Featuring stories of my latest hikes and any website-updating explanations.
My hiking guidebook Cedar Mesa Hikes is now out of print. The first edition of Southeast Utah Hikes is more or less finished and I'll try to publish it sometime in 2012, though I'll be busy working so don't have much time to do a final edit. This winter I was planning to go back thru the draft edition and proofread all the many GPS coordinates but I got very busy starting construction on a small house in Bluff.
I eliminated the separate page for old news and will include two months in the same page.
Address email inquiries or comments to info@anasazis.com and Squeaky will eventually reply. This is no longer Squeaky's primary email address, so she doesn't check it more often than every few days.
March 4, 2012
I've been super-busy building a house down in Bluff. Consequently I haven't had time to do a longer hike. Instead, after working on my house, I take Squeaky for a half-hour walk somewhere near Bluff. Often we go to lower Comb Ridge, to the area near the wagon trail into lower Butler Wash, down at Sand Island, over near the Bluff International Airport, etc. I have found a few ruins new to me mostly because I hadn't walked into the area before; I had heard someone mention one ruin once. Near one area I've gone to repeatedly only becaurse it's easy to get to, I could probably tell you the average density per square yard of cobble stones. And how many footprints cross the area.
This has been mostly a mild winter and the days in Bluff have been great for working outside. Sometimes I peel to a t-shirt. Lately it's been a bit stormy but even up in Monticello we get an inch or so and enough wind to blow it around seeming like a super storm. I haven't had to plow or shovel my drive in months.
Mostly I'm building my small house solo, with some hired backhoe help from a local guy. The place I bought already had some sherds lying around on the ground, but we haven't found anything else while digging the trenches for the septic tank and leach field. The backhoe guy and others dug into a burial further east while trenching for a water line, some time in the past.
February 5, 2012
Squeaky and I went for a short hike on Comb Ridge today and saw three people and their two dogs. The weather was cloudy and blustery. It did clear just a bit later on. I stayed sort of low on Comb Ridge and hiked north. Two vehicles drove by, and I saw two others parked. One VW camper moved a mile or so and the guy and his two dogs were soon joined by two other people and headed towards Comb north of where I was. I saw one other vehicle parked at a trailhead but no people. There were lots of pools of water. It was a fleece layer kind of day.
Saturday, after working on my place in Bluff, I took Squeaky out along the river to look for a petro panel I'd seen from below last year. I finally found it and mangaged to get to it and take photos (uploaded later).
January 29, 2012
Squeaky and I went for a short hike on Comb Ridge today and saw nobody. I sort of picked a random ridge and we walked up it until we got cliffed out, with no way further. I took a long lunch break, then we just headed back to the car. The weather was a bit cool and a little breezy; up high it was chilly. I saw another car parked south a few miles, one parked a few miles north, and three drove by on the Butler Wash road while we were hiking. Later, the two that were together, parked over on the NE corner of Tank Mesa, but way over where there's not much going on. I didn't see anyone around, nor any bike tracks. Just one of those mysteries, I guess. I found some pools of water for Squeaky. The only difficulty I had on the hike was crossing Cow Manure Wash thru all the thick brush.
During the week, after working on my property, I took Squeaky for a short walk up Comb Ridge just north of the old highway crossing area, using the Hobbs Wash Memorial road from the highway.
January 25, 2012
Squeaky and I went for a short hike on Comb Ridge today and saw nobody. I returned to the place I hiked several days ago but went a different direction, mostly to see a few cliff dwellings more or less impossible to access. When we got cliffed out, we followed a slanting ledge back down to the east, crossed a canyon, and went back up another ridge partway. Then we took our lunch break. There was plenty of new snow around, except where the sun had already melted it off so I couldn't really cross the canyons up high. It was also colder the higher I went. Mainly we stayed down low on the east side of Comb Ridge.
The weather started cool but warmed up nicely and was mostly calm. All the new snow on the road started to melt by the time I drove out so I had to use 4WD a few times. Down near the TH for Wolfman Panel a motor home was parked and I saw footprints along the road but no people. There were lots of pools of water for Squeaky.
January 22, 2012
Squeaky and I went for a medium-long hike on Comb Ridge today and saw nobody. Basically I followed some friends and their dogs, about a week or more later. We went up a moderately difficult canyon to see some rock art which I'd missed before. The first panel is somewhat hidden behind a tree and some bushes. Probably when I came down the canyon previously I was paying more attention to getting thru than looking around.
Then we hiked over to another site, finding a small pithouse structure on the way. I'd passed this one several times but never taken the time to really look around. This time I found the upper panel, and took photos of the lower one also. After we took a break in the weak sunlight, we went over to the head of a dome-ridge and walked down it. I found an intense and large open-air site which I'd probably seen, or one nearby, as I had a "p" marked on my map.
The weather stayed a bit cool, but it was okay. It had obviously only rained on that part of Comb Ridge and the only ice I encountered coated some rocks in the streambed. There were some slickrock pools all over the place also. Once I got out in the sun there wasn't any ice or new snow. I only saw one other vehicle, parked at a trailhead, on the drive out. All previous tire tracks were erased by recent rains.
Squeaky took a bunch of photos of the places and rock art we saw, and posted them online. There are 20; 3 went into RUINS page 15 and the remainder went into SE UT ROCK ART page 27. Both of the panels I went to are "named" by RA enthusiasts, which doesn't necessarily mean that BLM archaeologists are aware of the panels or the popular names for them.
January 20, 2012
Squeaky and I went for a short hike on Comb Ridge today and saw nobody. We went up near a 'named' site to the summit, took a break, and came down a different way. There were some recent footprints in several places. There were also lots of cow tracks and manure down low but I didn't see any cows. I found a few slickrock pools for Squeaky and carried water. Some of the lower pools had been sucked dry by cows. I also saw two campers driving by on the Butler Wash road while heading up Comb. The weather started cool but warmed up nicely. Down in Bluff my air temperature gauge on my FJ read '58'. Saturday (today) a quickie storm is blowing thru with some light snow falling at 7000 feet and higher. I saw some flies and ravens. I also took some photos and a closer GPS location for some graffiti I'd already reported to the BLM.
Squeaky found and became fascinated by the smell of a ski cap someone had dropped onto some ice. When I got close I picked it up and she seemed interested so we made a brief game of me flinging it into the air with my hiking pole so she could catch it, shake it some, and have fun. I left it on a small boulder weighed down by some rocks. The people were probably from Durango judging by some print on the cap.
January 17, 2012
Squeaky and I went for a long hike on Cedar Mesa today and saw nobody. Nor did I see any footprints at all. We hiked out into one of the many seldom-seen corners to check on something I found years ago. There was some small snow patches around but not enough to affect either my drive off the highway or our hike. I found no pools of water for Squeaky and I think she nibbled on snow mostly. The only sites I saw were some open-air ones with no sherds, only ashes and lithic flakes. I did see a few partial projectile points. The weather was cool but mostly sunny and a nice hiking day despite some smog or dust in the distance.