Utah Adventure Journal

  Boulder, CO based band Salem is fronted by drummer Todd Anders-Johnson, who also works as a tech-rep for SLC based Voile Equipment. An avid backcountry enthusiast, Anders-Johnson will be taking the band on tour this winter with Salem bringing its original blend of hip-hop, jazz, and neo-soul to the bars, saloons, and breweries of […]

  Adam is all kinds of excited. It’s 3am, Justin and I are shuffling like the walking dead around a truck stop somewhere along I-70 in search of caffeine, and I think the toothless cashier is judging us by our brightly-colored, yuppie down jackets. We’re awake at this ungodly hour as a result of “Project […]

  Question: What is the Monolith, also known as the Rotten Monolith? Answer: It is a cone of “unbelievably rotten” granitic rock similar to compressed kitty litter located in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. According to Louis Stur’s 1962 first ascent description with Fred Beckey in the American Alpine Journal, the (Rotten) Monolith “presents a […]

After skinning up a couple thousand feet before lunch, you aren’t exactly picky when it comes to what’s to eat. And so you find yourself, exhausted and starving, rummaging through the bottom of your pack for another protein bar or long-forgotten trail mix. Hey, you’ll eat anything at this point.   But why should you? […]

  I’m not a downhill skier. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I’ve tried it. I can rock hotdog and pizza, and I put the latter to especially good use for much of my childhood. My lack of love for the sport might have had something to do with the iffy, wet conditions I […]

  Yvon is eyeing a small serac at the snout of the Teton Glacier.  He asks how we might attack it, and a student heavily armed with two very shiny ice tools and new rigid crampons begins a mad display of poor front pointing and flailing until he gets to the bulging top, where both […]

  Adventure is not just what you do, but also what you observe. I love watching hawks, especially Red-tails in the Southwest and peregrines, ospreys and eagles wherever I can find them. Imagine scanning skies with binoculars looking for raptors and then catching the wild birds to tag and test them–even drawing blood samples! Utah […]

I couldn’t tell you the exact moment it happened – whether it built up over time or subtly crept in with an afternoon thunderstorm. But the lure of the Wasatch was nowhere to be found.   I had spent back-to-back seasons retracing my steps on miles of well-worn singletrack and skintracks, thinking it’d appear at […]