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Southwest 2014
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Desert Southwest - The Checklist Edition
Introduction
Often, outdoor adventures don't go as desired: bad weather rolls in, someone gets sick, night falls before finishing, parks get closed. A mismatch of participant experience or skills may prevent achieving an objective. Or, vacation time is short. Even lack of interest and/or interpersonal conflict can derail plans.

Over the years, the list of missed outings inevitably grows. It grows until there's a big enough list to fill an entire trip. Such a trip could reasonably be called a "checklist" trip.

I'm calling this trip - 2014's trip to the desert southwest - a "checklist" trip. A trip to finally do several outings that we've in the past tried to do, or which we've contemplated doing but never got around to actually doing.

So, what were the objectives, burning impatiently in our minds? Here's a partial list:

  • Lady Mountain, Zion NP : we attempted this cool 2700-foot desert scramble last fall, but were forced to turn around 900 vertical feet below the summit due to a late start and approaching darkness (and then the park got shut down - thank you, congress).
  • Grand Canyon Rim-to-rim: A rim-to-rim traverse of the Grand Canyon is popular in the general imagination. Several of us had such a journey on a bucket list.
  • The Subway, Zion NP: We've been attempting to get access to this popular permit-only canyoneering route for several years now. This year, I applied well in advance and successfully secured one.
  • "Some Random Desert Peak": this one is more specific to Roland, but in general, the idea of climbing some arbitrary trailless peak in the low desert of the Mohave.

There were other objectives I had in mind, but the above list is a decent-enough start, and more than enough to fill the time we had alloted for this year's trip - a solid ten days' worth of time.
A Big Gang
This trip continued a recent trend: that of weaving together the desires and restrictions of a very broad range of trip attendee, from grizzled veteran (that's Roland - he's always grizzled on these trips) to eight-month-old newbies. We were also very large this year - fourteen in total; the largest number of trip participants we've ever had!

With a list of fourteen participants, I'll keep the introductions as brief as possible: we had two main sub-groups: The Hatko family and friends, comprising six in total: Chris, Gillian, Katie, Evie, and friends Sandra and Alana. The other sub-group consisted of myself, Jenn, Roland, Stephanie, Pu, Brian, Caroline, and Bob.

Unfortunately, Bob didn't even make it onto the plane. Prior to the trip, he suffered an injury to his hip that was bad enough that his doctor recommended against doing any sort of hiking. Down we were to thirteen - hopefully, lucky thirteen.
Travel Day
Thursday, September 18
Early morning at YOW
Super-early on a late September morning, we departed for the 3-hop North American zig-zag on United Airlines to Las Vegas. We were pleasantly surprised when all of our flights proceeded like clockwork, and after some very nice clear-weather western landscape overflying (including great views of the Colorado Rockies with fall colors, and a fly-over of the Grand Canyon), we arrived in Las Vegas in the middle of the afternoon.
So Safety Conscious
ERJ Cabin
Cool Valley Fog
Rocky Mountain Highs
Canyonlands
The Wide Escalante
Coyote Gulch confluence
Over the Big Ditch
After obtaining our rental vehicle - a nice, large 12-passenger van (from an outfit called "State Van Rentals") - more than enough to accommodate the seven people in our "sub-group", we headed off to our place of residence for the rest of the day. In a departure from our usual stay-at-the-motel-6 routine, we elected to get rooms at a strip hotel. A low Thursday-night rate offered by Bally's Las Vegas, directly along the heart of the Las Vegas strip, fit the bill perfectly.
courtesy RHanel
A Large Load
Our Big White Box
Lounging at Bally's
On these desert trips, we typically arrive in Las Vegas late at night and then depart early the next morning. This time, however, we had the rest of an afternoon and a full evening to simply hang out. A nice change of pace.
courtesy RHanel
courtesy RHanel
Prime Strip View
Upscale Bally's Room
The High Roller
After spending some time observing the impressive views from our quite-nicely finished hotel rooms, we decended to street level for a relaxed stroll and a dinner at The Flour and Barley - a pseudo-Italian restaurant in a new branched-off section of the strip known as "The LINQ". The LINQ is a wide, carless promenade of shops and restaurants, and is backed by a 550-foot high observation-type ferris wheel - apparently the highest in the world, as of 2014. It is cutely named the "High Roller".
courtesy RHanel
Enjoying the strip view
An evening on the strip
The LINQ
The Hatko Family (Chris, Gillian, Katie and Evie) had flown down the day before to Las Vegas, and were spending their time in a different hotel not far away. I had been in communication with the Hatkos, and apparently Chris was fairly ill with some sort of cold/flu. We were therefore quite surprised when we bumped into the Hatko family as we made our way to watch a showing of the Bellagio Hotel's famous water fountains. It was good to meet up and touch base. Chris, however, looked a bit zombie-like.
courtesy RHanel
courtesy JInnes
LINQ shops
Bellagio Fountains
The Night View
We returned to our respective hotels and rooms shortly thereafter, took in some of the spectacular night views of the strip, and then headed off to a reasonably early bed.
Vegas by night
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[ Return to "The Checklist Edition" Home page | Introduction | Day 1 : South Kaibab to Clear Creek Trail | Day 2 : Clear Creek Tr to Cottonwood Camp | Day 3 : Cottonwood Camp to North Rim | The North Rim | Drive to Zion | Lady Mountain Redux | The Subway | Angel's Landing | Zion in Flood | Valley of Fire | Wind-up and Return | The "Short Report" | GPS Data ]


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