Snowshoeing Alpine Pond Trail on Cedar Breaks

What a gorgeous day for a snowshoe hike!  In an effort to meet people here in St. George we organized a snowshoe hike at Cedar Breaks National Monument on the Alpine Pond Trail. To get to this trail, drive on Highway 143 until approximately 3 miles south of Brian Head where the road turns at the junction with 148 (Cedar Breaks Scenic Drive) at the closed gate there will be a small parking area carved out of the snow.

Snowshoe south on closed stretch of Hwy 143 1 mile to the Cedar Breaks’ winter ranger station Yurt. This yurt is staffed by volunteers, on the weekends during the winter season between 11a.m.-3 p.m., who offer hot cocoa to winter visitors. You continue on the trail following orange cross-country poles south 1 mile, and return.

When we arrived both kids were excited and ready to go. Generally Sarah loves snowshoeing and I don’t have to motivate her. Today was a different story almost immediately after we started she was moving like a snail and driving me to drink. She would walk 4 steps and stop. Sometimes mommies just don’t clue into the issues until it is too late, needless to say I was frustrated with her. We currently live at approximately 2,860 ft elevation and have for 8 months now, long enough for us to lose our mountain lungs. Where we were hiking was 10,500 ft.  On our way to the yurt she said it hurt to breathe that is when it dawned on me that she was having issues with elevation not motivation.  We met up with the group that we organized and ate lunch and walked a little ways further with them before we turned around and headed back. It was a very slow pace our total distance was 3.01 miles in 3 hours and 37 min.  On the way back Spencer took off uphill at a fast pace as I caught up to him he looked a little green and said he felt like throwing up. As I stood there huffing and puffing myself as my lungs burned I told him to have a seat and relax a few minutes, lay your head down if you need to. 

We made it back to our car about 3PM and instead of waiting for the rest of the crew to come back I chose to take the kids off the mountain. They were both beat and Sarah was complaining of a headache. 

MLK DAY

Early Morning Ride

It was a holiday Monday and I had yet to do any real riding on my new baby Alexander. I set out at 9AM to ride for an hour and ended up riding him for two hours. I rode up HWY 18 to the north entrance of Snow Canyon and road back down through the canyon and on home, absolutely beautiful views on that road.

Better view of picture here

Johnson’s Canyon Hike

In our quest to do one hike a week we chose Johnson’s Canyon which is just before the south entrance to Snow Canyon and is a 2 mile loop that is only open from Nov 15^th – Mar 1st. The trail goes through the black lava which is sharp and tricky to walk over if you don’t have good shoes.  As you walk down the trail if you are paying attention on the eastside is a sandstone Johnson Canyon arch that spans 200 feet.





Sarah's Performance for MLK celebration

Sarah belongs to Sunset Express and the group was asked to perform at the St. George Tabernacle as part of the program for the second annual celebration of MLK day in St. George, UT




Ok I need work on achieving better videos but she is so cute so I have to post them!

Red Cliffs Reserve

Short little hike today. According to Spencer's GPS we hiked 1.8 total. We would like to go back and do this one in the spring when we can get wet.

One reason I love St. George, but it is the bane of my existence as the maid!

With the recent snow here rock climbing RED cliffs in the Gap was out on Tuesday, so I hiked with a friend instead. He has been showing me different rock wall art in the area that has been etched in the RED rock.

























This time I remembered my camera and took a few pictures. The art is faint but still pretty cool to see, plus the sunset was beautiful!

















Upon my arrival home I found a lovely note scribed on my gate in RED dirt.




















And RED dirt tracked all over my floor...

Apparently Sarah fell while playing with her sling shot


I do absolutely love the RED colors down here just not in my house and not on her only pair of tennis shoes.

Snow Dusted Zion

It is the start of a new year and because we live away from family I thought it would be fun to keep a blog of our Excursions & Escapades. We start the year off driving home from Ogden on January 2nd and wake up Monday to SNOW in St. George, UT. I yanked the kids out of bed and we headed to Zion.

We decided to hike Emerald Pools. The original plan was to hike the Lower Pools Trail but found the way was blocked due to recent flooding in Southern Utah. We crawled back into the car and headed up the road to the Grotto Trail.

The hike was very enjoyable and beautiful! The best was getting to the Upper Pools to see the large mound of ice formed from the water fall and hearing large sections of ice that were clinging to the side of the canyon fall. At the end of our hike Sarah spotted a mule deer. We worked up an appetite on our hike to the Emerald Pools and decided to have lunch in Springdale, UT at Blondie's.

After lunch we drove through the tunnel and hiked the Canyon Overlook Trail. We saw several big horn sheep near the end of the trail. Kids had a great time sliding back down this trail as it was a bit harder to walk on without falling on your hind end!

On our way out of Zion we saw two gorgeous bucks with some nice racks!

Not a bad way to start off a new year! Here is too many more hikes and adventures. Hope you enjoy following our Excursions & Escapades.