Utah Adventure Journal

  I never apologized to my dad before he passed away in August 1997. To say we didn’t get along during my teenage years would be putting it lightly. Before our troubles began, I recall working together on a project. Clumsily, I positioned a nut at the end of a bolt and started torqueing it […]

You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy a bike. And any enthusiastic cyclist will tell you that that’s pretty close. Yet for a handful of those cyclists, bicycle-induced happiness is merely the end result of pursuing a lifelong, two-wheeled philosophy.   Thanks to the state’s evolving bicycle sub-culture, Utah has become a source of […]

  The rain subsided at 4 AM August 14, 2011. By 5:30 the clouds broke, allowing a full moon to illuminate buttresses of green and red patina covered granite. Below them, tinted snowfields led to mounds of boulders. Between the talus were patches of rough grass covered in yellow blooms. Water trickled its way from […]

A thunderstorm rolls away, a curtain of angry rain sweeping east. The leftover air is cold and humid. Danni and I shoulder our packs and unceremoniously walk down the trail. From the Mirror Lake Trailhead in the Uinta Mountains, we begin our trek of the 80-mile Highline Trail.   The Highline Trail reaches east-west through […]

  I glance up at the darkening sky and feel the first raindrop of the day. I jam my hands and feet into a short, but slightly overhanging crack. I have a solid # 2 Camalot stuffed in for protection, just in case I slip, and I know all I must do is pull this […]

The officer methodically scans the car’s interior with his flashlight beam. “Do you have anything I should know about?” he asks. “No” is the honest answer to this stereotypical cop question yet I find my imagination triggering stock cultural associations. A default soundtrack begins in my head as I hand the tribal policeman my license. […]

The honey badger (Mellivora capensis), also known as ratel, are notoriously fearless and tough animals, known to savagely attack their enemies when escape is impossible. Bee stings, porcupine quills, and animal bites rarely penetrate their skin. They are tireless in combat and can wear out much larger animals in physical confrontations. After the internet video […]

Natural Bridges, Utah Americans have lost silence, solitude and darkness, but now the National Park Service has new initiatives to preserve and appreciate our dark skies, especially on the Colorado Plateau. Natural Bridges National Monument west of Blanding, Utah, has been named the world’s first Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association and visitors […]

“This is why I don’t buy expensive sunglasses,” I said to myself as I activated the flashlight app on my smartphone. It was a desperate situation, made worse by my groveling on the nasty floor of a movie theater, on my knees, crawling over sticky, spilled soda. I was in this compromised position because I […]

Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge 25 Years of Photographs by Howie Garber Peter E. Randall- Publisher Portsmouth, NH 2012 211 pages   If you’ve been a regular reader of the Utah Adventure Journal, you’ve no doubt seen the work of frequent contributor Howie Garber. A resident of Salt Lake City for 40 years, he […]

Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge 25 Years of Photographs by Howie Garber Peter E. Randall- Publisher Portsmouth, NH 2012 211 pages     If you’ve been a regular reader of the Utah Adventure Journal, you’ve no doubt seen the work of frequent contributor Howie Garber. A resident of Salt Lake City for 40 years, […]