Visitor!

This week Nick's college roommate Greg came to visit. He was very excited to try the hiking, so we started off with The Living Room (followed by the Natural History Museum, since they share the same parking lot), which he did well on, so the next day I took him to Frary Peak on Antelope Island (Nick had a lot of work to do before our trip to Zion and Vegas).

The Peak is the highest point on the island, which is one of the islands in the Great Salt Lake. Due to it's protected nature and remoteness, it has herds of bison, bighorn sheep, deer, pronghorn sheep, and coyotes. We saw all of those except the sheep on the trip.

You know you are getting used to Utah when your guest sees this view and says "wow!" and you say "yeah, it's alright."



The peak is only 6596 ft, but the island is at a quite low elevation, so that isn't low for out there. After about three miles of ascending around foothills you reach the false summit. You then descend the right side of the peak before ascending up again. The peak is in the distance.



Near the top the ascent is very steep.



The views were amazing though - 360 views of the area.



On the way back the sunset made everything look different and wonderful.

Zion - Observation Point

On our way down to Vegas we stopped at Zion. Our friend may have just started to get into hiking, but he is still used to eating every meal of the day out and having constant internet access, so he wanted to stay at a motel instead of camping. The next morning we had a healthy breakfast at a local cafe that also made us sandwiches for hiking (I had an amazing veggie/fruit/nut wrap). Due to the need to airlift out the toilets at Angel's Landing, we couldn't do that iconic hike, so we did a longer, more strenuous, higher elevation one - Observation Point. I'm glad we did, as it had more varied terrain.

The trail started with a steep ascent, but with well maintained switchbacks.



And was directly across from Angel's Landing.



After that ascent you enter Echo Canyon, my favorite spot on the hike.



Then you start ascending again, with sharper and sharper switchbacks until you reach the mesa.



Lunch at the top (6508ft). Again, not very high by Utah standards, but southern Utah is a lower elevation than northern Utah, so the ascent was still over 2000 ft. gain.



On the return the light in Echo Canyon was even nicer than on the way up.