going, I need to nail down a schedule in April... or put it off until the fall.  I can always go in October or even early November, I suppose.  Although then I start to step on other commitments; Alex will be eligible to go on his mission starting late September when he turns 18, so October or early November is probably when he's leaving.

And I'm reconsidering some of what I'd planned.  I do still want to do Chesler Park and camp there, maybe two nights, for a relaxed, packless exploration of the region.  But I'm now starting to become increasingly convinced that the Salt Creek area should be the subject of it's own trip that focuses just on that area, and is done as a point to point with some kind of shuttle, or two cars, or something.  So, I should just ditch that (for now) and look for some other stuff to do in the Moab area after doing a Chessler Park backpacking trip for... I dunno, three days and two nights or so.

Luckily, there are a lot of potential day trips or short in and out one-nighters in the area that look really good too.  There's a six mile loop trail at Dead Horse State Park that few people take (because they just hang out at the drive-up lookout point and then leave, mostly) which is highly recommended: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/east-west-rim-trails-loop

There's always more to see at Arches, although avoiding crowds can be a challenge in its own right: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/klondike-bluffs-trail-tower-arch-hike
https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/devils-garden-primitive-trail

And there's a few other spots in Canyonlands worth taking a look: https://www.outdoorproject.com/adventures/utah/hikes/horseshoe-canyon-hike

And, of course, there's plenty of BLM land that I'm curious to see more of: https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/hidden-valley/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/fisher-towers/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/negro-bill/
https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/hiking/moab-hiking/hunter-canyon/

And this link has some of the same options listed above, but a few other ones as well:  https://www.explore-mag.com/10-of-the-Best-Hiking-Trails-Near-Moab-Utah

Of course, if I do a lot of day hiking like that, I need to figure out where I'm actually staying at night; a campground somewhere?  A hotel? 

Either way, if anything is going to come of this, I need to get on it pretty darn fast.  Now that my wife is home from her girlfriends cruise, it's time to pivot to my solo vacation (which is actually solo, unlike hers) and figure out what I'm doing.  Maybe I'll even piggyback off of their trip out west to see conference and do a few other things during Spring Break in April.  It'll be a little odd, because I've had the fact that I can't go with them on my mind from the get-go, due to vacation schedules, and my own requirement that I get my solo backpacking trip that I missed in 2018—so going with them to go backpacking will be weird.  But maybe for the best after all.

A little more thought on a Needles trip

Let's see more specifically how I could pull this off, and specifically how to pull it off in a week, since I don't want to take more than 5 days of vacation.  Most likely, I'd try to take this trip in March, in which I can't tack on any holiday days, but if I somehow decided that going in later April and adding the Easter holiday to the routine, I could make it easier, including keeping the trip down to four days of vacation time and having more cushion to do it in as well.  But let's go for the harder itinerary first.

Day 1 (Saturday): Drive from home to my normal mid-Nebraska midpoint.
Day 2 (Sunday): Drive from mid-Nebraska to Moab.
Day 3 (Monday): First day of Chesler Park hike
Day 4 (Tuesday): Second day; stay back at Squaw Canyon campground
Day 5 (Wednesday): First day of Salt Canyon exploration
Day 6 (Thursday): Second day of Salt Canyon and Horse Canyon exploration; back at Sqauw Canyon
Day 7 (Friday): Explore some other Moab sites reachable by car, particularly Fisher Towers.
Day 8 (Saturday): Drive back to Omaha
Day 9 (Sunday): Drive the rest of the way home.

If I do it in April, I can leave on Friday, take fewer vacation days, and get an extra day of hiking, which means I can actually do Horse Canyon and Salt Creek canyon as to discrete trips with a stop back at the water and established campground at Squaw Canyon.  I have to come almost all the way back to Squaw Canyon campground from exploring one to take the other fork to the other anyway, and that keeps me from needing to carry more than two days worth of water.

Of course, I may decide that I don't even want that much backcountry time anyway, and that I've already bit off as much as I want to chew.

I also don't really like using Sundays as driving days, but realistically, with a normal work schedule and a 2-day drive on either end of the trip, I don't have a lot of choices that don't make significant sacrifices to my ability to actually do the purpose of the trip.  I suppose if it's really that bad, I could stop for Church somewhere in whatever town I'm passing through at 9 AM and get at least sacrament meeting, but most likely I'll consider that and not do it, which is what normally happens.  It's just too difficult to pull off, and makes my arrival schedule too late that day too.

I may be overthinking the water management problem, though.  From what I've seen of trip reports in the area, it's not necessarily that dry during the spring.  And this was actually quite a bit later in the spring than I was talking about.  In fact, it's late enough that if this worked out, it does kind of make me think that maybe April or even early May might not be a bad time to go.

https://backcountrypost.com/threads/salt-creek-canyonlands.3945/

https://www.visitutah.com/things-to-do/backpacking/canyon-country-southern-utah/big-needles-loop-canyonlands/

https://www.backpacker.com/trips/canyonlands-national-park-salt-creek-lavender-canyon-loop

UPDATE: I suspect that, as normal, I'm being too ambitious.  I see from various online trip reports that people do the Salt Creek as a point to point and still take 4-5 days to do it.  Here, I'm thinking that I'd jaunt most of the way down it and turn around all in two days!  Granted, some of those people had rather leisurely approaches, but then again; wouldn't I rather do that myself?  One group got caught in a pretty serious storm that lasted most of an afternoon, and then had to contend with flooded, swampy conditions the next day, both of which slowed them up considerably too.  But, it looks like unless you're doing a late season approach, there should be plenty of water in the Salt Creek canyon to make carrying gallons and gallons unnecessary.  In any case, I've seen other trip reports that call it a day hike, albeit a long one.  I'm unsure on how to proceed.

Although it's not cheap, I like the idea of having a shuttle. (It gets cheaper (per person, anyway) the more you have in your party.)  Hiking from Cathedral Butte to Chesler Park sounds doable and great, before finishing the Chesler Park loop and returning to Squaw Canyon campground and the car.

Needles district potential itinerary?

I'll add a Caltopo of this later.  How about starting at Elephant Hill (or Squaw Flat if the road to Elephant Hill looks bad) and doing two separate jaunts.  One of them does a loop into Chesler Park, spends the night there, sees Druid Arch, comes back around through Joint Trail, and gets back after less than 48 hours.  There are five campsites in Chesler, and any of them will do, although CP1 is further away from the other four, which are relatively close.  The two EC campsites are another nearby option.

At Squaw Flat, by the way, there's drinking water and a campground, so after doing this, we just dump out there and spend the night.  Early the next morning, we tank up our water containers (including our stomachs!) and hit the trail again, this time heading more directly south and exploring the Big Spring and Squaw Canyon areas before taking the Salt Creek Canyon and spending another night at SC4.  This is a relatively long day of hiking (about 15 miles or so) but you could cut it back to nearly 10 by just heading more directly to Salt Creek Canyon.  You'll probably want to come back that way anyway.  Get SC4 for two nights and explore the Salt Creek Canyon area the second day without your packs, specifically seeing Angel Arch.  If going all the way to Kirk's Cabin isn't your thing, you can instead take the unimproved road to Paul Bunyan's Potty, Tower Ruin, Fortress Arch and Castle Arch, and get back to SC4.  After spending two nights at SC4, head back to your car and into Moab for a shower, a restaurant and recuperation before driving back home.


Fairly quick and easy, without over-extending too much (although if I really hiked all the way to Cathedral Butte and back, that second leg would be more than 50 miles, without even talking about the side exploration, so that's probably not happening.

It would be easier if I had a good 4-wheel drive, of course, because I'm walking on some umimproved jeep trails for part of the way that I could drive on with the right vehicle.  But still; I prefer my feet anyway. I just won't be able to do all of this, because the second loop is potentially too ambitious.  I marked more than I'd ever be willing to do.  Plus, with water being an issue, even in March or early April, I don't want want to spend more than two nights and three days out.  Maybe not even that long if it's really dry and relatively hot.

Triple Tiara?

Although I romanticize the idea of hiking the really big long trails, I know that realistically I won't ever do it, nor do I really want to.  For multiple reasons, including, although not necessarily limited to:

• How in the world do people get 5-6 months off, anyway?  I suspect that most hikers have managed to retire early, or more likely, they're younger people who have put off becoming real adults, in many respects.  (As an aside, this doesn't make "the social trails" like the AT and the way the PCT is starting to become in many respects, more attractive, does it?)  I have, in addition to paid holiday, which only adds a day or two in the window that I'd be able to hike (the Easter holiday... maybe.  Memorial Day.  Independence Day.  Labor Day.) four weeks of paid vacation.  In the next year or two that will bump up to five.  I can also "buy" up to two additional weeks, although then that becomes essentially unpaid vacation, because I don't get paid for it anymore.  That's nowhere near enough to hike one of these long trails.  And I'm not likely to be able to afford taking an unpaid sabbatical anytime soon; I still have two teenagers at home, a college student-aged kid who's temporarily back at home while she figures out what she actually wants to do, and a married son who'll probably start providing grandkids sometime in the next few years that I'll need to visit.  Plus, my wife won't be really thrilled with me deciding that I'm not going to dedicate any of my time off to actual family vacations, I don't think.  While that doesn't have to be a complete show-stopper, it's usually not wise to tell your wife that you don't care about any of her concerns and you're going to do what you want to do anyway.  Realistically, even in the next few years when my vacation bumps up, the idea of taking more than three weeks or so isn't very realistic.  
• Of course, I could wait until I retire.  But quite honestly, I'm already getting old enough, stiff enough, tired enough, overweight enough, etc. that even the small hikes that I do do are physically challenging.  Not over-challenging, but challenging.Given that I'm unlikely to retire for at least another 12-13 years, and even then, I'll probably go get another job when I do, that's only going to get worse, of course.
• To be perfectly fair, I don't know that I even want to do it as much as I think sometimes that I do.  I tend to get tired of camping after a while, and being dirty, and eating crappy camp food, and sleeping on the ground.  5-6 months of that is 4-5 months more than I want, at least all stuck together like it is.  Now; let's imagine for the sake of argument that somebody with a bunch of money came to me and told me that they'd created a trust fund to pay for me to go hiking as my job.  Realistically, what I'd probably prefer to do is take 4-5 smaller week-long trips spread throughout the year, plus maybe a bigger epic trip of, oh, three weeks or so.  And probably 1-2 of those 4-5 trips might be ones where I spend as much time in a lodge or hotel as I do in a tent, but I'm hiking and sightseeing the great outdoors of America during the day.  (Plus, that way I'm much more likely to talk my wife into coming along.)  That would probably really be my ideal wishful thinking way of doing this hobby.

So, that said, are there smaller chunks of trail that can offer the Triple Crown experience, but in a more manageable format that's smaller?  Other than section hiking the trails over the course of many years, of course (which is another viable way to do it.)?

I think so.  Here's a link to the "junior" Triple Crown, sometimes called tongue-in-cheek, the Triple Tiara.  From that link: "My name is Jim, though on the trail I'm occasionally known as Simba. When I retired a few years ago I returned to backpacking and found, for me, the sweet spot is long trails, but not that long. In the past few years I've thru-hiked the Colorado Trail, Long Trail, JMT, Tahoe Rim Trail and Sheltowee Trace. To me, these 200-500 mile trails can be life changing, without taking so long that I have to change my life to accomplish them. I think they're a great alternative for those that don't have the time, ability, circumstances, or need to hike one of the Triple Crown. I hope to share that point of view on these pages."

He offers as smaller alternatives to the big three, Vermont's The Long Trail to replace the Appalachian Trail, Colorado's Colorado Trail to replace the Continental Divide Trail and California's The John Muir Trail to replace the Pacific Crest Trail.  All three of these actually share right of way at least for some of their length with the trails that they're replacing.

Of course, they also miss one of the most important aspects of the CDT and the PCT in particular, namely that there's no "desert" section, when the near desert of southern California, most of New Mexico and a good half of Wyoming make up at least a third of the lengths of those two trails.  So, if I were doing one of these every year for the next, oh, I dunno—half a dozen or so years or so—I wouldn't worry about it being "triple" anything, I'd just do something that I'd really like to go see.  My choices would be to put off the Long Trail until probably near the end, where I'd (admittedly, somewhat grudgingly) do it and the Presidential Traverse after I'd already done the other parts.

I actually am not sure that the Colorado Trail is within scope.  At nearly twice the length of the other longer trails, it's really probably a 5-6 week affair, even if I were in better shape than I am now.  The Arizona Trail would be a great substitute for the desert sections of the CDT and PCT, plus a great trail in its own right, but it's over half again as long as the Colorado Trail.  Most likely, those would have to be broken up into two and three or even four respectively sections and hiked separately.  

But if I had that wishful thinking job and had to come up with half a dozen significant hikes every year, one of which was multi-week and required resupplies, I think I'd target the following trails. 

• John Muir Trail
• Colorado Trail, parts 1 and 2
• Arizona Trail in three parts (maybe four?)
• Wonderland Trail
• Tahoe Rim Trail
• Wyoming Wind Rivers Traverse (probably using the CDT Knapsack Col alternate), connected to the Gros Ventre Wilderness, connected to a full Teton Crest Trail.
• The Grand Enchantment Trail, or at least the part that isn't already on the Arizona Trail which is already covered above.
• The Presidential Traverse
• The Long Trail

That's not half a dozen.  That's over a dozen.  Oh, well.

Options for 2019

I've got a few trips already scheduled around which I need to plan my hiking.  But, one (maybe two) of those other trips are actually hiking trips!

Let's have a look, shall we?  I get about four weeks of vacation annually (plus a good two to three weeks of paid holiday; I do fairly well, although I'm excited for about two more years when I get bumped up another week of paid vacation) and I tend to try and chunk my stuff into weeks, as much as possible.

Already planned

1. Week for Caribbean cruise in late August, ending right around Labor Day.
2. Week for Isle Royale hike with some friends of ours, and my wife even is talking about going(!) around July 4th
3. Week for High Adventure; possibly a Pictured Rocks National Shoreline hike/kayaking hybrid, although assuming I do go, my son and I will decide together what we're doing.  This would also be in late June; the week before my Isle Royale hike.  There's a lot of options, because it's the whole state of Michigan "All LDS Encampment High Adventure."

Now, the High Adventure trip may fall through or we may end up not doing it, and the Isle Royale trip might have unexpected complications.  But that's the plan now, anyway.

This leaves me with one week for my trip somewhere.  Here's some stuff I'm considering:

• Maybe an early trip, to make up for the fact that the schedule is already pretty slammed during the summer.  Maybe even as early as January/February to some place like Big Bend or Guadalupe Mountains National Parks, which is usually a good season to visit those places, actually.  I went to Big Bend ten years ago in Feburary, and half the time, I'm wearing a t-shirt (admittedly, the other half of the time I have a sweatshirt on.  And I slept in the lodge, not a tent.)  I could also fly out to Phoenix, visit my brother and his family, and do some stuff in the Supes or elsewhere in Arizona, for that matter.  By mid March, the crowds (such as they are) have already descended on these destinations, and by late March, they're already hot.
• A later spring (mid March to early May) trip to somewhere on the Colorado Plateau.  The Needles District of Canyonlands, maybe, plus some Moab and/or Grand Junction exploration.  There's actually so much to see here, and much of it can be broken up into several smaller trips rather than one big backpacking extravaganza, that I could really get a ton of interesting things done and really enjoy this (although spend more money on gas, and maybe a few extra hotel nights, compared to the way I normally do things.)
• Go back to the mountains in mid to late September like I did in 2017.  Maybe even hit the West Elks again and see Mill Creek, or Maroon Bells.  Although Sneffels and the Blue Lakes hike beckon, and the fall colors in the Sneffels area is notoriously beautiful.  Lots of options, but the slightly more southerly Colorado ranges are preferred because there's a better chance of better weather because of the latitude.  I'm actually going on the cruise the last weekend in August, so I have a relatively big window between the 4th of July weekend and the last week of August.  If I don't mind further breaking up my work schedule for the summer, I could also go in late July or early August to just about any Rockies destination I choose, come to think of it.  The Uintas or the Wind Rivers or the Beartooths or some of the other ones that I've noodled around with in the past and not ended up doing probably shoot to the top of the list in this scenario.