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Purpose
When I'm looking for great hikes I sometimes search online for photos of different areas. This website exists to return the favor.
Technical
Hillhaus.com has been hosted on Dreamhost since 1998. It operates on a modified PHP/MySQL blog script developed by B2Evolution. I'm constantly developing the interface and design.
As of 1/1/2008: 616,475 large images have been viewed.
I've finally installed a shopping cart and setup an account with Google checkouts, but until I get everything running smoothly please use the "contact" button at the top of the page to email me regarding any photo requests.
Environmental, public and non-profit organizations have permission to use my images without charge as long as they notify me first.
Add yourself to my announcement list and get periodic updates when I add new photos.
Double Arch is huge. That's Jason standing below the first arch.
The sun goes down as Jason and I hike out of Canyonlands using jeep trails. A sudden and unexpected snowstorm prevented us from using our planned route through slickrock canyons. At this point we still had about 5 miles to go. Our 15 mile adventure was exhausting but he and I made a great team.
When we crawled in the tent around midnight there was no sign of snow but we woke up to several inches of it. This is when Jason remembered that halos around the moon (such as the one we had seen around midnight) reliably forecast precipitation. This much snow in the Moab Desert was shocking and somewhat disturbing. Slickrock provides amazing traction when dry, but it's incredibly slippery and dangerous when wet. We had hiked 7 miles in and out of canyons to get to our campsite in Chesler Park, mostly on slickrock trails. This meant we had two options: stay and wait for the snow to melt or find an alternate route back to the parking lot. We opted for the latter, hiking 15 miles in snow along jeep trails through the desert. It was the most exhausting hike of the year for me. The worst part was at the end, some 10 hours later when we found ourselves stuck on a slickrock cliff roughly 100 feet above the ground and within sight of the car. It was completely dark by then and the temperature had dropped to around 15 degrees. We were exhausted, hungry and freezing, but managed to keep good spirits and find a safe route down the cliff. Soon we were back in Moab drinking pints at the local brewery, reviewing our photos, and marveling at the security of banal comforts often taken for granted.
Jason and I spent Thanksgiving at this campsite in Chesler Park. After our holiday feast of turkey jerkey and instant mashed potatoes we took a nap and woke up around midnight to explore the area under the intense light of the moon. The Moab Desert gets extremely cold after the sun goes down. The previous night had a low around 5 degrees. This night was a little warmer, probably around 15 or 20. We had a candle hanging in the tent to provide some warmth. Surprisingly, there was a 22 degree halo around the moon. This is extremely rare in the desert since halos forecast precipitation. They're caused by light refracting through high altitude ice crystals, and are more common with sunlight than moonlight. Unfortunately, neither of us remembered that halos have been used for thousands of years to predict the weather. We climbed back in the tent with no clue that heavy snow was coming our way. Even if we had remembered that halos predict precipitation, we probably wouldn't have believed it. The Moab Desert only gets 5 to 8 inches of precipitation every year, the majority of which falls during summer monsoons.
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All images © Joshua Michael Hill.
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