We visited our spot up at the cabin over General Conference weekend. It was looking as great as ever!  Happy Fall.

Sometime last year, I discovered this hike, know as the Beatout.  It’s basically the last 1/4 of the super intense WURL hike.  It starts at the White Pine trailhead, just below Snowbird.  It hits the following peaks: Pheifferhon peak, UPWOP, Chipman, South Thunder, and North Thunder. Then it descends down Bells Canyon and out at Sandy.  I didn’t get to it last year, and put it on my summer hit list for this year as an end of year finale hike.  I’m happy to report that I’ve done it and it’s now in the bag.

Here is my route:

We had terrific weather all day long. And the fall colors were on display.

Red Pine lake

On the ridge prior to the Pheifferhorn.

View from the Pheifferhorn overlooking the route for the day, marked in red.

As soon as we started down the far side of Pheifferhorn, the trail was no more and it was a ridge scramble for the next 5 miles.

This is Chad, my hiking buddy for the day. On UPWOP (Unnamed Peak West Of Pheifferhorn).

Gotta get your mountain goat skills going for this.

This is the view from Chipman Peak, looking across to Box Elder, with the splendid Dry Creek canyon in full fall color.

Same view, but in the pano you can see Lone Peak on the right, and Pheifferhorn on the left.

This is the Thunder Ridge, leading up to South Thunder peak on the distance.

It as the gradual rocky incline on the one side of the ridge, and sheer cliffs on the other.

Looking at the huge bowl on the other side of Thunder Ridge.

The backside of Lone Peak looking from South Thunder peak.  I’ve been there!

Lots of interesting rocks to wonder at.

And fun obstacles to overcome.

And narrow pathways to traverse.

Here I am being a mountain goat again.

So close to North Thunder. We just just couldn’t quite make it all the way before we got to a spot that was just too risky feeling to attempt. I tried swinging down off the ridge and trying another route that looked promising, but ran into another dead end. It was a bummer to have to abort that peak, but by the end of the day, I was pretty glad we did. It was S-L-O-W going hiking along that ridge line.

And then began the eternal descent down and out Bells Canyon. This part of the hike is where the Beatout get’s its name from.  Luckily we had this happy rock cheering us on.

Interesting granite block dam at the Upper Bells Canyon Reservoir. The best part was on the other side of that dam, we were finally back on a trail again. After the ridge line, the trail felt like the freeway!

Still picking our way down the mountain.

Stats
Time: 13:13
Distance: 14.7 mi
Total Ascent: 5461 ft
Total Descent: 7877 ft
Difficulty: 9/10
Wow Factor: 10/10

Possibly one of the hardest hikes I’ve done to date. I didn’t anticipate just how slow the ridge would be. All that time slowly picking our way really drained the energy out of us mentally and made for the extra long day.

Our Eliza-boo is growing up fast, turning 9 this year.

We had a delicious German Pancake breakfast, followed by our stair picture.

Opening presents

Friend B-day party, watching Matilda the Musical in the new basement.

Silly string at Eliza!

Beautiful and delicious cake by Kathryn.

Happy birthday Eliza! We love you!

For our end of summer break last hurrah, we took a trip to Flaming Gorge reservoir.  All loaded up and on the road, Kacho is enjoying the wind.

On the water.

Tim and Suzanne joined us for the trip too.

We invested in some fishing gear for this trip. I was the tackle master.

Even Zoey got in on the action. These kids all practiced casting for hours at home with practice weights. They were so looking forward to fishing.

And continue to practice casting they did.

We tried all sorts of things until Eliza eventually caught a fish stick.

Day 2, we boated all the way from Lucerne marina to the dam. Landon and Suzanne drove the entire way while the rest of us relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

We hopped out on the rocky shore and explored the visitor center and the viewing area. It’s always impressive to see such a huge structure holding back such potential.

In the visitor center, they had rocks for sale. You can tell what this girls favorite color is! She found all the pink rocks in the place.

On the way back up river, it got a little blustery.

But then it decided to get nice again and we tried our luck fishing again. This time we came prepared with juicy worms. After trying for a while, we caught what I believe was the only fish in the reservoir!

Later on, Kathryn caught a surprise. She sunk her worm to the bottom and after a little while, felt a very gentle tugging on it. She slowly reeled in her line and discovered a crawdad snacking on her worm!

It finally calmed down enough and we got a few toys out.

Day 3. We went up river a little farther up in to the high desert part of the lake. After cruising for a while, we saw what looked like a sandy beach and we decided to investigate. We were quite surprised when it turned out to be a shale beach. We had a ton of fun skipping rocks and finding all kinds of interesting things.

We found another cove and dropped the lines in again. This time Ashley was the lucky one and pulled up another crawdad.

He went nuts for the Dorito!

Great times!