From: David Kenison Subject: [OUTDOORS] Hiking groups Date: 06 May 1997 09:30:31 -0600 (MDT) Any recommendations for this request? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Hi, my name is josh. my father and I were planning on taking a hiking/backpacking/camping trip in June. We have never been before and we wanted to find a touring group with which to go. We did not want to have to do tachnical climbimng, so Outward Bound and NOLS are out of the question. I was wondering if you could reccomend some groups to me who do strenuous backpacking, but without technical climbing. We want to go to Utah, maybe the Canyonlands or some such area. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Josh **************************************************** *Peace in the g'tto * *http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/jshershk/ * **************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mike Jones Subject: [OUTDOORS] squaw peak and rock canyon Date: 12 May 1997 14:47:51 -0600 So we hiked squaw peak and rock canyon this weekend. The snow is pretty much gone. Just patchy on north facing slopes near the top. The wildflowers are passing their prime though. They are still nice in shady spots but starting to wilt otherwise. There's about a million people hiking up there though. Sadly, we stumbled upon a camp along the trail complete with semi-dressed woman saturday morning. Oops. I suppose that's the chance you take, being semi-clothed beside a trail, within 5 miles of a major (by utah standards) city at 10 am. hapy hiking, mike. ps. Please accept our humblest apologies if you are the person whom we stumbled upon sat. morning! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bert Lagerstedt Subject: [OUTDOORS] Straight Wash & Upper Eardley Canyon Date: 19 May 1997 11:48:51 -0600 Friday Night I drove down to the head of Straight Wash, a tributary of Upper Eardley Canyon, and camped for the night with 5 Explorer aged scouts. The access to this San Rafael Swell canyon is off I-70 Ranch Exit 129, about 30 miles West of Green River. Drive time from Orem, through Price and Wellington was about 2 1/2 hours. We camped in the last of several meadows there, to stay furthest from the cows, and this was our trialhead for Saturday. It was also a great area for night games, with a half moon shining. Saturday morning we headed down Straight Wash. The wash was about 3 miles long - further than we had judged from Kelsey's map in the San Rafael hiking guide. There was a lot of sand and a bit a boulder hopping to get to the confluence with Crawford Draw, Red Draw, and upper Eardley Canyon. There was very little water - a few stagnant pools teeming with pollywogs and such. We had to climb around two of these to avoid swimming. We had hoped for some narrows in Straight Wash, but only found about 50 Yds of narrows, ending in a dryfall and deep pool. This was in the bottom quarter mile, and could easily be hiked up to from the confluence. We did not enter Crawford Draw, but Red Draw looked interesting. It is narrow at the confluence, with some dryfalls and a pothole full of water. The traverse around the pothole looked risky, so we went on down Eardley Canyon to the narrows about a mile or more further down. There were several short stretches of narrows in a 2-mile section, with several maple groves. Nothing very spectacular, but it was nice. We hiked out the way we came. The day got hot, and several boys ran out of water, but the potholes seemed thicker than we wanted to filter, so we rationed until we got back to the car. It was a good lesson to them about the need for plenty of water and preparation before heading into a desert area. I don't think I'll take the same route in again.. simply too far to hike for the narrows we wanted. Kelsey had some alternate routes - one in Red Draw and one further downstream (off of exit 133), that looked better. We met a couple at the narrows who had hiked in the lower of these, and they seemed less tired than we were. Bert Lagerstedt