- Location
- West Bountiful, UT
Made a quick over nighter to goof off in the Roost area last weekend. Drove down early Fri. morning, leaving my house shortly after 3:30am. Ran into a bit of weather and slick roads on the way down, so it as kind of a slow ride and the sun was all the way up and shining by the time I left pavement just north of the Dirty Devil and headed east.
Friday turned out to be a simply drop dead gorgeous January day on the San Rafael desert! Not much wind, temps got into the mid 50's, sun was shining. Beautiful!
Here's my Jeep parked by the river with Factory butte in the background:
And a shot of the icy Dirty Devil with Factory butte behind:
Spent all day Friday just exploring a few two tracks in the area I hadn't yet driven and taking several short hikes to nowhere. Made camp that night at Sweetwater spring just north of the Hans Flat road. Had a nice ribeye with cabbage for dinner, then sat by a small fire enjoying a fine cigar and a few nips of the Irish. The stars were just incredible - I wish I would have had the ambition to get out my tripod and camera to try and capture it, but I was just too content by the fire with my whiskey and cigar to be bothered with it .
Awoke Saturday morning to a new world... The wind violently shaking the tent is what woke me up before dawn. The sound of huge rain drops splatting against the side of the tent is what kept me awake. Arose to a wet, bitterly cold morning. The temperature really wasn't that bad, but with a 30 mph wind driving a mixture of rain and snow, it made for uncomfortable conditions packing up camp.
Spent the morning just put-putting around sipping coffee and exploring the obscure two tracks I could find. A break in the rain and an opening of the clouds looked like enough of a window to take a hike. So I headed to the end of one particular obscure two track and started out on a hike to try and find a cave I've been meaning to visit for some time.
Found it pretty easily, after only about a mile of rough cross country hiking.
This is an extremely impressive alcove! I really wish I had someone with me to include in the pictures for scale. These shots just make it look a lot smaller than it appeared in person. The mouth is about 100 feet across and I'd say about 40 feet tall.
The roof fall rubble pile inside is a good 20 feet tall and perhaps 50 feet wide at its base.
The cave is a good 50 feet deep.
Like I said, wish I had someone with me to include in the pics for scale, this cave is just massive!
I saw no signs of visitation. No boot tracks anywhere near it, or in it. Plenty of wild animal tracks inside though.
A small seep runs from the back wall and a larger spring flows nearby. I'd have expected this to be a major habitation site for the Old Ones. But, with no smoke blackening of the roof and no real obvious artifiacts of any kind, it didn't appear to be so. Despite no real obvious smoke blackening of the roof, there was a generous scattering of charcoal on the whole floor and a few small bits of lithic scatter to clearly show at least occasional use by the ancients. Perhaps the location wasn't well suited for growing maize or otherwise lacking for a permanent habitation, and it was only an occasional hunting camp?
Just about the time I got back to the Jeep, the rain and snow started coming down again, harder this time. And it pretty much was either raining or snowing for the rest of the day. With the wind never letting up at all either. So, most of the rest of the day was spent just exploring the few side roads in the area I hadn't been on yet - I can now say I've driven every open route I know of in a very large chunk of this country.
Towards evening, the precipitation finally let up, although the wind certainly didn't. But with no more rain or snow I decided to make a quick run out past Keg Knoll to hike to Five Hole arch before it got dark.
The rest of these pics are all from that area.
Drove home from there, with a full blown white-out blizzard all the way over Soldier Summit. Was like two hours of staring at the hyper drive scene or whatever it was called from the original Star Wars and not being able to see the road. Intense!
- DAA
Friday turned out to be a simply drop dead gorgeous January day on the San Rafael desert! Not much wind, temps got into the mid 50's, sun was shining. Beautiful!
Here's my Jeep parked by the river with Factory butte in the background:
And a shot of the icy Dirty Devil with Factory butte behind:
Spent all day Friday just exploring a few two tracks in the area I hadn't yet driven and taking several short hikes to nowhere. Made camp that night at Sweetwater spring just north of the Hans Flat road. Had a nice ribeye with cabbage for dinner, then sat by a small fire enjoying a fine cigar and a few nips of the Irish
. The stars were just incredible - I wish I would have had the ambition to get out my tripod and camera to try and capture it, but I was just too content by the fire with my whiskey and cigar to be bothered with it .Awoke Saturday morning to a new world... The wind violently shaking the tent is what woke me up before dawn. The sound of huge rain drops splatting against the side of the tent is what kept me awake. Arose to a wet, bitterly cold morning. The temperature really wasn't that bad, but with a 30 mph wind driving a mixture of rain and snow, it made for uncomfortable conditions packing up camp.
Spent the morning just put-putting around sipping coffee and exploring the obscure two tracks I could find. A break in the rain and an opening of the clouds looked like enough of a window to take a hike. So I headed to the end of one particular obscure two track and started out on a hike to try and find a cave I've been meaning to visit for some time.
Found it pretty easily, after only about a mile of rough cross country hiking.
This is an extremely impressive alcove! I really wish I had someone with me to include in the pictures for scale. These shots just make it look a lot smaller than it appeared in person. The mouth is about 100 feet across and I'd say about 40 feet tall.
The roof fall rubble pile inside is a good 20 feet tall and perhaps 50 feet wide at its base.
The cave is a good 50 feet deep.
Like I said, wish I had someone with me to include in the pics for scale, this cave is just massive!
I saw no signs of visitation. No boot tracks anywhere near it, or in it. Plenty of wild animal tracks inside though.
A small seep runs from the back wall and a larger spring flows nearby. I'd have expected this to be a major habitation site for the Old Ones. But, with no smoke blackening of the roof and no real obvious artifiacts of any kind, it didn't appear to be so. Despite no real obvious smoke blackening of the roof, there was a generous scattering of charcoal on the whole floor and a few small bits of lithic scatter to clearly show at least occasional use by the ancients. Perhaps the location wasn't well suited for growing maize or otherwise lacking for a permanent habitation, and it was only an occasional hunting camp?
Just about the time I got back to the Jeep, the rain and snow started coming down again, harder this time. And it pretty much was either raining or snowing for the rest of the day. With the wind never letting up at all either. So, most of the rest of the day was spent just exploring the few side roads in the area I hadn't been on yet - I can now say I've driven every open route I know of in a very large chunk of this country.
Towards evening, the precipitation finally let up, although the wind certainly didn't. But with no more rain or snow I decided to make a quick run out past Keg Knoll to hike to Five Hole arch before it got dark.
The rest of these pics are all from that area.
Drove home from there, with a full blown white-out blizzard all the way over Soldier Summit. Was like two hours of staring at the hyper drive scene or whatever it was called from the original Star Wars and not being able to see the road. Intense!
- DAA
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