Provo Round #2

This weekend I was lucky enough to be able to visit Ivy again! My Andrew aunts and uncles were celebrating my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary, so I asked to be just dropped off at BYU. I arrived just after Ivy had raced in the school's mini-triathlon, and had finished strong. We (she) recovered in her apartment in the Foreign Language Housing where she studies Spanish. 

Later in the afternoon we hiked up Rock Canyon, which is only a 15 min. walk from campus. The fall colors were pretty, and the cool air was perfect for a hike. There were several groups climbing and mountain biking, and we joined the many couples that were obviously hiking for a date. We explored the canyon, found a cool cave, and crossed the stream several times. Ivy told me about Squaw Peak that overlooks the canyon and times that she's climbed it. Pretty cool!

After we walked back into town, she showed me around campus and all the things that she does around there. We had dinner at the Ruby Thai restaurant and then watched a flick at the International Cinema. I invited her over to my grandparent's house for the night and the next day, and we stayed there with all my crazy wild cousins and family. Sunday we went to church and after lunch we dropped Ivy off and headed home to Moab (where my new climbing harness had arrived! Now I have all the gear I need to climb with my friends). What an awesome weekend.

Exploding colors in Rock Canyon

Klondike Bluffs

Sterling and I wanted an afternoon ride the other day, so we threw on the bikes and sped off to Klondike Bluffs. After saying goodbye to the trailhead, we began the 4.5 mile ascent to the lookout on the top, which views Arches Nat'l Park. Uphill wasn't too bad; just pop your bike into granny gear and cruise up. We stopped to check out the dinosaur tracks on the left of the trail and then helped out a couple who had bent a derailleur (helping others = good trail karma). After a nice hike at the overlook, we jumped back on and just bombed downhill. It made all that up really worth it! Klondike Bluffs is an awesome trail, and I'll definitely ride it again.

Good Times in Happy Valley

I got Saturday afternoon tickets to General Conference! It was an awesome double-date; I took Ivy and Jed took Kesha. It was my first time going to a session in the Conference Center, and it was pretty exciting to be completely surrounded by people who were all there for one purpose: to listen to the Prophet. After that session, we needed to get to my Andrew grandparent's house because we were going to stay there. It took us over an hour of driving to finally figure out where we were going (we drove a complete circle around the city of Murray). I almost always get lost in big cities, I hate it! Cities are nothing like a canyon or desert - those are easy to find your way, sheesh. Anyways, we stayed at my grandparent's house on Sunday and watched the rest of Conference there. What a crazy awesome weekend of friends, family, and Ivy!

Deso #3

Last week Karen, Kerri, Ammon and I did a three day Desolation Canyon trip. We actually did the whole thing in about 50 hours (Karen had to be back for a Cat trip), without a motor. Cooking on the boat, naps on the boat, grooving on the... no, just kidding! We rowed into the dark every night, and even floated Range Creek Rapid in the dark. Camp was always late, but we enjoyed it and the weather was beautiful. No rain, hardly any wind, and it was pretty warm. We stopped at the iron-prowed skiff, Rock Creek Ranch, the Three Canyons Bridge, Last Chance Rapid (in the dark!), and climbed up the cliff at Rattlesnake. Most of these places we don't stop when we're on commercial trips. And the wildlife was amazing! There were bald eagles, two herds of bighorn sheep, and lots of beavers. It's the best in the fall - I love guide trips.

Denim and Steel-Toes

With the river season being over and needing money for a mission and college, I found a new job at Williams Northwest Pipeline! While it's not quite as exciting as my last job, I get to work with two good friends and drive a big truck and I get paid very well. We work 40 hour weeks, so we do ten hours a day Monday through Thursday. The three-day weekend is very nice. It's only my second week here, but so far we have put up signs, marked the natural gas pipeline, and cleaned up the plant in Moab.

This is one of the sexy trucks we drive. We also have a Rhino to use where the truck won't go.

One Big Mexican Serving

Last weekend my buddy Chris Allen and two of his friends came to ride The Whole Enchilada from the LaSals down to the Colorado River. Not just a part, not a couple bites, but The WHOLE Enchilada. It's a big strenuous ride. With this ride you get everything: the cool air (in between cow pies) in the green mountains while you duck around aspens to big air over scrub oak to dodging cliff sides on the red rock. Not to mention the breathtaking view the entire trail! (or maybe I was just out of shape and breath)

We started out at 10:30 am after driving to the trailhead and began an ascent of 800 ft in one mile to get to Burro Pass, the first section of our ride. That was a lot of hike-a-biking. As soon as we got to the top, it was just crazy fast downhill singletrack through the trees and streams and over rocks and roots. Every time we stopped we had to move off the trail because there were so many riders! We cruised down to Warner Lake and were surprised by a wedding facing the lake. Oops.

The trail crossed through the creek several times. It was pretty, but the water made my feet smell like wet dog at the end of the day.

Chris, Clint, Matt, and Chris at the top of Hazard County.

After Warner came Hazard County. This trail starts out with half a mile uphill but it's worth the view up top. Overlooking the Moab Valley, we began the descent into the sage and scrub oak and then hit some big man-made jumps and dusty burms along the trail. We crossed the LaSal road and began the Kokopelli section of the trail, which was my favorite. Wide open DT with big whoop-de-dos and it was easy to ride.



Changing the first of three flat tires.



The Kokopelli blended right into the next part of the trail - The Porcupine Rim. The first part of this ST was fun; it flirted with the cliff edge overlooking Castle Valley and Castleton Rock and had some fun drop-offs. The lower section of Porcupine was killer, we had several flat tires and we had run out of water (I drank all 3 liters of my Camelbak and hadn't peed once!) and we were just exhausted. It was all I could do to stay on the bike. When we finally got down to the truck at the Colorado River, it was 7:15 and we had ridden 28 miles. We threw the bikes in and sped to Matrimony Springs, the first water source we could find. After we had satiated our thirst, we went to City Market to get some Gatorades and energy foods.

The Whole Enchilada was definitely the hardest and most technical ride I've ever done. It was also by far the funnest too. I want to do it again, except maybe next time I'll take a smaller bite of this Mexican delight.

Goblin Valley

Karen, Kerri, Lauren, Ivy and I took a road trip to Goblin Valley and the surrounding canyons. We drove out to Crack Canyon and had delicious tin-foil dinners and set up camp. In the morning we hiked Little Wildhorse Canyon and explored the hoodoos in the park. I really want to discover more in the San Rafael Swell. I love slot canyons!

 

Little Wildhorse Slot Canyon



Ivy, Lauren, Kerri, Karen.

Mesa Verde National Park

We went to Mesa Verde in Colorado for a weekend vacation.

Carefull, that stuff's dangerous!

Company Cat

This year we got to do a company Cataract Canyon trip! It was just a bunch of guides, friends, and one of Nicki's friends with her family. It was so much fun, and the rapids were awesome.

The crew: John, Mark, Mike, Stephen, Joe, Ivy, Karen, Chris, Jordan, Lexy, Erica, Scott, Jane, Dale, Suzy, Clinton, Morgan, and Sheena.

Like always, Suzy just can't seem to keep her hands off me, and of course Clinton has to help her out. Some passengers on other trips have even asked if Suzy and I are dating because she horses around a lot more than Ivy does :P

Holly wanted to "go on the boats" instead of driving back with Steve.

 We left the put-in at about 9:30, so it was dark as we motored to our first campsite. It was cool, I've never rafted in the dark! People read, slept, and ate leftover cheesecake from some wedding reception.

The fun boat with Mark, Joe, Suzy, Me, Ivy, Morgan, Steven, and Scott.

For dress-up night all three of us unintentionally wore Hawaiian-themed clothing.

I love Cataract Canyon

Lake Powell

The single's ward went to Lake Powell for three days to waterski, wakeboard, kneeboard, and everything in-between. Jane even bare-foot skied!

Cooking fajitas. Good food always makes the trip so much better. We used World Wide's kitchen and food, so most of the riverguides cooked because we knew what we were doing. The funniest quote of the weekend was "I like how as riverguides, we just get it." --Jordan

The best part of the trip was cliff jumping.

Last time I went to Lake Powell I tried several times to stand up on a wakeboard, but I couldn't. So I settled for kneeboarding instead. Ivy got a gnarly bruise from a crazy flip-jump-twist-wreck she did. It was impressive.

Ivy and I at Defiance House, awesome indian ruins!

  Randy, one of our favorite guys. He took us all over the place to cliff jump, hike, and swim. We went to Party Cove, where the cliff wall alcoves straight into the water.

And guess who got groover duty? Eww...

Hot Date

A while ago Ivy and I went on a sunset hummer tour with Mike, who was a bus driver and guide for World Wide and now works at High Point Hummer. He is an awesome guide at anything he does and he's very entertaining. We went up Sand Flats road and crawled around the slickrock there.

Weightless

I got a call one day that went something like this:

Chris: "Hello?"

"Hey, you wanna go skydiving?"

"Yeaaah... who is this?"

"This is Ivy!"

"Uh, skydiving?"

"Yep, Jane found out that with our guide licenses we get a big discount at Skydive Moab, so a bunch of us are going. You coming?"

"Heck yeah!"

So, I went skydiving! We drove out to the Moab airport and met up with our other friends -- Jane, Lexy, Clinton, Cody, Joe, and Morgan. We watched some educational and safety videos and then headed out to the hanger. Two of us could jump at a time with two tandem instructors. So we put on those goofy looking "jump"suits and waited our turn.

Ivy and I waiting in the hanger.

The guy that I jumped with was Ben. He had a hardcore mohawk.

In the plane almost ready to jump.

Then, at 10,000 feet, they opened the door. I focused on the picture taped to the plane wall in front of me. Suddenly, Ivy and her instructor were gone. Ben tapped me and yelled, "Our turn!" We crab-crawled over to the door and let our legs dangle almost 2 miles above the ground. "Put your feet on the step over the wheel!" A push came from behind and we were wildly spinning through the air! The feeling is completely indescribable, like nothing I've ever felt before. It was terrifying and radically exciting at the same time--I wasn't sure if I should scream or laugh (not that I could anyway at 120mph). It was the biggest adrenaline rush I have ever had, and I don't think anything can top it. 

After about 30 seconds (it seemed shorter) Ben pulled the chute. We glided and he let me steer with the lines so we spun around. It was awesome!

We landed and I ran over to Ivy. She was as white as the clouds we just flew through. "Woah, are you alright?" She leaned over and breathed deeply for a moment. "Yeah, just the flight up there was kinda crazy. Maybe I should take dramamine next time. After she felt better, we couldn't stop talking about how awesome it was. I would do it again, but even with the guide discount, it's pretty expensive.

My advice:

Do it!

Desolation and Grey Canyon

At World Wide, every riverguide gets a free river trip a year for a family member. I decided to take my brother Joseph on a five-day Desolation Canyon river trip. Ivy came too, so the three of us got our own boat. There where two other guides on the trip, Suzy-Q and Morgan. The first day we have to cover 25 out of 86 miles of the Green River, so we took a motor with enough gas for one day.

Rigging our boats at Sand Wash, the put-in, Monday evening.

The next morning while we waited for Suzy and Morgan to get the passengers from the airstrip, I found a snake. When Suzy came back we put the reptile on her back. At first she thought it was her sunglasses and chums.

Unfortunately Jed, our driver and the motorhead, forgot to tell us to open up the gas tank while the motor was running, so it died a lot. It was embarrassing because all our passengers knew we didn't know what we were really doing. Luckily for us, they were very nice and helped out.

It took forever for us to figure it out. Everyone except for Suzy wanted to shoot ourselves. Instead she just swears, right Suzy? ;)

Outlaw hide-out in Firewater Canyon.

One of the nights it stormed the whole time. Cool lightening and thunder but we didn't appreciate the rain very much.

Morgan tried to stay dry by sleeping in her dry-bag under the table. I don't know why she's smiling, it didn't work that great.

Ivy and I at McPhereson Ranch. I'm glad we use groovers on the river now.

We stopped on a small isolated beach after Rattlesnake Rapid and hung out there for about thirty minutes. One of our young passengers pointed downstream and said, "Hey! A bear!" We got off that beach pretty quickly. The black bear looked like an awkward adolescent. I love the wildlife in Desolation and Grey Canyon!

In camp we played the whipped cream game with our passengers. It's my favorite river game.

Ivy and I drew straws for our favorite rapid on Deso, Three Fords, and I got it! I really hope that the year I come back to guide I can be trained for commercial trips like Cataract and Desolation Canyon.

Love ya deso ~ until next time!

Gold Bar Float

A couple weeks ago Sheena, Cody, Ivy and I took four duckies with our overnight gear and floated down the river. We put in at the beginning of Potash road after it had thunder-stormed that afternoon.

The crew.

It was so shallow that you could almost walk across the river at some points.

We found a random croquet set on a small sandbar so we took our paddles and played a game. Weird.

One of the best parts of this trip was the food. We had chips and various dips for dinner, and eggs, bacon and fresh fruit for breakfast.

Random river hippy playing the harmonica. What the?

What we woke up to in the morning. Beautiful.

We four-strapped the noses of our duckies together and just floated for hours. Best party-barge ever! I love making food for only a few people and taking care of just myself. No responsibility over passengers! We played around a lot on this trip. 

When we got to Gold Bar we packed up our stuff into the truck and cliff jumped. Gold Bar is a river-side campsite that's right across from the trailhead to Corona Arch. It's even better than Left-hand, the cool-off waterhole in Moab, because the cliff is higher and the water is warmer and deeper.