Trip to the Tushars

The past four days I led the young men of the Eagle's Landing ward on a tough backpack trip around the Tushar mountains east of Beaver, Utah.  Eric is a priest and was my tent partner.  There were twelve of us all together.  Most of the boys had been on many of my backpack trips in the past, but a few had not yet experienced one of my trips.  We originally had planned on hiking the Dive of the Buckskin into the Paria all the way to Lees Ferry, but a strong monsoon thunderstorm pattern prompted us to change our plans due to the high risk of flash flood.  I had gathered some information and a crude map from my friend Michael Nad who had hiked and backpacked a multi day route around the mountain range.  He spoke highly of the area.

We spent three nights and hiked four days making a loop back to our starting point and our trucks. We probably covered around 30 miles total.  A third of the time we had to make our way through steep and rugged terrain without a trail and on more than one occasion we had to backtrack.  Each day we chose a peak to summit.  All of the peaks were at 12,000 ft or higher.  We also saw many elk & deer.  We always had our camp sites and canyon to ourselves.  I only made one boy cry.  Two of the leaders took painful falls with their packs on, but no serious injuries occurred.  Our dog Roxie came along and she wore the skin off of her pads and we had to wrap them up each day to keep her going.  Eric agreed it was a challenging trip.  Thunderstorms did catch us on 3 of the days, but the cool mountain air was refreshing and the campfire time was enjoyable.  I should have explored these mountains much sooner and I am sure I will go back again.