Utah Adventure Journal

Simplicity. I think there’s something to be said about living a simple life, so I often wonder if I was born in the wrong decade, hell, maybe even the wrong century. Those Luddite thoughts always seem to bubble up when I’m on a backcountry yurt trip. For me, staying a night or two at a […]

It’s a ski bum’s tragic reality: when livin’ the dream takes a backseat to a “real” job, and the art of powder chasing becomes the curse of pencil pushing. But for this dedicated crew of people, a simple wintertime hobby has turned into a lifelong job, whether intentionally or not. The result: a successful combination […]

The skin track quietly disappeared.  Wind and new snow combined to erase our defined path up the intimidating slope. The Route ascended a smooth ramp defined by two boundaries, one the edge of a large iceshelf, the other a tumultuous portion of the glacier filled with house-sized seracs and yawning crevasses. The clouds swirled around […]

  Everest, Denali, Rainier, the Grand Teton…Utah has none of these. The Wasatch is not known for alpine climbing. The Alps have Mt. Blanc, the Matterhorn and dozens of others. Even Colorado, Californiaʼs Sierras and Washingtonʼs Cascades boast better alpine routes. But there are two user-friendly classics here, and they are actually pretty awesome in […]

  It snowed 8” overnight and the temperature at Snowbird Resort had plummeted. A biting wind swept across darkened ski runs, cutting through rises of pine. The low-lying clouds gave the slightest hint of the coming dawn. 7 AM at the tram base  some 30 men and women dressed in red jackets emblazed with the […]

San Rafael Swell, Utah Of the thousands of Indian rock art panels in the Southwest, none are older than Barrier Canyon pictographs found throughout the San Rafael Swell. From tiny five-inch animal figures to stunning seven-foot tall human shapes with no arms or legs and alien-like bug eyes, Barrier Canyon style images are almost always […]