The first leg of my journey to Las Lenas, Argentina, began with a drive to Albuquerque. Which at the very least means I will get all of the warm weather I will need to get me psyched for a few months more of winter. On my drive I had to stop by Black Diamond in Salt Lake City, UT to get my 01 telemark bindings fixed. As many of you know I have been breaking things left and right this year so I wanted to make sure my gear was solid before heading down south. To my surprise, even though they did not have to, the guys at Black Diamond replaced both toe pieces in less than an hour. I plan on writing to Black Diamond to let them know how much I appreciated that, especially after what Volkl did to me. Needless to say Black Diamond knows how to take care of its customers and Volkl does not.
After spending the night in the SLC I headed down to Canyonlands National Park to do some exploring. The Canyonlands is an incredible place with some of the best views I have ever seen. I really want to spend some more time there in the future, but in October or something not June!! I ended up doing a hike from the Murphy trail head which is located a few miles south of the Island in the Sky Visitors Center. The web site says the hike is only nine miles, however, I am pretty sure they messed up on there math because I am do not know how a 4.8 mile hike and a 4.7 mile hike looped together, plus1 mile to connect the to hikes comes out to be 9 miles. I kind of suck at math but it looks more like 10.5 miles to me. It was a great hike and it was nice to get out of the car to get some exercise after driving so much.
This is the view from the top of the Island in the Sky about .5 miles from the trail head. The hike takes you pretty much to the beginning of that canyon down there, which I do not know the name of.
This is looking down the mesa to the Hogback, which is that ridge like looking thing on the right hand side. I walked along that for 2.8 miles and then walked to the pictures left for 1 mile and came up the wash for the final 2.7 miles. For perspective it is about 1.5 miles from where I am standing to the valley floor.
This is looking back at the Island in the Sky. The trail goes down the rock wall in the center of the picture.
Here we are looking North from the Hogback at the white rim. If you look closely you can see the Green River. Which begins in the Wind River Range in Wyoming!
More of the white rim area.
This is just a really cool view you get from right off of the road!!! This was taken on my drive out of the Island of the Sky portion of the park. I ended up spending the night in Monticello, UT and then driving to the Needles area of the park in the morning, where I did a little road tour.
And then it was on to Albuquerque to see the family!!!
