Looks like I can’t change the location on a blogpost once it’s drafted with Squarespace, so if you’d like to read my most recent report The Terminus: Fly Fishing the Small Creeks of St. George for Utah’s Southern-Most Boneville Cutts, please go check in out in The Picturebook.
Canyonlands Sunset
Stress, Winter Travel, and Cold Nights Cuddled Together.
Canyonlands Sunset
Stress. There’s stress for some reason now, where once packing for a backpacking trip seemed so easy, so care-free, “If I forget anything, I don’t need it.”
Stress eats away at my consciousness each moment, the itch at the back of my neck, the wicked sensation that tickles your self-doubt, “You don’t need it, but they do”.
Stress that laughs while you drive away, sick to your stomach of the pending court date you never wanted to attend, yet volunteered for.
I’m dying of stress and I can’t think of a goddamned thing other than if I have everything I need in my stuffed-to-the-gills truck, loaded up with all accouterment seemingly important for 9ºF desert campout in Canyonlands national park. It fades for a moment, and the moment melts into an hour while I cruise down the highway with the dog popping her head out of the window on occasion. Warnings from further south about traffic jams, car crashes, and sketchy roads give the trip a sense of pending dread, but once I pick up Taylor that dread fades away, and we indulge ourselves on that most menacing of meals: McDonald's. It’s while we’re eating that the voice of Stress cackles in the back of my head, echoes down my spin,e and makes my hairs stand up, an auditory sigh is the only conscious reaction I can muster at first, followed by “Oh my fucking god”.
I forgot the stove.
Stopping into the last Ace Hardware for the rest of the trip, we pull out a lucky find with a stand-up Camp Chef on sale for nearly half-off the sticker price, and $150 grill for just $85. I snag it and somehow tetris-fit the box and its contents into the shallow allowance of my bed, and then we are finally off on the long drive to Moab, or the next destination for gas and treats. The road winds down corridors that shine a reminiscent veneer of a time not so long ago that now feels to have been a lifetime away; It’s funny to me how even passing through space can bring back ghosts of yesterday, whether they meet Heidegger’s definition of Dasein or lesser than conscious in even some diehard panpsychistic belief. My old Nissan Murano, who would bless me with nightmares any time I’d travel with it, where I nearly died rolling off a muddy hillside with it in 2021. The friend I took here during a turkey hunt some miles up the road. A time when I would cram into the back of a red Chevy S10, Crew Cab, with a single access seat and a space on the floor affectionately titled “the bitch seat”.
Cigarettes come to mind, a long-time favorite of mine during desert camping sessions I used to attend at all times of the year. It’s interesting to look back, at how much of a desert rat I used to be, far down South or in the dry dead West. I wish I could have one, but I know how miserable I feel anytime I even taste one, so the desire fades and I’m back to where I’ve been all along, driving with my fiance and our husky down the wide open, white-out blizzard January roads of central Utah. We’re strung along the road for a few hours before things clear up, and when they do we’re in that long, monotonous drive between Price and Green River with views of the jutting San Rafael Swell can be seen far on the Western horizon. Dust curls on the still air when heavy trailers blast past, leaving a whipping wind of sand and brake dust long enough to spray our windshield.
We make it down to Moab as the sun is setting, but our destination is still an hour out, so we throw on some campfire stories and make our way further into the dark, an anticipatory excitement leaks into my mind as I remember again those days more than a decade ago when I first saw the red rocks of Southern Utah the morning after we arrived. Taylor’s in for a surprise, and I can’t wait for her to see just how much of a playground this vast landscape is.
Setting up camp is a mad dash after rousing an own from its hiding hole, as the temperature outside has plummeted down into the teens, the stars clearer than any other campout we’ve been on in months. Zipping up the vestibule to my rooftop tent to provide a little buffer against the cold is a great idea, and even better is when we get the heater kicked up inside the small room and things get cozy FAST. It’s hard to think about anything but sleep, and we cuddle up for a little while but it’s only about 730, and we’ve still got to eat our dinner on the fancy new stove. I head out and start cooking up some tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and all our energy came flooding back, but the temps outside left us opting for quick explorations around our Hamburger Rock campground then swiftly returning to the warm tent to chat, listen to music, and eventually head to bed.
Then the next day would be the one we went on the big adventure, initially planning on hitting Elephant Hill but then opting to run a “moderate” rated trail on a 4-LO drive out to a Colorado River overlook. A little over a mile in, I opted to air down the tires and see if it make a big difference: We’ve aired down before and loved the results, but this trip will be the first time I have a portable air compressor with us that we can pump back up anywhere we need, and I’m eager to see how much my Tacoma–and my skill as an offroad driver–can go. It’s not long before we start having some really fun, bumpy trails with tricky terrain mixups, high hill climbs, and some good old-fashioned hitch kisses. About an hour of driving later, we’re at the loop for the overlook, and we head out over the rocks.
The view here is the same that often leaves one at a failure to describe, and even photos fall short of capturing the sheer vastness of the landscape around you. A chasm nearly a mile wide stretches from where we stand to the other side of a relentlessly tall cliffside, that juts nearly straight down to the icy flows of the low and slow Colorado that seems impossibly far below. I’ve only seen these rivers in warmer weather, and it’s a real trip to be here with just us looking over a landscape that leaves me in awe at each glance, conjuring thoughts of what it must’ve been like to cross or live in these lands during the bloody expansion of Manifest Destiny.
As we make our way back towards the main road, my tires still aired down, I tell Taylor we should at least go see what Elephant Hill is like. I came here once years ago with that old Murano and knew I wouldn’t be doing much else than hiking the 4x4 trail; I’ve seen videos of guys in stock Tacomas running the wild pass, but those guys always have something like 3 or 4 other trucks rolling around them like a brazen tribe of mechanical nomads slugging over rocks that threaten to wipe out their advance from a simple slide. Once we arrive, I feel a burst of confidence when I see the road, and we blast up the stark hillside, only a few cars in the nearly vacant parking lot and not a soul around. Once we hit the first real ascent, Taylor’s insecurity immediately takes hold and there’s a lot of desire from the passenger side to stop now and get out while we can. Begrudgingly I obliged, but in hindsight, the detour was probably the smartest thing I could have done since the sun was beginning to peek down behind the jutting Needles to the West.
We drive back down to our same campsite out East, the sunset at our backs and illuminating the landscape and storms some miles away into a blast of color: Blue-black, hazel, brilliant orange, and blasts of green from the shrubbery dotting the sunny buttes. As we arrive at Hamburger Rock again, we are gifted with one of the most impeccable desert sunsets I’ve ever seen, and again I flow down into a flashback of consciousness. I’ve seen so many breathtaking sunsets in these parts of the world, my typical bewilderment being met with jokes at my expense by friends who’ve already had more than I would drink in a weekend now. But here, this sunset is beautiful, and the company I have with me fills me with joy and warmth as the cool air descends our cozy little campsite once again. After the fire and the tacos and the laughter in the little vestibule room, we crawl into our warm blankets and cuddle up as a family, and I sleep better than I’ve slept in weeks.
Tonight, the stress is gone away.
Red Castle
A Pioneer Day spent on the Trail
Red Castle
Life and time are two ephemeral concepts whose perceived intertwined states all too often leave us thinking a bit too deeply on the goals we’ve made, how time has passed them by, and how much time we might have left in life to still achieve them. One of those pesky, slips-through-fingers goals I’ve held for the past several years has been to go backpacking up to Red Castle, some 12 miles up the north slope of the Uinta range. It’s something I hear so often about, folks preaching its utter beauty in comparison to other places around the range; “It’s really, really something out here, but Red Castle is all-together something else. It’s stunning over there”, to quote a friend I made on the highest peak in Utah.
Well, in 2024 I finally found a timeframe that I could make the trip work out, and this time I wouldn’t be hiking alone. My Fiancé, Taylor, and our Siberian Husky, Venus, would be joining me for the long trek, this being only their second backpacking trip ever. We left early in the morning and hit the trail with cautious optimism by 10 AM, having propped up the farm back home to be as close to self-sustaining as possible during our four-day getaway. As we packed in the miles, I’d tell Tay every mile that we’d only made a half-mile of progress, hoping that it’d help her perceive time going by faster once we finally made it up to the lakes. We met some fantastic characters along the trail, but by far the most memorable was the older gal who was hiking back down the trail solo with her Heeler pup, Violet, as a companion. We never exchanged names personally, only information about our dogs, the landscape, and compliments about how badass it is to see her out there hitting the trails in such a remarkable fashion. It wasn’t until about the halfway point that I told Taylor about the miles, and she was astonished: How could this be so easy with so many miles behind us?
We were about to find out that the trail only really starts picking up elevation after that exact point.
Things got a little grungy, so we’d stop for snacks and fishing opportunities along the Smith’s Fork, with some good hungry brookies ready to take a bead wrapped in foil. We stuck it out towards the end once we got up above the heavy tree cover into subalpine territory, and breathed a sigh of relief when we finally made it up to Red Castle Lake. But Taylor was in no mood for anything besides setting up camp to rest, and even Venus the pup was ready to call it a night. We all took what we thought would be a nap after getting the tent set up, which turned out to be an early night’s sleep, hitting the hay at around 7 PM.
Once morning came around 6, I got up and started hiking up the mountain to cast on the lake. It was forecast to be thunder and lightning our entire time up there, but this morning it was just a perfectly beautiful, slightly cloudy gray against the vivid red and green landscape that rolled around the crater of water. That’s when I really felt the words of my friend up on King’s Peak hit, and walking along the flat, grassy, rock-laden landscape I started to have my breath and soul drawn up out of me, drifting over this place in a kind of spiritual bliss that was reminiscent to a visit to a favorite playground as a child; There was the promise of endless opportunity, the constant rising of trout over the lake, and the spinning, flashing sides of cutthroats throwing down roe and smelt in the clearly defined redds along the shallows and inlets of the lake.
Watching all this was hypnotizing in itself, but now it was time to fish; and that morning, it wasn’t a bad harvest at all, pulling a tiger and two cutthroats for lunch, and I really need to highlight here the quality of the trout in that magnificent lake: These tasted more like Atlantic salmon that a fish from Utah. Absolutely phenomenal meal ensued as we took a short lunch break during the afternoon storm.
The next day proceeds similarly, with the miraculous isolation of having the entire lake to ourselves. A few moose visits through the night were enough to scare Tay stiff, so I felt it’d be a good idea to take her mind off the fears induced last night by teaching her the joy of fly fishing, and it was here on this lake that she caught her first, second, third, fourth, and fifth trout, not just on a fly but her first fishing experience ever. I feel the nervousness of admitting to her, “You’re getting spoiled, this place is magnificent”. Another storm rolled in over us, but instead of hiking back to the tent we opted to stay and the lake, throw the rain jackets on, and enjoy the pitter-patter of cool drops on this lovely summer day.
I ended the day at 22 fish, thus farm my personal best, and some of the best cutthroat trout I’ve ever pulled to boot. Every cast seemed a different experience, and it was an absolute meditation on nature to interact with those fish and see how their appetites changed throughout the day. As the evening approached, we decided it’d be nice to head out a day early to have another one back home to mind chores and rest a little more before the grinding workweek resumed, so we started heading out. It’s on our way down that we realize how perfect our timing was, and how much better our experience was when adding a little grit to the hike, as at lower lakes the crowds began to multiply exponentially. What started out as our seeing maybe 3-4 people here and there turned into passing groups of 5-8 every hundred yards or so, the lake and trail becoming ever more crowded along our path downward.
Red Castle is remarkable, and ever more so if you’re lucky enough to get there when everyone else is tired and weary of lightning.
Picturebook: Escapades After Noon, or SMALL Creek Fishing
CUTTSLAM 2:
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
CUTTSLAM 2: THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
Back in 2022 I finished my first Cutthroat Slam here in my beloved home state of Utah, and just as soon as I got my little medallion in the mail I was eager to get started again, and that’s exactly what I did in the summer of 2023. It wasn’t until June of 2024, when I had done some fishing for Native cutts but not really targeting the subspeicies did I notice the DWR tag on my fridge had an expiration date: My birthday, June 30 of 2024. “Shit” was the first word to mind that June 4th.
What followed this month was a clusterfuck of chasing trout as quickly as I could while battling the spring runoff that was still prevalent in most regions, as well as running through all possible venues that were flooded out, news from local word and sat imagery wisdom. A single trip early in the season knocked out both my Yellowstone and Bear River checks, and the Bonneville I had already caught back in 2023. So I only had one to catch, but most of where I knew I could catch the Colorado Cutt were going to be tough access, flooded, or too far out of the way for my schedule to permit: Hell, I just got engaged afterall.
There was one small stream that I remembered, and checking the DWR’s mapping for the Colorados I realized that it fit right smack dab in the territory. I’d been wanting to head back to this little stream for quite some time, a location I found while driving out to the Grandaddy Basin a few years back and had fished once before, noting the absolute perfection of the surroundings that seemed too-perfect for a Utah backdrop, but there it is.
We went out on my birthday weekend, really cutting it down to the wire as my tag expires June 30 at midnight and I had a tattoo appointment that same day, 3 hours drive away. Starting on the 29th, we woke up early in the Huntsville home and made our way down south. Arrival time was around 4pm, which meant I’d have around 5 hours to fish before we needed to pack up and find a place to pitch up the truck for the night.
Getting into the water I immediately hooked up on a nice sized brown, and I felt like we were really getting somewhere. This approach was a real Curtis Creek style setup, crawling through the tall grass to an overhanging ledge, spying on the rising trout for a good 15 minutes before determining the correct fly pattern, and setting it down: First cast, final strike. We got ‘em.
The rest of the night we were able to get into some more hungry browns rising around a pool that provided some fun and even a little learning lesson for my Fiancé, but with each brown I’d take, the more my hope would wane. Once the sun had set and it started getting a little too dark out, we made our way back out and scouted for a campsite, which we found among many other trailers and RV’s in a spot that was just good enough for a late night birthday couple. Like checking into a hotel for the night, we made up a small dinner that was quite surprisingly delicious: a few chicken and steak skewers, chips and dip, a southwest bean salad and goat cheese with thin crisps. A last little birthday hoorah at nearly midnight started the celebration early with a tiny single serving of cheesecake, aptly topped with a twig birthday candle.
The next morning began even earlier than the last, the missus unable to sleep most of the night on account of us leaving the dog in the truck bed beneath us (recently sprayed by a skunk, a WHOLE other story), and myself tossing and turning at the thought of missing a year’s worth of work. We got to the river at 6am this morning, June 30, and we needed to leave no later than 1030. “Shit”, the motif continues.
It’s a hopeful start to the day as well, in a small pool I can see the snapping flicker of light near a shallow tree trunk submerged roughly half way into a slower part of the river, and I tie on one of my favorite streamers, given to me by a dear coworker as a birthday gift the year prior: it couldn’t have been planned better. I set the streamer in, and let it glide down to just in front of the area I saw the striking when it happens: Gold flash, set hook, taught line, slack line. The damn thing snapped my line, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it even more when this same occurence happened 4 more times at different points in the water, making our way upstream I started to become more and more frustrated, flustered, and furious. I’d lose 7 more flies before I found the culprit: very bad tippet that had been on the spool for the better part of 3 years had apparently gone to shit, and now all I had was the last little bit of 4x I could find, less than 4 inches.
I’d lost my temper now. I was raging, the fiancé and our husky could feel it, so much so that we needed to go our separate ways due to my impetulant tantrum. I stared at the river, which by now had been still for what seemed like hours without bites, as the clock neared 10:15. I watched that water for ten more minutes, more out of meditative catharsis attempting to resolve my conflict rather than anything else when I saw a monsterous take some 25 yards down. “Another Brown, just my luck”, I think to myself, and plan out the cast. I observe the strikes again, watching the yellow belly run up, take then retreat. Focusing on the surrounds I notice the mayflies are hatching light and large, so I tie on a 14 PMD and let it drift down.
It takes three casts for my white spec to be the chosen one, but as soon as I did, that line went tighter than it ever has before, and I start to see exactly what I’m fighting against: the golden sides, pink and crimson belly, black spots that get heavier near the back… “God I don’t deserve this”, thinking to myself. The rod and reel were both a birthday gift from the girl down the bend earlier in the month, a very fun 7ft 3wt Reddington Butterstick reeling with a Ross Colorado, so light weight action was the name of the game here and this fiberglass rod was just about as bent as it could possibly get.
Once it’s in the net I’m hit with the obvious at fist: This is the biggest cutthroat trout I’ve ever caught. I’m stunned this guy made it’s way out of the little river bend at all, and it’s giving me respect for the size of trout that can be in easily waded waters. And then, I go out to find my family, with a bit of shame on my heart. Once I presented to fish to her, I issued the greatest of apologies I’ve ever mustered, humility and embarrassment covering me like a blanket of sad snow. But she was able to forgive me soon enough, and we decided to keep the might trout for a real birthday dinner of fish tacos.
And with that I ended my second Cutthroat Slam, down to the absolute wire. It was close, it was dramatic, it was fun. I hope my next slam can be so enjoyable, and maybe I’ll be able to help the gal with her first slam this coming year as well.