Utah Adventure Journal

“Ignorance is bliss.” This famous quote can be applied to many things in life, like fixing that bad engine noise by simply turning up the car stereo. But in outdoor life, the quote can work equally well while dreaming about new, expensive gear that we all want in a salivating-frenzy-kind-of-way, but don’t really need (and […]

The pros and cons of nuclear power have been debated for decades, it’s expensive in the short term but cheap in the long term, it’s a ‘clean’ power source but potential hazards do exist, and it takes a lot of water to run a power plant. A nuclear power plant has not come online in […]

Bluff, Utah Ed Abbey called her a “girl ranger” and she was—the very first.  She began her federal career tracking grave robbers and pothunters in southeast Utah and ended it catching pot growers in western Oregon.  Lynell Schalk broke through the sagebrush ceiling as the first female armed ranger and Special-Agent-in-Charge for the Bureau of […]

Despite the fact that the calendar has just flipped over to September, here it’s still very much Summer.  We’re in the desert. It’s Labor day weekend.  It’s evening, around 5:30 or so, and it’s still at least 80 degrees.  We have just dropped off the west side of Highway 12’s hogback; a narrow, windy, slip […]

In the lower left corner of Utah lies a table of seashell-colored sandstone fit for a family of heavenly giants. If something of the colossal kind dined there, they’d pull a chair up to 200-million-year-old cliffs composed of scarlet and carmine shale holding the table 1,000 vertical feet over the rest of the Earth. Called […]

My stomach tightens as I oar my 14-foot raft toward the hardest whitewater of the canyon: Skull Rapid. It’s spring and the water is extremely swift, swirly and ill tempered. Ahead of me, I see an enormous 7-foot wave crashing at the entrance, with far nastier whitewater below. Instinctively, I know I am heading into […]

The frenetic wail of old violins in need of new strings rang out from a rounded, red rock amphitheater. Guitars, makeshift drums and the pounding of worn leather boots on stone kept time to the music. Men and women danced in circles, their clothes sweat stained and threadbare under a starry sky. Campfires illuminated the […]

The transformative first night’s sleep of a camping trip feels like having turned over my adventure Etch A Sketch, shaken it and then woken in the morning with a clear screen on which to create a new drawing. Shortly after the sun has risen over the red rocks, I walk the quick mile up Red […]

Utah has long been recognized as a canyoneering Mecca, sandstone being the perfect pathway for water to carve slots etching deep into the desert. And while you can find canyons to explore all over the southern part of the state the most dramatic and famous ones are all in or around Zion.   And probably […]

The simple pleasure of riding a bicycle is one that everyone on this Earth should enjoy.  From the young to the old, a bicycle has no prejudices or preconceived notions of who you should be.  Whether you are cruising neighborhood streets at twilight, or rolling along sun-kissed ridges high in the mountains, there is a […]