Some of our pristine campsites were taken over by some of our other canyon dwellers this week. If you recall from my last post there was a seemingly abandoned tent by one of our campsites. Contrary to my suspicion the owner of this tent is quite alive. How do I know? Well when we decided to relocate and go back to that spot to camp we found that he had moved to where we had pitched our tents and taken our spot. We decided to go to another one of our spots that is now inhabited by Steve. He is a nice guy in his mid 40’s. He has some kids and grandkids and owns his own recycling business. He was very nice and offered to let us chill by his fire. We have enjoyed camping near him apart from his playing rock music about “stealing your girlfriend’s car from a trailer park”, when I’m trying to go to bed.
We also went rock climbing a few times this week. We had some good times that naturally got us into some precarious situations, as one would expect. So since we had already gone rock climbing I suggested we go hiking and exploring in the canyon. We decided to go up Spring Hollow in Logan Canyon. We did not really have a plan per se but we were kind of heading towards the ridgeline. We wandered for quite a ways. The scenery was absolutely amazing and was constantly changing as we ascended. We were on a trail until we got to some snowfields that left us blazing our own trail to the top.
After a little ways we decided the ridgeline had to be close but we were surrounded by so many trees that we couldn’t be sure. Then we then heard people and four-wheelers. So we went a little further and found a road. After looking at Eric’s map and seeing where were, we decided we had gone a little farther than we wanted to go (wherever that was).
At this point we had been hiking for more than four hours and had ascended at least 4000 feet (I still have to check Google Earth). So we scoped out the area that we wanted to head to, which was actually like 700 feet below us and a mile or so away from us. So we started fowling an old road and then I lead us astray and we ended up in a different place. We finally found our destination about a half hour after that. It was this awesome plateau that jutted out into the canyon and supposedly had a spring.
By this point it was definitely time to be getting home. Although it was sunny, I could see storm clouds in the distance. As I looked back to where we came from I figured we wouldn’t have a very good chance of finding the trail we came from. At this point we made the bad decision that it would be just as easy to bushwhack down the ridgeline.
So there we were, two tired hikers trudging down a steep slope with a loooooong way down to go. We were already sweaty filthy and tired. The first part o f the decent required us navigating some rock faces and then killing our knees on a rocky slope. Then we started into the trees and brushes. The bushes were about waist high (some of them were poky) and we were using them to stay afoot on the steep slope as we went down. Then the rain started. I started slipping on by butt every few feet so we decided to bunker down under some pine trees. Being the mountain men that we are we build a fire to stay warm as the rain.
The fire go too big so we made it smaller right as the rain got so heavy I could no longer keep my eyes open for very long and it doused our fire. Eric is so cool. At this point we were already socked so we slid our way down the rest of the mountain, making it through more bushes and traversing more small cliff faces. The whole experience was actually a lot of fun. Maybe a little more than we bargained for but we saw some awesome views and had an adventure getting to where we were going and getting back.
