Whew! We made it through the holidays, which leaves me hopelessly behind on the blog. So what will follow on the next several posts will probably be photo-heavy and light on the text. Here we go! Nate has made a tradition out of summiting mountains on his birthday. This past September he decided to let us all join him. He strategically picked a peak that our family could handle and that would add to our summer adventure miles. Bald Mountain, in the Uintahs, elevation 11,943 feet. Due to the elevation, we spent most of the hike winded and also got totally fried, despite our liberal sunscreen application. We were mostly troopers, though, and played lots of rainbow I-Spy and I Went to the Kings Feast to power ourselves through. The birthday boy himself. A tuna sandwich picnic at the top. A crazy-huge cairn. We lost count of the number of lakes we spotted.

My old friend Keaton invited me to hike to the top of Pilot Peak with his brother at the end of March. It's just over the Nevada line out by Wendover, and it's an "ultraprominent" peak, meaning that there is a difference of more than 4,900 feet (1500 meters) between the top and the surrounding plain. In this case, you start on the desert floor at about 5,000 feet and then climb over 5,700 feet to the peak, which is at 10,720 feet. A little more about the peak: It was used by travelers in the 19th century as a guide for "piloting" their wagons across the west desert. As the story goes, in 1845, explorer John Fremont sent Kit Carson across the desert to see if it could be done. He made it and lit a huge bonfire from somewhere on Pilot Peak. This was the first time Euro-Americans traversed the west desert. Our own traverse began early Saturday morning when we met up out by Saltair on I-80, and then we piloted our way across (in a Subaru, not a covered wagon...