Spring Break 2015 - March 21 - 26 - Canyonlands

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We all talked about how we must make it back to the area (soooooo much more to see), so I'm sure there will be more trips in the future.

Definitely, that was a recon trip. Two days after we got back Katie was talking about how she missed camping, being on the trip, and the people. I agree :cheers:
 
Jenny wasn't to happy after elephant hill, but she hasn't stopped talking about the trip since (in a good way)
 
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For anyone interested, this is the risiculous flashlight I had at dirty devil:

http://m.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=u...428.l1313.TR2.TRC1.Xultrafire+flashlight+502b

Or you can search for an UltraFire 502b and get different combinations- with/without charger, carrying case, different color lights.... It seems they all have the 5 mode switches now, has a flash, SOS, high, med, low. Mine was 3 way, high, med, low only- I like that better. Oh well.
 
Ok, finally got some time to go through 400+ pics - here are some of the better ones that aren't complete duplicates of what Travis and Leon have already posted.

We took off Friday morning - I was on the verge of losing vacation time anyway, so we got an early start and spent the afternoon hanging out at the Glenwood Springs hot springs. Then went on to camp at Rifle Falls state park. Leon was looking for us later that night, but he was at Rifle Gap state park a few miles away.
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After gathering everybody up at the Walmart in Rifle we were off. These are at the Hyte overlook.

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More in a bit...
 
We left Hite and headed into toward the park around 5
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It was a really late night
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I think we got into cap around 11:00 - but Doll House is one of the coolest camping spots I've ever been in!
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We spent a full day and 2nd night in and around Doll House
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A short hike out to Beehive Arch
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And out near Chimney Rock
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An attempt at night sky photography - about a 2 minute exposure. I need to figure out my remote shutter release. I think Katie got some good shots down near the river.
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The next morning...
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I don't have many pictures of the next day until we get to the river - I'm uploading a video of the river crossing and will edit it in here when it finishes.
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That's all for tonight - more tomorrow!
 
Great pics, thanks for posting Eric!
 
Ok, here's the video of Leon & Travis crossing the Dirty Devil
 
And some more pictures!
The next day we tried to take a "short cut" over a mountain range. Didn't work out that way...
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Leon busted drifts for awhile, then I got stuck. Really stuck - diffs locked, tires free-wheeling kind of stuck in heavy wet snow the consistency of concrete.
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We tried strapping to Leon's truck with no success. He was taking a running shot at it, really yanking his truck around. We didn't even feel it. So then the winch...
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Which did nothing but pull Leon backwards.
About that time we got a call from Luke, who was leading at that point. We had discussed earlier whether we were going to go on or turn back. Luck found the drift that made the decision for us. I never saw it, but it was apparently about 3' deep and very long.
 
Leon went ahead to help Luke, while I set up a double line pull on a tree. I stalled a 10K winch on a double line pull, with no progress. I tried moving the tree-saver up a bit, since the first was very low and pulling the truck down. All that did was threaten to break the 8" to 10" pine. By the way, we had dug out the whole front of the truck as well.
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By that time, the other guys were back and we pulled out Luke's 8K Warn and attached it to the other recovery point. That did it - two winches, 28,000 pounds of pull.

Did I mention that between the snow, there was alot of mud!?
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I think I spent about $30-$40 at the car wash getting stuff cleaned up when we got back. And there's still some I missed.
 
We went back down the mountain with our tail between our legs and took the long way around.
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We entered the park again the next day near Newspaper rock. I let Jackie drive from there for awhile, and gave her a hard time about drifting all over the lane. When we got to air up, I found that one of the tires had gone down to about 12 PSI over night, leading to the dodgy handling. When I came out the day we got home, that tire was completely flat. Took it to the shop - they didn't find anything and think something was stuck in the bead. Remounted and it's been fine since.

Some more pics from the last day on the trail in the Needles district. This was probably the most spectacular in terms of the rock formations.
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