Days 10 and 11- Bryce and Zion

Day 10-

It takes quite a while to get from Hurricane, UT to the gates of Bryce Canyon. The handlers had determined this the previous evening after leaving the star watching party, and they realized that this would mean that they would have to leave very early the following morning in order to make the 7:15 am check-in time for their scheduled horseback ride.



So, upon a good 3 hours of sleep, they left their lodgings and headed out into the black of the Utah early morning. They decided to take a different route than the one which had stymied them the night before in the hope that it would involve less mountain driving and be faster.



It didn't...and wasn't.



After it became clear that more mountain driving in the dark would be necessary, Handler 1 offered to take over. Handler 2 consented, but soon found that the only thing he found more unnerving than driving in the mountains at night, was being a passenger in a car driving in the mountains at night. The two switched places again, and the roads soon cleared up. They made their check-in...but just barely...and were soon matched up with their mounts.


Here is Handler 2 with Dixie.


Handler 2 wanted to prove to certain of the grandhandlers that he could, in fact, ride a horse. He was then dismayed when Handler 1 pointed out that the lovely (but extremely gassy) Dixie is actually a mule.

Handler 1's mount was an Appaloosa named Dinero who was the best horse in the group. That's not just her opinion, all the trail guides said so as well. Handler 1 isn't sure why she got the best horse around, but was pleased all the same.


The 4 hour ride took them down into the canyon, among the "hoodoo" formations.

Afterwards, the handlers were of the firm opinion that this was the best way to see the canyon. They passed many weary hikers on their way who looked like they could really use an equine lift back up to the top.

Bryce was lovely, and afterwards the handlers continued a new (and somewhat accidental) tradition of eating at the historic park lodge. Lunch was surprisingly good. Then, they left, intending to return to the hotel and take quick recharging naps.

One of the tunnels leading out of Bryce.

On the way, they made a quick stop at Cedar Breaks National Monument.

This place probably would have impressed them more if they hadn't just come from Bryce. As it was, they dubbed the place "Bryce Lite" and didn't spend too much time there. It's supposed to be a lovely area during the peak of fall colors, but we were unfortunately a little too early to experience that.

After a short nap and a blog update, we decided to see if we could get some time in visiting Zion, so we headed out.

This, by the way, was just some of the lovely scenery between Hurricane and Zion.

Zion, itself, is spectacular. This is especially true at or near sunset when the whole sky turns different shades of pink.

However, the light was fading, and there wasn't too much to do in the park after dark. As such, we returned to the hotel, to ready ourselves for the following day and our introduction to canyoneering.

Day 11-

The handlers, being prudent folks in general, had signed themselves up for a half-day course to learn the basics of canyoneering prior to beginning their adventure in the Subway. They arrived at the shop and met their instructor Jeremy. They were to be the only persons in the class.

Jeremy was something of a free spirit, admitting aloud that he had tried and failed at having a "real" job. However, as a guide to people canyoneering, white water rafting, and otherwise engaging in adrenaline pumping sports, he turned out to be pretty good. He taught the handlers a bunch of knots they could use, how to create and hook up to a rapelling mount, and how to rappel down a 30 foot vertical wall without flinching.

He was actually a knowledgeable and patient teacher, and the handlers had fun learning how to rappel.

It was nerve racking at first, but they got over it.

Jeremy seemed convinced that the handlers would be prepared for the Subway. He rented them necessary gear and even provided them with an item from his personal gear kit to borrow. He was a great guy and the handlers would not disparage him or the information he imparted to them...regardless of what happened next.

After the class, the handlers got cleaned up and headed out again to see Zion in the daylight.

The handlers picked up their "backcountry" pass from the ranger station and were set to perform the Subway the following morning (provided the weather cooperated, as the Subway really shouldn't be attempted if rain is threatened). While waiting, they read an article describing the stupidity of other Zion visitors who had entered into the backcountry unprepared. The most interesting of these was the story of the group of people who thought it would be okay to bring their 7 year old and 1 year old infant along with them into Keyhole Canyon.

Not a good idea.

Personally, I didn't bother getting a pass, I'm not that stupid.

We decided to take the "Emerald Pools" trail. This leads you to some verdant pools deep within the canyon, where green bacteria has grown on the walls of the canyon and gives the area its name. There are three sets of pools, but just about everyone only sees the lower pools, as the rest of the trail requires some serious uphill hiking.

Here's the lower emerald pools.

And the midway pools.

Where we encountered an absolutely gigantic dragonfly. The picture doesn't do it justice as there's no scale, but this thing was at least 4 inches long.

We kept climbing.

And eventually made it to the upper pool.

There we met a very nice Austrian who had just visited Las Vegas and didn't like it at all.

A curious thing we noticed about national parks: there are a lot of foreign visitors there. I mean a lot. Also, the clientele of Bryce was significantly older than that of either Yellowstone or Zion. Apparently, Bryce must offer a good AARP discount.

There wasn't much wildlife to be seen on the trail, aside from the completely unfazed deer that just wandered everywhere around the park like they owned it. Oh, and this guy which the more arachnophobic of our readers (cough...Jen) might want to avoid looking at.

We'll leave you with this serene photo of the lovely Zion National Park to tide you over before Handler 2's in depth description of the following days' antics.

Just a reminder...

All photos from the trip up to this point can be found here.

Hiking the Subway, Part 1

"The hardest part about hiking the Subway is finding it. If you can do that, you'll have no problem doing the rest" --Canyoneering course instructor.



I've thought about doing these posts several ways--humorous, pithy, ironic, in verse to the theme song from Gilligan's Island--but I think doing it in those ways takes a bit away from the abject terror and horror Becky and I faced on that day. I think I would much rather lay it out straight, so that anybody conducting research into the hiking the Subway may someday find this post and be able to take into account all possibililties before attempting what will be a very difficult hike.



First things first--I thought we were going into this knowing what to expect. Ever since I found out about the Subway's existance, I had researched it to the best of my ability. I had read upwards of 10 trip reports of other hikers, I had read detailed route descriptions, studied topographic maps, knew what the obstacles would be, how one traverses these obstacles, was read on timelines and distances involved, and had familiarized myself with the world of canyoneering.



Prior to our entering the Subway, we signed up for a canyoneering course, where we got an excellent instructor, who answered all of our questions, taught us basic canyon safety, turned us into decent rapellers, if I do say so myself (in fact, the rappels were the only thing that went right that day), and told us what he could about the Subway. The quote above was his response to my question of whether he thought we were ready to tackle it.



The Subway is a canyon that is rated 3BIII on the canyoneering scale; more information on the scale can be found here.



For those that don't want to bother, a 3BIII requires a couple rappels, a bit of getting wet and some swimming, and takes between 6 and 12 hours to complete. A 2 on the scale would not require rappels--that's the main difference between a 2 and a 3.



What this translates into is that the Subway, according to everything I had researched, required a rappel down a boulder, a 40 yard swim, a rappel down a small waterfall, and then a 30 foot rappel down a rock face to the lower part of the canyon.



My understanding of the full route, generally speaking (I was using much more specific directions) was this: follow a cairned trail across a slickrock gulch, to a steep gully, which would have a trail leading into the canyon. Continue into the canyon until a boulder was reached. Rappel boulder. Hike further until you reach some potholes about 40 yards long which required a swim. Continue futher into the narrows, where a small downclimb followed by some waste to chest deep wading would be required. After that, rappel a small waterfall. Enter the actual Subway, rappel down into the lower canyon. Wade about 2 to 3 miles through the Left Fork creek, and then a steep hike out of the canyon. Once out, walk about 400 yards to the Grapevine Wash, and then 200 yards to your car.



Before we left, I had detailed descriptions, 2 different sets of GPS coordinates written out, and had studied every resource available to me.



Sounds simple as pie, right? I couldn't have been more wrong.



The hike started innocently enough. We parked our car, hitchhiked up to the trail head, and embarked across some peaceful meadows and horse tracks, until we reached the sign marking the start of the Subway route. That's when things started to get bad.





To be continued....

Setting The Record Straight

In response to my dear, loving wife's horrible mischaracterization of my actions that fateful night, I would like to point out that:

A) Being a notorious acrophobic, driving across mountain ranges at night particularly sucks;

B) Even if it later became flat (it really, really didn't--apparently, there is a flat route, but she took me through the mountainous winding route), because it was PITCH BLACK, I couldn't see that it had become flat;

C) All night, even though I was going the speed limit, I had idiots tailgating me, with their brights on;

D) Dear Wife was spouting such gems as "huh. This town isn't on the map," "Why are there 2 route 89's?", "turn left here...no wait! Right! No wait, Left! Crap, just go straight" and "I have no idea where we are";

E) Even though I was going said speed limit, the night was forever colored when 2 cows just appeared on the road ahead of us. We had about 50 feet of warning, or, the distance our bright lights extended, because there was no other light, at all, in any way, to see by. There was much screaming, a screeching of the brakes, and a short stop only 3 feet away from the cows, who blinked, chewed some cud, and then trotted off. This colored the rest of the night, because now, not only did I have to worry about heights, tailgaters, pitch blackness, and a navigatrix who was saying things right out of a horror movie before the two kids arrive at a deserted cabin to be horribly murdered, I now had to worry about random large bovines appearing magically in front of me on a deserted road.

So, yes, I was freaking out. So sue me.

Day 8 & 9 (Playing Catch Up)- Yellowstone National Park to Hurricane, Utah

Hello! I'm going to be posting more than one day today because I seem (through no fault of my own and the entire fault lying with my handlers) to have fallen behind a bit.

Day 8-

So, when we last left off we had collapsed into bed at the Old Faithful Inn, having not managed to see everything we came to the Upper Geyser Basin to see. So, we decided to get up early the next morning and see what there was to be seen arounfdthe Inn. We were aided in this by the fact that some guest's car alarm was going off all night long, keeping us perpetually awake. Whoever that person is who let it keep carrying on like that should be shot. Here we are bright and early the next day in front of a thermal feature.








We had heard the hike up to Observation Point was a great way to see the whole geyser basin and, since it was allegedly short and with only 200 feet worth of elevation, we figured it would be a breeze. Well, it wasn't a breeze. We were still all tired and sore from the previous two days hikes. And the view...

Meh.

We left, unimpressed, to visit the remainder of the thermal features.

I've mentioned previously the mats of bacteria that live in the runoff streams of the thermal features and give them pretty colors. Here's a close up view of them to give you a good idea of what they really look like.

We had been wanting to see Old Faithful go off again, but he was a tad early. As such, we were all the way across the basin when he blew. Handler 1 was disappointed, but cheered up at the thought of breakfast at the lodge. Breakfast turned out to be far better than the basically invisible (it was very dark in the dining room) meal we'd had the night before.

The geyser board said Castle Geyser was set to go off around 11:20. Handler 1 had heard this was a good geyser to see, so she convinced Handler 2 to stick around and watch it (even though this would put them behind schedule for other things).

So, we headed out to Castle Geyser, found a good photo spot, and sat down to wait.

And wait.

11:20 came and went.

Still waiting...

Ah! There we are. Castle turned out to be a really neat geyser to watch, however, now it was time to end our little visit to Yellowstone (to the tune of Handler 1's sobs and pleading to stay another day). We took a picture of Moose Falls on our way out of the park.

After waiting some time at a construction point between the two parks, we entered Grand Teton National Park.

Grand Teton appears to be a succession of lovely mountain landscape views which, when not obscured by haze, are otherwise obscured by smoke from huge nearby forest fires.

Needless to say, this made the photos Handler 1 was so hoping to take at the famous picture spot known as the Oxbow Bend not come out good at all.

Luckily, there was still some wildlife to look at. We found a 'jam' complete with ranger escorts, and knew we'd find something neat when we got out of the car. It turned out to be a bull moose.

We continued taking photos of the pretty mountains.

This is the view from atop Signal Mountain which, much as Observation Point was not worth the climb earlier in the morning, really wasn't worth the slow winding drive up and back.

We then went to find a somewhat mythical place known as 'Mormon Row', where stand a few old abandoned barns that people like to take pictures of. We ran into some old friends along the way.

And here's Mormon Row. At least, here's one barn of it. Handler 1 isn't sure whether she missed the other barns or if the old things finally collapsed under their own weight. Regardless, this ended up being one of the more useless of sidetrips.

Our next stop was in Jackson, Wyoming. Apparently, there was some sort of art festival going on, with a pet adoption event and a marathon run planned for the next day. In other words, the place was packed.

Our aim in coming here was mainly to obtain dinner, which was had at a local bar/pizza parlor. We had the best beer here that we've had on the trip thus far. The Snake River Lager.

After dinner is when things began to fall apart. One of the grandhandlers...I won't name names, but you know who you are...suggested taking a path through Idaho to get to our next destination. He did not mention that said path would be through high, twisting, mountain roads that really should not be traversed at night.

Not to mention the loose stock. There are places out west where ranchers just let their cows roam free on public land, without payin any attention to what might happen to them or the motorists they jump in front of on the road.

Well, to make a long story short, Handler 2 white knuckled the drive for some time, almost killed a cow and very thoroughly blamed Handler 1 for all of it. Handler 1 took offense at this, and just tried to find them the fastest way back to the freeway possible. Handler 2's nerves were shot, so we decided to stay in the first town that offered a Super 8. There was no room at the in the first place we tried, but lodgings were eventually found in Orem, Utah.

Day 9-

The next day we headed south through the Beehive State, which you can tell by the fact that all of their state highway signs have a beehive on them. We passed quickly through Salt Lake City, and though we stopped off to see the Temple, the main road in front of it was closed for construction and we really didn't see the point of bothering to find parking for a building we wouldn't be allowed inside anyways.

Okay, so here's an interesting fact. In Salt Lake City, all the roads are named in reference to their location comparative to the Temple. So, the road running N/S 400 yards to the east of the Temple is 400 East. The road running E/W 400 yards south of the Temple is 400 South. And so forth. Other cities in Utah repeat this methodology, although they seem to use the individual town center as a point of reference.

Now, some of the more astute readers may have come to a startling conclusion upon reading this description. What happens when 400 South runs east far enough to intersect 400 East? Exactly what you'd expect. You get the corner of 400 South and 400 East, and yes, people in Utah are crazy.

After leaving the comparative civilization of Provo, we headed into the backcountry to take the historic Burr Trail through southern Utah. We passed within a stone's through of Capitol Reef National Monument, where red sandstone cliffs rise out of the desert.

We then entered Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Handler 2 began to get worried as we increased our elevation. Likely, he was remembering the trouble from the previous evening. Soon, beatiful canyons formed on either side of the road.

And when I say either side, what I really mean is both sides at once.

You can't see it particularly well, but there are 500+ foot cliffs beyond the trees and scrub edging this road. This, actually, was one of the wider parts where you could safely pull a car off on the shoulder. We later heard that this road is termed the Hogsback. Handler 1 thought it was great. Handler 2's palms sweated the whole way down into flat country.

It shoulod be noted that Handler 2 did have something to distract him from his abject terror as the Michigan-Notre Dame game was playing on the radio. It was also a nailbiter, but our mighty wolverines were victorious in the end!

After exiting Grand Staircase, we took a quick 9 mile jaunt off our intended path to Kodachrome Basin State Park. Handler 1 had one, and only one, reason for wanting to go to this park. To take this photo.

Seriously, who stuck me with these juveniles?

We had reservations in Hurricane, Utah, but had to pass through part of Bryce Canyon National Park to get there. Handler 2 wanted to stop at the visitor center and check out information about star watching parties. There was apparently a star talk and viewing scheduled for later that evening, and Handler 2 wanted to do it. Handler 1 didn't want to, mainly because she knew it might lead to more mountain driving at night and didn't was a repeat of the previous evening. However, she eventually consented.

The talk was interesting, and the star viewing would have been interesting but for all the clouds. A small rainstorm was moving in and so, even with 3 high powered telescopes, it was hard for the rangers to keep anything in view for any length of time. We did, however, get to see some double stars in the constellation of the Big Dipper.

After that, Handler 2 did, in fact, drive through the mountains (and through a fairly treacherous swtichback portion of Zion National Park) in the dark. However, nary a word of complaint was spoken. We found our hotel and crashed. We would have to get up very early the next day to be on time for our Bryce Canyon horseback ride.

We're alive. Barely.

We made it back, with only a few scrapes and bruises. Nobody got hurt physically and we made it back safe and sound.

This is not to say that it went well. To be perfectly honest, I think it was the worst fucking experience in my entire life to date. Sorry for the language--some things require strong words to get the full feeling across.

We'll tell the full story after I've had a night to decompress, think about everything that went wrong, and make sure I'm not suffering from PTSD.

Long story short, if you're thinking of trying canyoneering, don't. Not unless you're deadly sure you know everything you're doing. Our rappelling skills are excellent, apparently. It didn't help.

And now, I'm going to bed.

Quick heads up: Today Becky and I descend into a technical slot canyon called the Subway. While, on the whole, it's not terribly difficult, there will be dangers. This is just a heads up to everybody. We'll post tonight or tommorrow morning to tell people how it went.

Day 7- Yellowstone National Park

Our second full day at Yellowstone we really did get up early. Like, crack of dawn early. Handler 1 wanted to see if she could catch some more wolf action, and the rest of us were most agreeable to the idea.

On our way out, Handler 1 saw these photo opportunities and jumped out of the car.






We traveled back to Hayden Valley and the same overlook where we'd seen the wolves before. We were about to move on when two white 15-passenger vans pulled up. We figured they were either a bunch of people chasing after large charismatic megafauna...or a fencing team. Regardless of which, we decided to stick around.

They turned out to be a tour group of nice British folk who think it's the coolest thing in the world to spend 3 weeks of their year getting up at 4 am to go and try to see wolves in Yellowstone. Hey, more power to them. Plus they brought viewing scopes, and through one they were able to see the black alhpa male of the Hayden pack playing around in the snow waaaaaaaaay off. They let us take a look at him through their scopes (binoculars were no assistance at this range), and so we did get to see wolves once more.

However, wolf watching was not our only order for the day. Oh, no, we had far, far more planned. First stop was the grand canyon of the Yellowstone, which is the canyon formed where the Yellowstone River cuts through the earth, revealing the yellow colored stone that gives the park its name. On the way, we partook of a deer jam.


Here are the Upper Falls, which are neither the bigger of the two falls, nor the most northerly. It took Handler 2 a long time to get that 'north' and 'up' are not synonymous.



And here are the famous lower falls!

We took about a gajillion photos here, but will only provide you with one or two for brevity's sake.

Wildlife we saw in the canyon included this raven, who was waiting for people to park at one of the overlooks so he could pick dead bugs out of the front grills of their cars.

And this nesting osprey, pointed out to us by a nice couple with a scope.

After that, it was to our second Yellowstone place of lodging. This historic Yellowstone Inn, built originally in 1903 in a near perfect replica of the Walt Disney World Wilderness Lodge.

It's actually quite pretty inside, and a definite step up from the rape cabins. Sure, the bathrooms were down the hall, but the in room sink was lovely, and the period decorations lent a very nice air to the place.

Also, it's right by Old Faithful, which went off within minutes of our arrival.

After we checked in and left our food bags and cooler with Bell Service (so that our car wouldn't be attacked while we were hiking) we headed out to the Midway Geyser Basin. Our mission was to hike the Fairy Falls trail.

The trail goes right past the Grand Prismatic Spring. The steam coming off of it reflects the varied colors of the bacterial mats in the spring, so that it looks like even the steam is multi-colored.

And here's the spring itself, in a view you don't get unless you take the Fairy Falls trail and hike halfway up a big hill next to it.

Here's a close up of some of the bacterial mats and runoff streams.

We continued on down the trail. In case you were wondering, there are a LOT of Lodgepole Pines in Yellowstone.

Finally, we reached our destination!

One interesting thing occurred while we stopped for a brief rest and pictures: a beaver appeared! Handler 1 was taking pictures and looking away, so when Handler 2 saw it he shouted "Dear!" Handler 1 immediately turned around and, seeing Handler 2's pointing finger, immediately started scanning the horizon for deer.

Needless to say, we didn't get any photos of the "alleged" beaver.

Everyone we'd met on the trail (which included yet another enthusiastic group of British tourists and one random southern family who saw the beaver), told us we needed to continue on to see Imperial Geyser. So we decided to take them up on their suggestion (because, if you can't trust a Brit, who can you trust?).

There was a long runoff trail leading up to the geyser, which had formed itself into a little river with waterfalls and everything.

Imperial Geyser was pretty neat on its own, too.

On our way back up the trail (which, by the way, was significantly harder than going out...we were getting TIRED of all this hiking crud) we caught this guy just lounging in the grass some 25 yards off the trail.

There were some neath thermal featurs just set around the parking area for the trail. These things are seriously just everywhere in Yellowstone.

The handlers were pretty darn tired at that point, but they had originally planned to see the remainder of the geyser basins that day. There was no way they were going to do everything they wanted, but they decided to press on as much as their aching feet would allow them.

This is Grand Geyser. Not erupting, I'm sorry to say, but still reflecting at least.

Handler 2 decided he was dead tired and wasn't going to bother getting out of the Sexy Scion for more thermal features, so when a strangely shaped rock caught Handler 1's attention and she jumped out to see what the interpretive sign said about it, he stayed behind.

This is what happened when Handler 1 was about 15 feet from the car.

Neat huh? Turns out it was White Dome Geyser.

Handler 1 really wanted some close up shots of the Fountain Paint Pots, so we made that our last stop of the day.

These were much cooler than the Artist Paint Pots.

Clepsydra Geyser

At that point, everyone felt it was time to retire to the lodge and see if we could get ourselves dinner in the dining room. We passed an elk jam along the way and photographed this doe shortly after wading the river.

Quote of the Day:

Handler 2- "Except, my magic underpants don't have a pee hole."