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Tag: Secret Wrangler Gift Exchange

Snow Adventures

Snow Adventures

Snow has arrived (finally!) in Utah. I have only ventured out a few times, but it has been pretty great.

In mid-November my back tweaked again (see my nightmare injury from Summer 2015). I decided to test it out on the Lindon Squiggles and foothills below Dry Canyon. It started beautiful and ended with a whiteout. I knew a system was moving in, but figured I’d be ok not venturing too far from my car. It was fun to get first tracks in the snow and my Altra Lone Peak 3.0 Mid Neos worked great!

Snow moving towards me across the valley

A week or so later I ventured up Dry Canyon a bit – mistake. It was too tracked out and complete ice. Not wanting to descend the steep ice I cut up the Curly Springs trail Nr. 051 and came down the Squiggles. Much better on those back trails.

I hosted the 3rd annual Wasatch Mountain Wrangler Secret Wrangler Gift Exchange and someone was kind enough to hide a gift for me too. Like last year’s gifts, it took up new trails. Mill Creek, Pipeline Burch Hollow, towards Church Fork Peak. My childhood best fried was visiting and he joined me. The last pitch to the Church Fork ridge was a bit of a slow – he snowshoed up – but I didn’t put mine on until the ridge. We headed west a while, but didn’t trek all of the way to the peak. We were a bit short on time, and lazy. How beautiful though! AND, my new Christmas present Hillsound Ultra crampons were AMAZING. My Atlas snowshoes performed great too.

Where snow had melted off the rocks they were covered with lichen and plants.

 

Pleasantly mild day turned cold with a stiff wind on the ridge. Brr!

 

Looking down Burch Hollow into Mill Creek Canyon

 

Finding Christmas Gifts

Finding Christmas Gifts

Last year and this year I organized a secret Santa type gift exchange for my trail-running club, the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers. People signed up, I assigned them a person to hide for, people then hid gifts up in the mountains, and I then relayed the instructions/clues to the people they hid for. Last year it was fun and this year people enjoyed it again. Since I didn’t assign anyone to myself (that would be weird) a few very kind Wranglers hid gifts for me. Awesome people. I had fun finding them in Battle Creek Canyon, up the Church Fork in Millcreek Canyon (Grandeur Peak Trail), and Bells Canyon. Thank you Ben, Rebecca, and the mystery secret wrangler. You guys were very generous to hide some treats for me. I am seriously grateful.

SO FUN!

finding gift in Battle Creek (5)
I was standing right in front of it for a minute before I saw it in the tree.
finding gift in Battle Creek (2)
Frozen falls up Battle Creek

Finding gift on church fork (2)
I had to dig a bit for this one.
Finding gift on church fork (4)
Trail conditions on Church Fork were perfect. I bombed down at unsafe speeds, loving the soft footfalls in the snow.

  

Bells Canyon gift retrieval (1)
A moment of sun peaking through on Bells Canyon and the foothills south
Bells Canyon gift retrieval (2)
There were a bunch of surprisingly bright orange trees.
Bells Canyon gift retrieval (4)
Wind or animals or people had knocked the ornaments off the tree and they were buried in the snow. I just picked a tree beside the trail, started digging and got lucky – spotting the shiny red.
Bells Canyon gift retrieval (5)
With some warm temps recently, the snow was getting SLOPPY! I didn’t notice it as much on my way up, but coming down fast, the added downward force of my downhill feet really made them sink in. Slippery slop!