map's trail notes - intermountain west nature and wilderness travelogues

branching off from Moab, UT with something less area-specific.

this weekend: city of rocks national preserve in southern idaho. high sagebrush desert, pinyon/juniper, mountain lowlands, granite.

i like posting this stuff here, a site that looks and feels increasingly stable, sane, and appreciative of writing, in addition to sharing with friends and feeding the social media machine. i don't have any hustle or anything, i just like going to places, running and posting about it.

total tangent, but i love these kinds of one-person-project photo blog sites that you can still find when you're looking up remote areas: https://www.beyondmycouch.com/2015/08/utah-nevada-back-roads-adventure.html

I'll check in on your travels, map!

At some point I'd like to take a month or two to roam around the west again. About twenty years ago I quit a miserable job and rode my little 250cc honda motorbike all over, up to Alturas CA, through Nevada, down to the Salton Sea.. mostly camping with an occasional cheap motel room to shower and clean my clothes. It was a real revelation and I met some great people... discovered some petroglyphs near Pyramid Lake, coyotes howling while I sat by my little fire up some gravel road. I even went to Gerlach, home of Black Rock City which is a cool place to visit when there's no on there

sounds great! there are so many petroglyphs in nevada.

i would like to one day make it to western nevada and the sierras. have to find the right spot. ideally the high sierras, somewhere a little less well-traveled. it's a long drive from here.

high on my list as far as wilderness goes: jarbidge in northeast nevada, the wind river range in wyoming.

East Sierras around Bishop/Big Pine etc are where to go... it's like looking at the Himalayas or something, and far less tourism... there's ever places you can just park on BLM land and stay for a week for free. There's also the White Mountains on the other side of valley, which are massive peaks in their own right, and where the oldest bristlecone pines are found

awesome, thanks! yeah that's around where i've been looking.

Awlright! Eastern Sierras & White Mountains are kinda my territory. I've camped up there a lot, been up to the research station at the top of White Mountain Peak.

If you get up to Jarbidge, set aside a couple of days for Great Basin NP and the ranges between NV-318 and US-93 south of Ely. Great backcountry that's relatively unvisited.

i love great basin np.

lotta mileage between there and jarbidge though. big area.

i'm getting ready for city of rocks tomorrow. new running shoes and hydration belt. trader joe's trip. i'll have a whole cabin with full kitchen to myself (splurged a little on an airbnb after getting a decent tax return), so bringing all my own food. they say the mountain behind it is private access only and included.

it's gonna be windy. probably some smoke from an oregon wildfire, hopefully not too bad. almo idaho has a little hot springs pool i'm hoping to spend a good amount of time in on saturday after the run. sunday and monday are going to be warm, mid-80s highs.

trails i'm excited about: circle creek loop in city of rocks, castle rocks trail in castle rocks state park, independence lakes trail in the range there.

I really wanted to go to the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in Oregon before I left, but it will have to wait

The Kalmiopsis leachiana plant was discovered in 1930 by Lilla Leach in the Gold Basin area. The plant is a relict of the pre-ice age and the oldest member of the Ericaceae Family, and is the namesake of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness.[1

that looks like a very beautiful place. speaking of beautiful places, are you out of the u.s. yet sleeve?

lol we were delayed for a day, leaving for LA very very early tomorrow - will be gone on the 11th and on the island on the 15th I think

safe travels - looking forward to hearing more about it!

Quoting from Wikipedia, the Biscuit Fire in 2000 "burned most of the 180,000-acre (730 km2) Kalmiopsis Wilderness". That was 26 years ago, but Biscuit was a hot-burning megafire that didn't leave much behind but dead and burned snags. The Kalmiopsis Wilderness is still very much in recovery mode, with a lot of brushy thicket and young trees where there used to be mature forest. :-(

that's too bad. a lot more of that coming unfortunately. looks like there is a fire southeast of bend that started as a prescribed burn and is now a wildfire. wnw flow bringing some smoke down here. i have a feeling this summer is going to be nutso :(.

Biscuit was a hot-burning megafire that didn't leave much behind but dead and burned snags.

yes I am aware of this, it remains true that the Kalmiopsis is a unique biological/geological region that is actually a separate continental plate from the rest of the PNW which is why it has dinosaur ferns.

i.e. I don't necessarily want to go there for "mature forest", I want to soak in the vibe

same with the Rogue River last time I hiked it, watching the recovery in process is fascinating

so City of Rocks.. this place is a fuckin fairyland! it is seriously magic. i'm at a loss for how to describe it. i guess just try and hack through the basics. it's basically a big drainage amphitheater carved out of the side of a range, revealing massive spires, slabs, and blocks of granite. the overall tree population is pinyon/juniper mixed in with aspen groves. much of the flora is familiar to me from utah but how it is mixing together is different - for lack of something more solid to say it just feels like it's further north. everything up here (southern idaho) feels like it's a shade darker or something.

the reserve itself is interesting, i've never been on federal land that feels quite like it. the main crowd it draws is climbers, but there is a fairly sizeable and complicated network of trails that run from the higher parts of the land tucked up behind the granite down into the basin, rushing through slightly different zones. a few creeks still have a trickle of water. the wildflowers, folks - they are wild and they are flowering, everywhere. instant happy shots for me. one of my favorite blooms, cliff rose, is flowering everywhere. smells like liquorice. there are big black birds of prey circling everywhere. i think they're turkey vultures.

there's a big trail loop that runs up one creek, through a lot of rocks, and down another creek. one of the best trails i've ever been on. magic! couldn't have asked for a better trail running vacation. the cabin i'm staying in is very nice. red drapes and a giant metal sawblade on the wall give it a lynchian feel and indeed i had a dream last night wherein laura dern was lighting the bathroom on fire lol. this spot is one of the quietest places i've ever been. there is a town two miles up the road with a few farms and a little store. the climbing areas up in the park can feel a little busy but everything outside of that is very quiet. this morning i only saw one other group of two runners.

i'll have to post a pic or two when i get back. wifi here isn't letting me upload anything.

I love this thread already

I am doing big hikes twice a week to get myself primed to do the Lions hike in July with a couple friends

i hadn't heard of the lions - wow that looks like a huge hike! are you camping or doing it in one day? looks breathtaking - in more ways than one haha.

yesterday i did 4 miles. today was 5 with about 850 ft elevation gain. that's enough in one shot for me at this time lol. i got back around noon and i was pretty baked from the sun so it felt good to hang out in this cabin all afternoon. the endless quiet is nice to fall into. cool dry breeze floating through the window and occasional whistle of a songbird.

from yesterday - you can really see the cliff rose in this one - the shrub with small yellow blooms

https://i.postimg.cc/7YJnHhJq/IMG-0526.jpg

facing the other direction, into the granite amphitheater

https://i.postimg.cc/SRMYhXT9/IMG-0525.jpg

a special juniper

https://i.postimg.cc/XqGdY1JH/IMG-0595.jpg

happy in a high meadow today

https://i.postimg.cc/q71mF75w/IMG-0593.jpg

<3 <3 <3

I love this!!

Lions isn't a camping hike but it is 16km, an all day hike, and there's scrabbling and some "please use the provided rope to get up this rock face" moments. Too dangerous for dogs. My brother is a big hiker and he says it's the best hike he's ever been on. I'm gonna have to work up to it... the Grouse Grind is a famous, shorter-but-punishing warm-up, I'm gonna try that one in June and see how I fare

awesome. love those epic show-stoppers.

i stopped at the general store in almo on my way back and talked to the woman at the register for a few minutes. they have a local history display with photographs and things including some self-published manuscripts from a history keeper who passed on a few years ago. i had a feeling this was the case but that entire region of southeast idaho is mormon settler land. they are a bit of a different breed than the city mormons lol. and the idaho mormons are a little different than the rural utah / southern utah mormons. everyone i talked to was very warm and friendly.

i have my own issues with mormonism but i have to admit that with some perspective it's pretty clear to me that their emphasis on stability and brotherhood / sisterhood is one of the better cultural influences in the area, as far as american expansion goes. obviously they have their bullshit and their darkness like anyone else. but as far as farming/ranching vs mining goes, the mining towns were hell afaict and i have difficulty seeing much good in that element of the west - just raw, brutal capitalist alienation and exploitation.

anyway. amazing trip. really great to see those big expanses of the west that haven't been filled in yet, where things haven't changed much in the last 50 years. i passed by a couple of farmhouses that .. well, they make me want to drop out of the city and start a new life lol. a distant fantasy but maybe i'll live to see the day when i'm living in a farmhouse on open land.

as luck would have it, a few days later i'm in cedar city for a work conference. cedar city sits right at the base of the high plateau in southern utah that drops into zion and has bryce canyon in it. the town is on the west side where it plateau meets the great basin. it's about 5500 feet high.

cedar city is kind of a bad vibe for me for a few reasons. i'm also a little on edge because i didn't like this conference ten years ago, there are a lot of mormons attending, and i'm not sure how i'll do. i'm going to be easy on myself.

i got out for an evening run after i checked in to the motel. cedar city has what looks like a huge network of mountain bike trails in the pinyon / juniper foothills that rise up on the east side of town. there is sort of an insistent and impressive ascent from that elevation into an aspen and spruce basin below the peak, cedar mountain, at 9200 ft., and it looks like some of the trails go all the way up. my run was a 4 mile loop in the pinyon / juniper. there is a lot of dark-colored rock here, which i'm guessing is volcanic. it creates a fun, technical trail. i didn't see anyone the whole time! the ascent was very gentle with long, dipping switchbacks. sort of a classic mountain bike flow type trail. i love running the mountain bike trails. they were my introduction to trail running. it's a pleasure and a rarity to be out there alone on one.

ok so next up is a camping trip, two weekends from now. i bought myself a tent online last night. i looked at campgrounds this afternoon and decided on one.

my criteria were: decent-looking trails, a reservoir or lake for swimming, far enough away from the wasatch front to get a dark sky, nothing below 7,000 feet or so (hot), and sites available for reservation through recreation.gov because i don't really want to gamble on first come first served on a weekend.

i found a good spot at joe's valley reservoir in central utah. it's halfway down the eastern slope of the wasatch plateau. you can follow the drainage into the san rafael swell to the east but it's gonna be hot down there so i'll probably be at the reservoir and in the mountains above it, to the west. hoping for more wildflowers, which i'm sure i'll see, though it hasn't been a big wildflower year here (dry). i'm looking at three nights, the longest i've ever camped. hoping it's the start of a new chapter of these trips for me as motels are expensive and often uncomfortable. i'm sure it will take a few trips for me to dial in my gear and preferences etc. but i think it will be worth it.