Utah Adventure Journal

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Illustration by Scott DuBar   Bargaining. After years in a relationship with my dear wife, I’ve learned that bargaining is the key to spousal happiness. Some may call it compromising, but that implies both wife and husband have to give up something for a greater good. But by bargaining, if done correctly, I come out […]

  Summertime means new summer beers. Coolers full of ice, hot feet dangling in a cold creek, and the feeling of a frosty beer can sweating in your palm – all are evocative of summer, and it takes just the right kind of ale to make those moments happen. Utah’s breweries have us covered with […]

The smell of gasoline fills my nostrils, a high-pitched whine fills my ears, and a bumpy vibration fills the space between my legs. Though this may sound like a teenage boy’s fever dream, I’m actually riding on the back of a snowmobile down the closed-for-the-winter Mirror Lake Highway to the Ridge Yurt in the Uinta […]

  The sun’s warmth feels so good. I close my eyes and tilt my head back to face the sky. It’s the first time I’ve seen the sun in three days, and of course it arrives on the final run of our last day ski-touring from the Steam Mill Yurt in the Bear River Range. […]

I lied on my life insurance policy. The reason, is that mountain sports are dangerous, and I participate in almost all of them. So when I filled out the insurance application and got to the page of questions about my hobbies, I feared the truth would lead to expensive premiums at best. At worst, my […]

“Are you okay?” I opened my eyes and blinked against a helmet-clad vision, silhouetted against the sun. I shielded my eyes with a gloved hand and raised my head a few inches off the ground. I could totally understand why this person was asking about my well-being, seeing as how I was sprawled out alongside […]

  The roar is deafening. From shore, the Colorado River looks like an angry serpent, coiling and unspooling through drops the size of small waterfalls before cresting over waves that rise dozens of feet high. From my vantage, the three Big Drop rapids, sporting names like Little Niagara and Satan’s Gut, look like a nightmare. […]

  I love to mountain bike in the desert. Every time I put tires to trail in remote, barren lands, I see things. Maybe it’s the heatstroke and dehydration, concussions suffered from innumerable endos, or my habit of sucking fumes from ventilation pipes atop abandoned uranium mines. But I swear that something is out there. […]

  My fingertips are smooth as glass. It feels weird and I can’t stop rubbing them together. I turn my palms toward my face and inspect them. I imagine my prints have been sanded off, but they are still there. It seems I have not climbed so much that I lost my identity. I look […]

“How was skiing?” The wife asks me this every time I return from a day in the mountains. I lean my skis, still dripping with spring snow, against the wall by the front door, put down my boots and poles, and take off my jacket. “Fine,” I say with a shrug. “We got a few […]

Panic overwhelms my entire being. I’m halfway up a ridge on Delano Peak, the highest in the Tushar Mountains near Beaver, Utah, skinning alongside an evergreen forest I suspect may harbor a powder stash. Wind has scoured the entire range, leaving behind exposed rocks and bulletproof snow. After teeth chattering descents from the 12,169-foot summit […]

It’s no secret that I love beer in equal measure with the outdoors. As a result, I’ve long held the notion that fine brews go hand-in-hand with outdoor recreation, not only because many of us who enjoy being outside are connoisseurs of fine, small batch ales, but also because nothing pairs better with a long […]

  Giddy. There is no better way to describe how I feel in this moment other than the pure, childlike joy that forces giggles unbecoming a grown man. Yet as I bank another turn on soft dirt and feel acceleration out of the corner, another girly sound escapes my mouth. A straight section of singletrack […]

I used to have a foot fetish… until I joined a climbing gym. There’s an old saying, “climbing is not a spectator sport,” but when belaying my partner at the new Momentum in Mill Creek, I can’t help but spectate at all the distracting, gnarled, swollen feet of my fellow climbers. Everyone who’s not on […]

  Picture any high school athletic event, like football for example, and images cross the mind of marching bands, cheerleaders, sod-covered fields, and costumed mascots. Now replace all those classic “Friday Night Lights” slices of Americana with cowbells, spandex, singletrack trails, and teams competing with each other instead of against each other, and you have […]