Another Round of Grad School Vacations in Utah

Lost some chronology in the blog. Here's what we did for Christmas and spring breaks the first year of grad school.

Christmas break started with some house sitting and friends visiting town. An inversion made the air quality in the Salt Lake valley less than ideal. So we hiked up around Black Mountain. Clouds looked pretty neat.

Wasatch winter.

This is a good way to watch the sun go down.

When friends left town Julia and I had several days to ourselves before house sitting ended. We went skiing and played Scrabble.

This was a particularly good game. 

Then we headed to Zion for the first time. Time for a running camp. We started off with 14 miles on the La Verkin Creek Trail.

We ought to go camping here some day.

The lack of precipitation throughout Utah in general made it possible to run just about any trail in Zion.

Julia was pretty excited about this run/hiking in Zion thing.

That night we camped at what has become one of our favorite campsites. Little stream, far enough off the beaten path to be relatively quiet, free. Next day we had a lazy morning and then headed up the West Rim Trail for a 14 mile tour of Angel's Landing, the west rim proper, and some beautiful emerald pools.

Dynamite was probably pretty handy when
this trail was getting put in.

We wandered up to Angel's landing. Julia was a little hesitant. Not really excited about the exposure but she made it.

Worth the trip? Me thinks yes.

Back down. Thankful for the protection.

After getting off Angel's Landing we followed a beautiful trail that wound through some pretty cool sedimentary rock and up to the west rim of Zion Canyon.

Getting to the rim proper. 

It was a type of beautiful we'd never seen before. Very pleasant.

Someone returned that jacket to REI saying that it was
"too bright."

On the way back we checked out Emerald Pools.

After another great night of stars and rest we wandered another 14 miles up the east rim of Zion Canyon and over to Cable Mountain. Pretty neat view of Angel's Landing and the ridge we had been on the day before.

Whoa.

I love this part of the East Rim Trail.

Full moon in Zion Canyon.

The next day was our departure day. So we tracked down some slick rock trails on Gooseberry Mesa to loosen up the legs for the drive back. This was our first attempt at slick rock. Pretty interesting. Glad it was beginnerish. Regardless of how often we got off to push, it was fun.

Also when we rested, we got to look back at
the entrance to Zion Canyon.

Eventually came Spring Break. In between was skiing, some downhill and a lot of nordork. Both fun. Unfortunately in late January I hurt my butt which ended up making my knee hurt. I thought it had something to do with adductors but that was the best explanation Julia could come up with. (That was a joke). Bummer. We still were able to do all sorts of fun things.

In February one of Julia's nordork friends (who introduced us to the term "nordork") mentioned how much fun she had at something called the Equinox Ski Marathon. The idea is to see how far you or your team can ski or snow bike or run in 12 or 24 hours. Sounds fun so we signed up and started getting ready for it. Found a beautiful place to train for it up on the Mirror Lake Highway in the Uintas.

But my butt kept hurting my knee so I couldn't get after it the way I hoped. But we decided to make the most of spring break by biking ourselves silly in the Moab area. We got to go to places I had seen pictures of for years and dreamed of visiting. It was good.

Dead Horse Point!

Looking the other way at Dead Horse Point.

My dad joined us for the first 1.5 days of the trip south and dropped us off at the end of the road in Arches NP. Not before being a ridiculous tourist with us though and checking out an arch or two.

This looks a lot more like a delicate arch than a landscape one. 

We wandered 30 miles around the park and back to the entrance.

Yes! Bike above head!

Unsatisfied and still with daylight we switched over to mountain bikes and checked out Gemini Bridges. This 13 miles was a little slow. Sand and fatigue do that I guess.

Gemini Bridges Road is not smooth. Still fun.

Julia wasn't real impressed with our destination.
"That's cool. I'm hungry."

My dad had kindly sprung for two nights at a campsite just outside the entrance to Canyonlands and the Island in the Sky district. The next morning we were in the park and ready to see how many lookouts we could enjoy up there. 35 miles later we had seen quite a bit. And it was good.

Grand View Point! Bike above head!

Big place. Henry Mountains in the distance.

We stopped by the Green River Overlook to be mocked by the Maze District for our inability to get more than 2 miles from the car without turning around. We could see about 5 landmarks that I had excitedly planned to visit back on fall break. Blast.

We will visit Millard Canyon one day.

We brought some shoes along to be able to check out Upheaval Dome. Way back when I was trying to get freshmen students to enjoy earth science I stumbled across this strange hole in the middle of the desert in satellite photos. Turns out there is evidence for the great big hole being a result of both an impact crater and a salt dome. Neat.

Only seen in satellite photos prior. Now in real life!

Back to the car we relaxed with a beautiful view of the La Sal Mountains and the Schafer Trail, the road that can mark the beginning/end of a spectacular mountain bike adventure along the White Rim road.

Lunch tasted good here.

Yup. Adventuring in Utah with my wife is pretty dang good.

Next we headed for a free camp site up Kane Springs Canyon. This was a great place to spend time. Very quiet. On the way we saw a guy and gal pounding it up a relatively large uphill out of the canyon. Both had packrafts strapped to the bikes. Hmmm. Bikerafting. That sounds like a great idea.

"Hey, car up...er...down."
"Whatever. Don't drive off the cliff."

First attempt at ramen cooked on a fire. 

The next day we decided to see how far we could go heading north out of Moab along the Colorado River. Turns out it's beautiful up there.

Following the river.

A big pillar above Castle Valley.

The La Sal's behind the castle of Castle Valley.

Quit taking pictures. Let's rock this downhill
and go eat.

After a good 45 miles we were back in the car and headed back up Kane Springs Canyon. We were treated to another wonderful evening.

Living the life.

Looking towards Hurrah Pass. 

The next day was a spin and drive home. This time we headed out for 30 miles of flat, this time heading south along the Colorado.

Jughandle Arch or something like that.

Soon after spring break we were heading to West Yellowstone for the Equinox Ski Challenge. I was signed up for the 24 hour race and Julia for the 12 hour. This was a wonderful experience. There were about 70 racers or so, some individual, some in teams. The race was cheap if you signed up to volunteer for 2 hours. So that's what we did. Plus we got a bunch a free stickers like these.

Blue Moon Bears; Mimi Matsuda

Aurora Bearealis; Mimi Matsuda

Bison by Ski; Mimi Matsuda

The idea is to see how many laps can be done before the bell rings. There was a day nordic course, night nordic course, and snow bike course. I didn't think my butt/knee would be happy with skate skiing for 24 hours so I brought classic skis and rented a fat tire bike.

The gun went off and everyone took off entirely too fast. We rocked the first lap and Julia decided to take a short break. Many people had mentioned how temperatures were likely to get in the 40's in the afternoon so I thought I'd get while the getting was good. There would be plenty of time to rest when the trails turned soft. So on the second lap I went fast. Really fast. I was having one heck of a time until I lost control going around a corner and fell. Hard. I made a sound I hadn't heard since high school football. About 40 minutes into a 24 hour race I cracked my ribs pretty good. There were two of them on the bottom that didn't care much for getting poked.

Crud. Well, I paid money for this dang race and I am definitely going to try hard. Unfortunately deep breaths and double poling hurt a lot. I could avoid double poling but not deep breaths so much. No classic skiing today.

The weather was very nice. Kind of too nice. By noonish the trails were pretty mushy. But everyone pressed on. At one point Julia got to take a run with a spare fat tire bike with me. We took one lap and switched back to skis. Lots of getting off to push.

On the drive up I bought a pie to supplement the chips, caffeine gels, other stuff that was provided at the race. Good thing too.

Secret weapon: peach pie.

I skied until darkish and switched to the bike for the evening. This was probably not the best approach if I was going for the gold. The trails were pretty quick for skiing. Oh well. Biking didn't hurt as much. Also I had an iPod set up with some pretty inspiring music.

So I hopped on the bike and got after it for a while. Julia was stuck volunteering for me. She kindly recorded laps for folks until late into the night. Just so I could flail around the course all night. Around 2 or 3 AM I finished off the pie and took a 20 minute break in front of a big raging bonfire. Did I mention that this was a really fun race to be a part of?

Around 5 in the morning I took another break, changed back into ski boots, and tried to get as many laps in as possible before the cut off. I was happy to still be in motion. Thanks Vitamin I.

Not too many pictures of this adventure. We were either in motion, asleep, or Julia was volunteering 4 hours to cover for me. Julia did grab a picture at the end.

Announcer guy: "And here comes #23...uh...Joel Pierson!...
He looks pretty tired..."

When I came down to it Julia traveled 106.4 km in 12 hours and I got to 237.7 km in 24 hours. I almost beat a guy who looked to be pushing into his 60's pretty soon. Don't know exactly what I did to those two ribs but getting into bed hurt for a while. It was worth it.

The Equinox Ski challenge was cancelled in 2013 unfortunately. Sign me up for 2014. Hope I don't eat $%^* and get beat by an octogenarian.