Charlie Horse's 2018 Picture Thread

[Charlie Horse]

12 Aug 2018

Last night I decided to do a medium hike idea I have been thinking about for months-- Its just taken a back seat to other plans till now.  Got up at 5:00 and ate and loaded up the goats.  Today I brought Shelby GT and Barry Goatalo.  Only Shelby is old enough to carry water.  The plan was to hike the red cliffs which are only a mile or two from the Morrison formation (Where I've hiked a lot recently) but very different geologically.  I planned based on google map photos, which don't really tell you much about what a cliff looks like since its all overhead shots.  My general plan was to go along the bottom of the cliffs, find a certain wash to the south, make my way up to the top of the cliffs, and back to the car.

   

The sun was just rising as we started the hike.  There's still plenty of smoke in the air making the red cliffs more orange.  The base of the cliffs is a series of washes and ravines, so there was some up-down-up as we crossed them.  Fortunately the weren't as difficult as I had expected.

   

These hoodoos can be seen from the road, and I've always wanted to visit them.  Note the gaps.

   

Looking up.  The tallest part of the cliff is above the hoodoos.  You cant step through the gap because there's a 20 foot drop on the other side! 

   

At the top of those cliffs is Lookout Point, a destination later in this hike.  Note the thin overhangs.

   

We left the cliffs and traversed a badlands/wash area with rather steep slopes and deep ravines.  We worked our way down to the river and road, out and away from the cliffs and walked south toward the next waypoint.

   

The problem is there was a badlands hilly maze we had to pass through.  There was no point in a map because you'd spend more time reading it than moving.  After a while I discovered it was far faster to walk the straight top of the mounds than the winding ravines.  Here you can see the main cliffs.  The daunting task is to find a way up to the top.  Failure to do so would mean a longer trip back around.

   

Its here that I found an amazing area!  A miniature goblin valley, but with a more cliff-like structure and green sandstone layers on top of the red.  The area is untouched, since anyone coming here would have to pass the maze and as far as I can tell, there are no roads or paths other than the wash.

   

There was a particularly interesting formation I took several pictures of.  So cool.  This area would make a GREAT camp site for a future expedition.

   

   

[Charlie Horse]

   

Here we left the goblins and moved up the canyon.  I knew most of the canyon was dead ends, but I was hoping I could find a way up.  I was lucky.  There was one, and only one way up a steep dirt scree field.  There was even some water in the canyon for the dog and goats.  The goats didn't want to jump a certain rock near the top, but eventually made it up without any issues.  Suddenly, up above, everything changed color.

   

In this layer the sandstone was light gray with a hint, or in this case, a lot of green. 

   

Ok.  So I can stand next to a 25 foot cliff that would probably kill me without a lot of worry.  But standing next to a 250 foot cliff freaks me out.  I ended up following a ledge, of all things, next to the main drop-off.  A 30-40 foot cliff up on one side, and the big drop on the other.  The ledge was 25-45 feet wide but for some reason I was doing the high-anxiety thing the whole mile or two that  we followed the ledge.  

   

   

Lucky for my sanity the goats didn't really go up to the edge very often.

   

I bet the pictures would be better if I dared get near the edge.

   

Too much smoke in the air kinda ruins the pictures.  No blue sky, no distant desert.

   

After the cliff I was moving along disappeared, I was on a upward sloping plane that led to Lookout Point.  I for sure wanted to go to the point, so even though it was getting hot, we trudged along a shortcut.  There was a 6 foot tall cairn on the point.  The point was at least 30 feet wide at the narrowest but had large overhangs.  Lucky for me the animals were too hot to care about the view.  I couldn't see much from there anyhow because of the smoke.  We headed back along the cliff edge and were getting closer to the car at last.

   

We dropped down the cliffs to a layer of goblin rock.  Smooth but hard stone surface that turns to goblins on the cliff face.  Very awesome scenery here.  You can see the red cliffs but Lookout Point is around the corner.

   

I think I have a few calendar entries from this trip!  The trip probably took about 6 hours and was around 12 miles, best guess.  Next week will be a totally different environment so stay tuned.

[Taffy]

The photos you post mae me want to take a geology course so I can better understand the terrain. It's gorgeous!

[Nanno]

Now there's a hike I'd love to do!

[Charlie Horse]

Last week's trip was to the south of Miller's Canyon exit on I-70 to visit "Miller's Cows", gigantic rocks that have rolled off of the yellow cliffs above, down on to the smooth gray mud slopes below.  I had put this hike off for a week due to big thunder storms moving over the area several times in the previous days and I suspected the blackish-gray dirt out there was capable of making some epic mud.

   
One of "Miller's Cows".  

   
I'm starting to think Miller isn't taking care of his cows.  This one has a hole in it.

   
This one is calving.  I don't think she needs any help. 

   
Here's a rather old cow.  Lookin' a little weathered and bony.

   
Ok. That does it.  I went around a corner and found where Miller was hiding the skeletons of cows he'd neglected.  Miller is a bad rancher!

   
Barry Goatalo takes the stage!

   
Shelby GT wonders about the implications of the failure to find supersymetry particles in the Large Hadron Collider for the standard model of quantum physics.

   
I found some shards of a rather rare kind of agate or obsidian in one tiny area about 10 feet on a side.  I bet once upon a time a Freemont Indian was making arrowheads here.  The funny thing is that this particular type of rock is found nowhere near here so it caught my eye.

   
Luna on the Lunar Landscape!

[Charlie Horse]

   
Shelby climbs the slope.  Its times like this when I wish I'd bothered to properly adjust his saddle straps.

   
This mudstone pinnacle.

   
Shelby GT, don't stare at it!  You could go blind!

   
This trip involved a lot of walking.  Sometimes we'd walk on the dirt road.  Here's a funny story that wrote itself in the muddy footprints I found as I walked.  At first, I saw a man's footprints in the hard dirt road walking toward the highway.  He'd apparently been on the road when it was raining and very muddy, as even on the road  his feet sunk an inch and the prints filled with water and then turned white with alkali.  The footprints went on for miles.  Then suddenly a woman's footprints ran next to the man's prints.  I guessed she got left behind.  I started thinking that perhaps these were tracks of someone that got their vehicle stuck in the mud way out in the desert.  I started looking for dried mud puddles with a rotting hand sticking out.  It got more amusing when, about 6 miles from the highway, I saw a child's footprints with the group!  I'm pretty sure the man made it to civilization-- I'm pretty sure the woman and kid met their fate out there.

   
Barry Goatalo agrees with my interpretation of the footprints.

   
Group shot.  It was a successful trip, but not really that exciting.  I had plans to get to a certain area I wanted to explore, but on the map distances don't seem so far as when you're actually walking.  Canyons look easy until the surprise 20 foot cliff appears that didnt really show in google maps.  I'll go back soon and drive down the dirt road of doom so I can start from where I turned around on this trip.

[Nanno]

Ha! Love the "cows"! I also think Barry's photo looks like it could make a great calendar page.

[Taffy]

I want to know exactly what Miller's cow skeletons are made of.  They look like they're petrified or agatized rock?  I remember seeing a couple of rocks with this type of formation when we all hiked in the Swell a few years ago.  They weren't nearly as dramatic as Miller's cows but were still pretty cool.

   

[Charlie Horse]

Today was a trip to Dry Wash.  Its not far from a lot of the other places I've gone recently and is related to the green sandstone that caps the red goblin layer.

I took Woodstock and Barry Goatalo because I couldn't find Bacchus' halter.  I'm wondering if it fell off in the field down the road where he had been staying...

   
There is something high-tech about these rocks...

   
Just check out that sandstone!
Dry Wash isn't that dry and I got my shins all scratched up by brush.

   
Its all about the ears, don't you think?

   
After quite a few miles in the green sandstone, we broke into the goblin layer.

   
Hiding in the shade of a hoodoo.  We took our first water break here.  The goats weren't too interested in drinking.

   
I came over a hill and very suddenly before my eyes was a Skeksis castle, complete with moat!  I was completely shocked.

   
Woodstock is very much like one of the Skeksis' counterparts, the old ones.  Don't you think?

   
Here's the east side.  The two towers only touch in one spot.  Next time there's a great conjunction, I'm coming back with a crystal shard.  We'll see what happens!

   
Escaping the castle. 

   
Found a lot of really cool rocks here, and I'm not talking about the goblins.  Its a rock hound's dream.  Every ten feet on this one gravel bar, you'd need to stop and pick up some cool looking glassy rock.  It was like candy laying around everywhere.

[Charlie Horse]

   
Woodstock endures.  He was out of energy.  We'd been walking for four hours and it was getting warm.  Everyone was panting.
Luna pissed me off chasing a couple antelope.  She showed up later with lather and foam on her chin, and a tongue that was 10 feet long.

   
Nearly back to the car. 

It was a great trip.  I'm going back and hiking the goblin cliffs next time, rather than the wash... Once we get some cooler weather, anyhow.