Comforts of Winter Camping

This weekend was the annual OAC snowshoe campout.
Comforts included a fire,
hot food:

And ye olde comfort station:

Slot Canyons and Climbing

The OAC went rock climbing.
I went hiking.
A little scrambling in this canyon:

... and then to this small but pretty slot canyon:

It's nice to have a little hiking time on the weekend!

BLM Breakfast

BLM (or Bureau of Land Management) land is great for camping,
especially with a group of people.
You don't need reservations,
you don't pay fees (for most places),
you just pick a nice spot and drive to it.
The OAC went down to southern Utah this weekend and I went with.
It was nice during the day but COLD at night.
So a hot breakfast was very pleasant.
I had hot herb tea and sausage (grilled precooked kielbasa).

Night Cross Country Skiing

Aspen Grove lodge has a good group deal on night cross country skiing.
This week I went up there with the OAC.
It was absolutely gorgeous, not too cold,
half a moon, lots of stars,
nice groomed trail and snow on the pines.
I didn't have a tripod and the above photo
is just a shadow of the gorgeous night.
The bottom group picture is more successful.
We did have a good time.

Winter Night Adventure with the OAC

On Thursday night I went to Meadow Hot Springs with the OAC.
It's a rather long drive from Provo, and we don't usually go so far on a week night,
but this was our opening event of the semester.
And the weather looked good (we thought).
Our drive down was completely clear,
and the hot springs were great,
and we had a fire,
and everyone had a great time.
There were about 20 of us all together.
We left about 10:30 pm, quickly toweling off in the cold night:

As we exited the parking lot, snow began to fall. And fall.
By the time we'd gone 10 miles on the interstate,
the snow was coming straight at the windshield,
and with the headlights the snow looked like the white streaks
that appear in the screen of the Millenium Falcon before it makes its jumps to hyperdrive.
We had to go very slow and at times we couldn't see the road,
just the reflecting posts on either side,
and I had no idea where the lanes were,
so I just drove in the dead center.
I was very grateful for my new tires!
Eventually the snow tapered off,
and by Nephi the roads were much better.
Though we didn't get back to Provo until 1 am,
I was grateful that all of our group made it back safe and sound.

OAC group photos in LWH

I planned a great group photo for the OAC in Little Wild Horse Canyon.
Here it is:

However, only half the group were present because half of them had gone up the wrong side of the loop (the Bell canyon side to the west). So a couple of the speedy energetic folks ran off and zipped through a couple of miles of canyon, collected our missing folks, and we had another picture.

Of course by this time we were in a different spot and it was hard to herd them to a good picture place. This is not as good a composition as the other, but all 15 of them are in the photo!

Balloons over Snow Canyon

This is from the weekend campout with the OAC down in Snow Canyon, near St. George.
(Despite the name, it was very pleasant weather down there in mid April!)

As we were making breakfast about 8 am, a couple of balloon outfits set up in a parking lot down the road and we got to watch them inflate their balloons and float off over Snow Canyon!

Windy morning camp

We camped on BLM land north of Arches NP.
It was a windy night and morning, and chilly.
Our fire was particularly welcome.

Me and the OAC

Our group picture at Surprise Arch, within the Fiery Furnace area

Our group picture at the overlook area of Fiery Furnace, before we hit the trail

Not so Fiery Furnace

Anticipating pleasant spring weather, I planned a trip for the OAC down at Arches Fiery Furnace.
It was windy and chilly; not bitterly cold but not as pleasant as we'd hoped.
Nevertheless, I had a good time.
Fiery Furnace requires traversing some skinny passages and along some moderate bouldering spots. It was just about the limit of what I was comfortable with (the students, of course, handled it all with ease.)

Winter cabin

It was certainly beautiful up at the cabin and very peaceful.

Campout Pancakes

I went camping with the OAC up Fairview canyon this weekend.
The club made breakfast: bacon and pancakes.
One batch of the pancakes was made with mashed banana chunks and chocolate chips.
It was surprisingly delicious!

OAC opening social

This evening OAC had their winter semester opening social.
One of the members who lives in a house near campus has a fire pit in his back yard so we all congregated there and built a fire and made foil dinners.
I made a dutch oven peach cobbler.
It was much appreciated, but it took forever to cook (the snow killed the first layer of bottom coals and it took much longer than usual for the cobbler to be done).
Still, I'm glad I went.
We had a jolly time.

Arches Trip!

Arches is especially gorgeous in the spring.
The (daytime) weather was in the 60s- perfect for hiking.

I hiked out to Double O Arch (above), more or less in connection with the OAC students.
A couple of them hiked with me; others went ahead, went exploring, and then we all met up at points en route, like at this overlook for Dark Arch.

It was about a 4 mile round trip plus another 0.5 to 1 miles of side trails to see additional arches.
The rock fins at Devil's Garden and the La Sal Mts were especially beautiful along the way back.

In the evening, heading out, we stopped at Park Ave for some late light photos on the spectacular rock wall.

I never get tired of Arches National Park!

Spring Snowshoeing Cabin Trip

This weekend I went with the OAC on a cabin trip up Fairview Canyon, about 2 hours south of here. There's no snow left in Provo Valley but up the canyon there were still several feet of snow. We snowshoed into a rustic cabin (owned by the family of one of the club members) and stayed overnight. No water, no electric, and no heat but for the fireplace, but there was a snug roof and extra mattresses to sleep on-- girls upstairs, guys downstairs.

It's very beautiful up there!

We had marshmallows to share and folks brought their own foil dinners (that's Alyssa with the marshmallow and Brian with his dinner). The club made pancakes for everyone for breakfast. We had about 20 people there total.

Emily Jane even packed in her guitar! She sang a variety of things, from John Denver to Collective Soul. She's good!

The next day, folks went sledding on the hill behind the cabin. I mostly photographed (that's Emily Jane going over the sled jump, and Emerson watching.)

Some folks opted to just relax on the couch by the fire for awhile, feet on the hearthstone.