On April 11th, 2014 Rachelle and I set of on another excellent adventure. Friday was spent in great anticipation for the exciting weekend to come. The 6 hours that I was required to work seemed to dawdle along for forever! I was finally freed from the torture at 6 PM when I hurried home to help Rachelle finish the packing which always seems to take longer than previously would be expected. After finally stuffing the trunk of our Mazda almost to capasity we headed over to the provo transit station to pick up Rachelle's sisters Kiana and Tiffany along with Kiana's friend Abby. (As a side note for future expeditions it will be helpful to have some sort of roof rack to store gear, thus allowing for more passenger room).  From there we skipped over to our good friend's apartment for a quick bite to eat complements of Emily Johnson. We offered a prayer for safety in our travels and over the weekend. My brother Drew also met up with the entourage at that time. We ate a nicely cooked meal of chicken and rice with a bit of gravy. Needless to say, it was delicious. After the meal we we piled into to cars, our Mazda and Drew's Honda Civic and made one more stop to get my nephew Grant and to fill up with gas. It is a good thing that we did too because Drew decided he better check the oil in his car and discovered that there was hardly any oil left! He quickly purchased quart and made the remedy. At about 8 PM we finally set of to our destination to Goblin Valley Utah! The 2 1/2 hour drive down near Hanksville was interesting, but you will have to ask me in person why. Upon arrival at the what Drew and I have dubbed "The Outskirts of Goblin Valley" we traveled just west of the ranger station on Wild Horse Rd for about 2 miles then turned south on a dirt rd to the campsite. My Parents along with my brother Adam and his family and my sister Janene with her kids. We got the tent set up and then went into my parents trailer to enjoy some chips and guacamole that Rachelle had made. It was fun to talk with my Mom and Joe and Emily. We were also entertained by one of Joe's "Joe Show" performances after he had been sleeping in the car. He had been holding the eggs and as he was getting out of the car he moved the eggs so that they started to fall and broke a few of them. He began to shout "The babies!" as the eggs fell. Quite entertaining. Staturday was spent in the mostly in the valley but we did attempt to hike Ding and Dang which is a fun slot canyon hike in the San Rafael wash. Here are pictures of the adventures:

We didn't make it to the ding and dang trail head due to the fact that I had never done that hike and Rachelle hadn't done it in something like 10 years, we did wander up into the higher mountains and found some exciting things. 

This photo is a grand example of the food chain in the desert. Its a little hard to see, but a snake is eating a lizard in the brush. 

Our good friends Joe and Emily Johnson were so fun. We were glad to have them along!

Tiffany is so funny, after coming back home she told the events of our trip in an indian accent without once breaking character. She is awesome!

Playing in the Valley was pretty fun! We played sardines and later got out PVC pipe guns and marshmallows for a little marshmallow war!

Grant was fun to have with us. He is an amazing hider for sardines!

I tried to do a head stand on the rocks. 

This is the "Birth Canal". Its a fun cave that is found toward the back wall of Goblin Valley you exit the cave through a roof opening. 

Cleaning up on Sunday morning. All of the rest of the family left after the hike on Saturday and took the trailer with them but we had a tent for everyone to pile into. Good thing too because it rained and stormed through most of Saturday night.

Here is an update over the last few weeks: We did a few fun hikes I will go in chronologic order here. On March 22nd we had a lot of fun with Rachelle's Sisters and a couple of their friends as we hiked in Ogden, Ut up at waterfall canyon. We thought that we would be hiking in the dark as we came down because of our late start, but actually we were able to make the trip in good time! We started at about 6 PM and got down off the mountain at around 7:40 PM. this is a 3 mile hike round trip but its fairly steep. The waterfall was not running really strong as much of the high mountain snow has not yet melted, but was a good spray. We started at the 29th street trailhead and muscled up to the waterfall in about 40 minutes. We took one break at the first bridge when the trail starts to narrow. We  free climbed up the rock face 15 feet and took some pictures. Up at the top Kiana and her friend Abby climbed up the snow pile at the bottom of the waterfall and and got a bit wet. It was fun!

Here is the crew! Kiana and her friend Abby, Tiff and her friend Makayla and Rachelle and I

Rachelle and I at the top of the free climb:)

They got pretty wet!

This was a great pic.

The sunset was Awesome!

This is from up on the rock

Next was last week, March 29th. Rachelle had homework that she wanted to get done but this is what happened. My brothers and I were actually considering climbing the west face of Timpanogos. Its a rigorous 10 mile round trip with 55 degree pitch slopes and lots of snow. The route is called "Everest Ridge" named from climbers practicing on the slope for an Everest assent. We would have used crampons and ice-axes. We had been planning on making trip for a few months, but we received fresh snow on the mountain on the previous day. We were in limbo on weather to make the attempt with the added avalanche risk or not until the night before when we decided to postpone the attempt until conditions are better. However, my great friend C.J., my brother Drew, and I did make the 6 mile round trip up to Squaw peak as a minor substitute.  Although it wasn't the strenuous climb we had in mind for Timp, we did have fun climbing up the mud/snowy squaw peak trail!

I particularly like the expression on C.J.'s face!

Overlooking Provo and Utah lake form Squaw peak

We started this hike at about 6:30 AM and made it back down at around 11:30 AM which gave us plenty of time to Join C.J. and Emily for another adventure....

Festival of Color!

Neither Rachelle or I had been to the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple It was a good time. (Please remember to close you're mouth!)

We finally made it up to the Y after living in Provo for almost two years. I know, we are slow! It was a fun little hike though. We decided together that we wouldn't take a rest until we got up to the Y so that made it interesting. amazing how much energy it can take to go a mile! The day was beautiful.

Looking up at the Y from the trailhead

We hiked in our sandals for the first time this year! #Chacos&Keen's

This is us sitting up at the top. I offered Rachelle my sunglasses, but she said that I would squint too much. She is probably right...

Hooray for spring weather!

Looking down on the Y with Provo in the background.

We then took a single track trail from the Y up the mountain about a mile further before tuning around. I love getting on top of tall rocks:)

First Post!

So Rachelle and I have created a new goal to do a hike every week this summer so this will be our "log book" for our adventures! I guess I will start with our attempt on Ben Lomond. We tried to make it to the summit but didn't quite make it. Our attempt was on March 8th, 2014. We had along with us my brothers Adam, David, and Jason as well as Jason's boys Porter, Jakob, and Taylor. This hike was in preparation for our Timpanogos hike up the west face known as "Everest Ridge" we go a late start, but showed impeccable Peterson timing by showing up in the parking lot at the top of the North Ogden Divide at exactly the same time! Thanks to Jason and Diamond Peak Mountain Sports for the snow-shoe rentals! We started at 7 AM and made our way up the snowy trail. The snow in the morning was hard packed and a little icy which made for easy hiking with the snow-shoes. We also had one pair of crampons which Jake wore. After about 5 breaks for water and snacks we made it almost 3/4 of the way along the ridge-line before we had to turn bake so David could make it to work. We turned around at about noon. The snow was much softer coming down which made it a bit more interesting especially for Jake with the crampons. There was one area which we had to climb up that was about 5 or 6 hundred feet with a pretty steep slope. It was fun to slide down! One minor problem... we forgot sunscreen on a particularly bright day. Sun + Snow= very red faces!  Here are some pictures:

It kind of looks like I'm jumping, but I'm not haha!

Here is the crew!

I especially liked Adams expression here:)