February, 2005

Bill Priedhorsky again organized his annual winter day hiking trip to the Bluff, Utah area to explore more of the beautiful desert canyons, Indian ruins, peaks, and ridges.  Thirty eight intrepid Los Alamos Mountaineers joined him, including me.

Cosima was still recuperating from a broken tibia that she sustained in a Christmas skiing accident at Wolf Creek Ski Area in Colorado.

Since so many people wanted to hike, Bill appointed several leaders to take smaller parties to a larger number of areas.  Bill asked me to lead Fish Creek.  I was happy to do so, but had no idea what to expect.

The single most daring adventure was getting close enough with Steve Hayes' 4 WD Toyota to start the hike.  We barely made it through the mud and washed out roads.  Comb Wash was full of fast running water.  We did one stream crossing while in the truck, but decided to skip a second that looked even worse.  We waded across the creek and started hiking in the direction of Fish Creek Canyon.  Dave Scudder was already wet from wading across our first crossing while helping us find a safe route for the vehicle.

Although the lower part of the canyon was less spectacular than the upper part (which I had read about), it had one wonderful attribute.......beautiful, well preserved Indian cliff dwellings!  We spent the day searching them out.  We chose to hike out on the mesa top to get better views than the canyon itself afforded.  That turned out to be quit nice, and we happened on our best cliff dwelling in the process.  The hike and drive back gave us wonderful views of Comb Ridge, and a gorgeous rainbow.