Water is scarce in the desert. What little you do find is usually seeping from a tiny crack in the bright red sandstone or a murky, stagnant puddle of rainwater lazily evaporating into the arid heat. Rivers can be clear but are quick to muddy after any precipitation. The Colorado River is, more often that […]
Lost cities don’t exist. They are confined to the bottoms of oceans and 19th-century jungles. As children, we all eventually give up on looking for buried treasure in backyards, or undiscovered, ancient ruins down the block because at this point humanity has been around long enough to stumble over most of them. Long before I […]
This is the fourth installment of a series of articles examining protection of Cedar Mesa and the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. When it comes to protecting the land, archaeology is the problem from hell. Ruins deteriorate and crumble away, vulnerable to animal disturbance, erosion, and weathering. Looters and vandals can destroy sites just as […]
Imogene Pass has eluded me. Although I’ve been planning a trip to ride up to Imogene’s 13,114-foot marker for some time now, I still have never been over this treacherous pass in the San Juan Mountains. High elevation backroads draw me in like glaciated mountains used to when I was a younger mountaineer. I have […]
In our book, 60 Hikes within 60 Miles: Seattle, Andrew Weber and I barely mention one of the coolest and most unique hikes in the region. It just gets one paragraph as a “Nearby Activity” tagged onto the hike description for Lime Kiln Trail, but it deserves much more. The reason the trail didn’t get […]
I’ve never been to Gamma Hot Springs, but I heard about this remote soaking pool anytime the conversation steered towards hot springs around Seattle. Apparently, I’m not alone either – most folks know of someone who has been there, but the “knowing” feels more like playing six degrees of Kevin Bacon rather than scrolling through […]
Bears Ears National Monument is a new national monument in southeast Utah, named for the centrally located Bears Ears Peaks. President Obama signed the monument into law on December 28th 2016. The national monument has many wilderness study areas and consists primarily of unprotected BLM land, used heavily by everyone from hikers and backpackers to the […]
Valley of the Gods is so colorful and uniquely beautiful that it’s fit for kings, queens, and even Gods. That’s if they like dry high deserts which are hot as hell in the summer and damned cold in the winter. This place is so special that BLM designated the road through it as a scenic […]
Tunnel entrance (photo clui.org) I am always looking for unique places to explore and I recently heard about this half-mile long tunnel. It was dug with hand tools and dynamite by a single person, Burro Schmidt who lived in the ghost town of Garlock below the tunnel. The tunnel and his home still remain. See […]
