SCUBA Diving with Nurse Sharks | Florida Keys

This past summer, I accomplished a bucket-list item of mine, going SCUBA diving sharks! It was a complete surprise to me, slightly terrifying, but overall peaceful! Swimming along side these creatures, I’ve never felt more sure of an animal’s place in this world. What I mean by that, is sharks do not swim anything like a typical fish. They are calm, collected, and at a moments notice can swim in any direction with complete ease and grace. And throughout that entire dive, I was fascinated by these grey creatures and couldn’t take my eyes off them. This was our second …

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Best Mountain Biking: Captain Ahab & HyMasa Loop | Moab, UT

The Captain Ahab and HyMasa is another iconic mountain bike ride for the expert rider in Moab, Utah. If you’ve ridden the Mag7, Klondike Bluffs, and Moab Brand trails and found them too easy, then the HyMasa and Captain Ahab loop are surely going to test your skills! The climb up HyMasa is beyond technical, with countless step-ups that will test the best riders. The climb makes the descent down Captain Ahab completely worth it, that is, if you want to ride some of the most challenging features and rocky sections in Moab! All said, if you only have a …

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Backpacking to Grandaddy Lake in the Uintas

Grandaddy Lake, located in the Uinta Mountains, might be the perfect weekend backpacking trip. After a short hike over Hades Pass, the view of the basin below filled with alpine lakes is unforgettable. And once you reach the shoreline of Grandaddy Lake, you will get to choose from a nearly unlimited number of areas to camp for the weekend. And having gone up there on the Labor Day weekend, which I thought would be busy, turned out to be completely empty, making it the perfect weekend of backpacking.

The roundtrip hike to Grandaddy Lake, via the Grandview Trail, is a 7.2 mile hike with only 1,300 feet of vertical to climb. Not difficult by most hike or backpacking standards, but this trail starts at 9,730feet and goes up to 10,645feet in elevation. The air is thin and the trail is steep, making it shockingly more difficult than I expected, especially with a heavy backpack on. But the adventure starts long before the trailhead, because once you turn off main road, there is 6.2 miles of bumpy dirt road that has to climb up over 2,000 feet.

The plan for our backpacking trip was to head up Saturday morning, spend two nights, then return home on Monday morning. We brought with us our dog, fly fishing rods, and most importantly, our Kokopelli Packrafts! And as we left the trailhead, heading uphill, we felt ever ounce of weight we were bringing with us for a weekend of adventure and fun. Luckily, the approach hike was beautiful and went by rather quickly. We left the valley behind us, passing other backpackers and day-hikers using the trail. And once we climbed up to the top of Hades pass, we could see we were going to be in for one incredible weekend.

From the pass, we could see the entire basin below, filled with alpine lakes surrounded by 10,000foot mountain peaks. The most stunning of these, of course, would be the largest lake in the Uintas, Grandaddy Lake. And we cruised on down to the water’s edge to see it up close and personal, and of course to find a campsite for the weekend. The lake was bigger, and more stunning than we could have ever imagined, and the best part was it was completely empty! So after we found a flat spot, with a fire ring, 200feet away from the water, we setup our camp! Starting with getting our heavy packs off our shoulders, followed by setting up our 10 year old 2-person backpacking tent. To which, we broke the zipper in the progress.

We didn’t let that slow our weekend down! The rest of that evening and the following day were spent perfectly slow. We inflated the packrafts and paddled out onto that empty lake with the dog in tow. We explored a few of the island on the lake, paddling from one to the other, getting off to hike around and imagine camping on one of them one day. The water was calm, soothing, and blue! Contrasting perfectly with the green pines that surrounded the lake’s edge and below the tan and white rocky ridge lines above.

We took our shot at fly fishing at the bank of the lake, with not much luck. Because even when we don’t catch anything, we still love to cast the fly into the water. Courtney had at least some luck with her choices of flies, getting the fish to hit, but not much luck getting them to bite anything. Maybe we’ll have to switch over to bait casting, because other fishermen we passed on the trail in had caught.   A ton of fish they sustained on for the entire weekend. It didn’t matter, we still had fun.

Each night ended the same way, with a mountain house meal, cooked with our JetBoil camp stove. We ate them sitting on rocks at the lakeside, as we watched the setting sun crest over the mountains to the West. The orange and red light beamed off the mountains above, reflecting off the water below. And with the setting sun, came the dropping of temperatures, plummeting from the warm 70s of the day, down to the cold, upper 30s throughout the night. I was not packed for those temps, foolishly I had only brought shorts and didn’t pack anything warmer than a mid-layer! Regretting that decision when I awoke with frozen toes, but at least Gregor seemed to get a great night’s sleep between us in that small 2-person tent.

The last morning, we woke to the view of a glassy lake surface, almost as reflective as a mirror. It almost made us forget how heavy the backpacks were when we put them back on for our hike out. But luckily, the hike uphill was short to the top of the pass, then it was all downhill back to the trailhead. On the way down, we reminisced about drinking the beers at camp that we had chilled by sitting in the stream that ran through camp. We talked about how the stars shined bright in the cloudless night’s sky. And how perfect of the Labor Day Weekend hiking to Grandaddy Lake was. And like every beautiful, destination in Utah we’ve been to, I can’t wait to go back.

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Best Mountain Biking: Mag7 -Gold Bar Rim – Portal | Moab, Utah

For years I’ve starred up at the canyon wall that surround the town of Moab, wondering what exactly is up there any how could I get there. Well, a few weekends ago, I found out exactly how, and it was followed by one of the best days on a mountain bike I’ve ever had. I’m talking about the classic trail link-up of Mag7 to Gold Bar to Portal. Each of these three trails is unique and incredibly challenging for drastically different reasons. And 5 1/2 hours later, my two friends and I were back at the truck, exhausted, and ready for a beer to cap off an incredible day on the bikes.

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Appreciating Fall and the Ski Town Shoulder Season

The other week, before the first October snow fell, I was out on a run at my local trail system that I can hit on my lunch break. The area is called Round Valley, and it sits right in the center of Park City and boasts panoramic views of the Wasatch mountains. And on this casual run, I began to grow more and more of an appreciate of this time a year. In ski towns, we call it the Shoulder Season, which is the time between our popular tourism seasons of Winter and Summer. And the longer I live here, …

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Mountain Biking Gooseberry Mesa | Bucket List Riding

The mountain biking at Gooseberry Mesa (Trailforks Link) is unlike anything else in the world. The landscape is completely unique, even among the already diverse Utah riding styles we have in the mountains and the deserts. But how could a mesa, with only 100 feet of elevation gain from trailhead to point, have nearly 700 feet of climbing on the average ride? Well the answer to that is short, steep, and out-of-the-saddle punchy climbs that highlight the entire trail system, that’s how. And though that might sound like most riders’ nightmare, I’m here to explain why the slickrock trails at …

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The Eden Epic | A Truly INSANE Mountain Bike Race

7 Hours in the saddle. 8,000 vertical feet of climbing. 3 miles of hike-a-bike. Oh, and of course a rain-storm that came in just as the racers were on the 9,500′ ridgeline dropping the temps to a finger-numbing 40 degrees. That’s just a part of the sufferfest that is known as the Eden Epic mountain bike race. Mixed in, during the 45 mile perpetual slog, was actually a stunning landscape that wrapped around high above the Eden valley. Check the course out on Trailforks.com. The race course was a mix of forest roads that were rocky, muddy, and steep, as …

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Is Bend, Oregon the Best Mountain Town?

I honestly cannot believe after going to Bend, Oregon every summer for the past three years, that I haven’t written more about it. The reason I say this, is because, quite literally, Bend is my wife and I’s favorite mountain town we’ve ever been to. Which makes more sense why we’ve made the 12 hour drive here every year, without ever being disappointed. Quite frankly, the mountain town vibe, the endless River activities, the incredible breweries scene, and of course the amazing mountain biking are just the tip of the iceberg of reasons why Bend is the best mountain town …

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Trail Running With Your Dog and Developing a Bond

My adventure dog Gregor and I head out most mornings from the house in the dark, cold, quiet, mountain air. Headlamps and light-up collars sending us off into the dark on the dirt roads, up and down along the contours of the mountainside we live on. My dog, living his best life, runs ahead by about 10 feet smelling all the scents along the way. As cars come, I call him back, waiting for the neighbor to pass by. Deer scramble from the open areas, into the wooded sections, upon the first sight of us. Sometimes my dog will try …

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First Time Rafting the Snake River in Jackson, Wyoming

Fourth of July in Jackson, Wyoming, finally getting to raft the Snake River for the first time, could it get much better than that? Well I’ll spoil the rest of the story for you, minus getting our campsite stolen by another couple, no, it doesn’t get much better than floating down a glacial fed river through the Teton Valley in the peak of summer. And with three days off work, we were able to get on two different sections of the river, each having incredible experiences tied to them. The plan was to float the mellow sections of river from …

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