ADAM HAYDOCK

Located in the White mountains, Boundary Peak is Nevada's highest peak inching up to 13,146ft at the summit.   

Heading to the trailhead can be a challenge in itself, especially if you head up form the south side to the trailhead. The road continuously gets worse and becomes rather steep.  I recommend parking at the start of the final approach as there is nowhere to park if you get stuck and the road can be quite challenging if you get into a problem. 

I recommend heading up the north road to the saddle trailhead as the majority of the people hiking to the summit were coming up form the north. 

The hike to the summit is straightforward and no snow was encountered. 

There is a false summit that I found to be a bit steeper than the final approach to the proper summit. 

I highly recommend taking your time to enjoy the views along the way, they are incredible!

Making it to the summit, you are welcomed with excellent views from the top and the nearby sierras. 

The next peak ( Montgomery peak) is a couple hundred feet higher and is just across the border in California.   

these two summits are doable to reach and I think that you will find a lot of value grabbing both summits. 

Have you ever arrived at a destination to run some canyons in a Prius and wondered where you could access a  canyon that would only take a couple hours to complete?  No? Well your missing out on one of the most accessible canyon in south east Utah, fry canyon.

After whispering falls, we had to strike camp and make it as far up kanab creek and into Scottys hollow before nightfall. 

The Hike out Kanab Creek took a bit longer than I anticipated as we made a few stops here and there.

We also passed by Kanab 1 and 2 canyons which appeared to be interesting tributaries into Kanab Creek

The towering walls were pretty typical of the grand canyon canyons that I have encountered but it was so nice to hike through Kanab Creek without any other people but ourselves.

The elevation started to decrease a bit as we meandered around more bends in Kanab to eventually reach the confluence of Scottys hollow and kanab creek.

We made it to this point at a time in the day where the decision was made to stay at the confluence of scotttys and kanab so we could have places to sleep and flowing water to drink.

5 dice was played and the last of the whiskey disappeared as nightfall came upon us.

Some clouds formed as we noticed the stars fading and coming back into the night as time progressed on.

We got a 0430 AM start so we could get to the rim at a decent hour.

We ended up leaving the campsite at 6 AM and started our way up Scottys hollow.

The water had an interesting amberish tint and it also appeared to get warmer and warmer along the way.

Continuing our hike up, we encountered a few swimmers with climbing that included pack hoisting and climbing around awkward holds.

There were some interesting challenges climbing up and made the progress a bit slow going in sections.

The water got warmer and warmer and I realized that this is a warm spring flowing out of scottys hollow!

Once we climbed over the last water fall the canyon was bone dry and we made it to the north and south fork confluence.

Now we had more climbing over some interesting climbs that we had to negotiate until we got to the supai layer. At this point we had a few workarounds in the supai that brought us to the last pool of water.

This water had all kinds of life forms living in it but we were drinking our water supply away and brought some water up with us so we could have it if we needed it.

Once we got to the esplanade we had our final approach within site and it was a slog to get up the steep slope to the rim.  It kept getting steeper and steeper and as we headed up we had to work around a sketchy trail ( very sketchy) and pick our way up to the top of the rim.

What an incredible trip this was.  We had a shuttle car parked at the rim of scottys hollow. Going from Kanab point to kanab 0 down up and around to whispering falls, down the falls, up to scottys hollow in kanab, up scottys, and up to the rim of the grand canyon made this trip one epic grand canyoneering experience. 

The Bill Hall trail is a beautiful and a very "in-demand" trail within the Grand Canyon National park system. The trail starts off at the Kaibab formation and breaks down into the coconino formation with steep switch backs and incredible views of the the western sections of the Grand Canyon. 

The trail passes Bridgers Knoll and descends around 1500ft to the esplanade. from there you can pick up the Thunder River trail that will take you down into surprise valley and on into Thunder Spring.  

An alternative is to take the Thunder Spring trail onto the Deer Creek trail which will take you into the lower deer creek canyon tributaries.

 On our trip we headed down the middle fork of deer creek canyon which is a technical descent into the lower deer creek. 

This region is one of the most sought after permits so you will want to rsvp them early. There is very little water on the trail so if you go when it is dry bring extra water.

We headed out to Zion for a short weekend of escaping the heat in the southwest desert summer to find some cooler temperatures and a bit of canyoneering in Zion National Park.

I have been eyeing Das Boot canyon for years now and its finally come time to tackle this little gem just above the subway route.

The night before we stayed up at the Kolob Reservoir where temperatures got down into the 50s at night!

The following morning we headed back down to wildcat TH and started our hike down into Das Boot.

You must obtain a permit at the zion visitor center to enter Das Boot and you must have a separate permit if you want to continue down the subway or you have to hike back out from Russel gulch.

We set out early with clear skies and stashed a few extra liters of water along the way to Das Boot.  It was going to get rather hot outside so extra water is a must. 

The trail to Das boot broke off and we walked over a few extra spurs to get into the right canyon for Das Boot. We put on our wetsuits and immediately found ourselves swimming through canyon juice and debris from recent floods.

The water was a bit cold but manageable and welcomed in this kind of heat.   I wore a farmer john 3mm and heather wore a full 5mm and we found that this was ideal for our thresholds.

We continued on into the canyon and the narrow corridors gave way to some mossy like coloring and greenish blue grey hued color on the canyon walls. 

Some sections had a subterranean like feel with a open ceiling of soft light casting into the fluted passage which gave this canyon some nice sparkle.  

The narrow sections would end and open up to brief polished stone walkways but would enter back into long cool swimming drain ages.

The canyons continued to deliver some great scenery with a few climbs around log jams and floating logs.

We came across two raps in the canyon with were no longer than 20 ft.  I would consider them around 10ft and more like nuicense drops but i can see how new debris and water levels could flux the length, still I feel that these drop are no longer then 20ft.

After about an hour the canyon opened up a bit with a few final swims and our last rap off of a pine tree was about 30ft in length.  It looks a bit less but to be conservative, I give it about 30ft.

There is another option to rap off a keyed boulder but we chose to go for the rap off the pine tree. We worked our way over to Russell gulch which is where our exit was located and started to head up and out of the canyon.

The hike took a bit longer than we expected due to the heat and the excessive amounts of wet gear that we brought ( and did not need) weighed down our speed.

We finished the canyon in around 8 hours time.  I recommend wetsuits and recommend going out the subway, I do not think that the just doing das boot is worth the effort but if you must get das boot done, take some people that have not been through the subway and do both.