Yep -- that was the section I was afraid you may not like! The wind definitely added an element of anxiety, but really the first part of the arch is quite wide/level. Many people go farther across, but that was beyond my comfort level. Thanks again for watching! 🌞
Good to hear! Yeah... I don't get the litterbugs, but in general I actually saw very little on this trek in most other locations. Thanks again for watching!
I would have been very concerned had I been on that arch! Thanks again for the excellent videography and travelogue through our beautiful deserts of the Southwest. You do us (the viewing public) a great service by posting your travels and sharing your adventures. Thanks for all of your sweat, toil, and efforts to bring us this video. Riveted until the end!
Thanks -- I appreciate the appreciation! 🌞 As I tell my mom re: walking on the arch, the first part really is quite wide and is not nearly as bad as it looks on video! BUT yeah, still not to be taken too casually especially if going all the across as I've seen people do. Thanks for watching! ✌
Glad to hear it. I definitely shot more on this outing so it seemed like a good way to share the content without make a crazy-long video. TBD how the format plays out, but for now... thanks for watching! 🌞
You made it further out on that arch than I would have.... Very beautiful areas you have shown. My Utah Bucket List will never stop growing! Thanks for another great video.
Great videoing and editing, 4:12 portion we are so fortunate to have cameras which are those 360 cameras when edited to the finished view, give these really exciting angles which are just unheard of if you just consider cameras 30 years ago. Going half way on the arch, that's a top ten highlight, thanks. 7:00 the cooler (explained in the comments above/below)
Thanks -- glad you are enjoying the series. Yes, I've been using different 360 cameras in my videos for nearly 10 years now and I really love them (especially the newer ones). They are not as high quality as a traditional camera, but I love the unique/flexible shots which help tell the story. I try to compliment that footage with my higher-rez cameras for the "beauty" shots. Thanks for watching and the comment! 🌞✌
What an amazing scenery out there. I am torn between saying these places are too far away for me to explore, and not far away to prevent unrespectful visitors to reach them and leave their trash. Sad view.
Yeah... I agree. The good news is that for much of the rest of my trek I saw very little trash. Also, others have said this area hasn't been that bad in the past, so maybe it's a recent phenomenon and can be turned around. Thanks again for watching! 🌞
I loved this video and the footage of the white domes and the water canyon arch! Spectacular!! I like to follow along where you are in the video and then find it on Google maps - The new format is great in my opinion ❤❤
Thanks -- glad you enjoyed the episode and liked the new format. I finished another big hike in June so more videos will be coming later this summer. 🌞✌
Hiked Squirrel >arch> water canyon loop last spring. Cooler was there then. Hayduke hikers have documented it as well. Surely from the off road trail that follows that formation. Wind was there that day too! Diggin the daily vids!
Thanks for the info -- didn't know the cooler had such a history, another commenter said it's used by locals as a water cache. BUT... it still shouldn't be there IMHO! The wind is definitely going to be a theme through this series -- seemed worse this year than ever before. Thanks for watching! ✌
I came up Squirrel Canyon to hit the old road you walked, but I was looping down Water, fun to see where it goes. Trash? Amazing, but it is obviously also related to wilderness violations - UTVs etc are not uncommon up there, as you saw in the tracks. The next vid will be fun too, I love Parunuweap.
Yeah, as another commenter pointed out this route and the Wilderness status is a point of contention with locals. I actually think much of it could be open to ATV use, but... going off route, burning up slickrock, leaving so much trash, etc. needs to be eliminated. Thanks for watching!
Jamal, with all the organising, walking, filming, post-processing and what have you, how on earth do you have time to watch Netflix, so that you now also start you videos with: “Previously on...” :-) Love your videos and the awesome scenery in Utah. We’ve been there a couple of times, just as tourists, and therefore not in the ‘deeper’ areas you go. Keep safe, Cheers from Austria (from a Dutch guy)
Haha -- thanks! Yeah... I was wondering how my "Previously" and "Next Ons" would be received, but I wanted to make each day make sense for any views who jumps into the middle randomly. TBD -- the whole daily format is somewhat an experiment for this series. Thanks for watching and the comment! ✌
Yep. 😱 But actually, as I assure my mom... the wide-angle "floating" camera really does make it look worse than it is in reality. The first part of the arch is quite wide and level, but continuing past where I turned around is left for those braver than me! Thanks for watching and the comment! 🌞
Yep -- that Fly Creek has seen it's better days for sure, but I still love it. I talk about its condition some a little later in this series. Thanks for watching! 🌞
Totally 'bitchin' places up there, and not inside Zion, making it even better. Whoa! Some view down. What have you got- some kind of drone on a stick? 😄 It sort of reminds me of a place above Bishop Ca, even that twisted round tree.
Yeah, this was my first time up there and I really enjoyed it. Not a drone, but a 360-degree camera on a long selfie stick. Software makes the stick "invisible" for the final video and lets me customize the point of view. Thanks for watching and the comment! ✌
Yep -- Canaan Mountain Wilderness south of Zion. I think most people do it as a day hike up Water Canyon or Squirrel Canyon. Not an official "trail", but it is a fairly established route. Thanks for watching! 🌞
Yeah hard no on that arch for me, but I enjoyed the video. My amygdala is way too big to try stuff like that, plus, I fall down all the time even on flat ground. Stay safe out there! Too bad about the trash, too big to extract without vehicle support. Did they bring it in with vehicles? Do you ever hike in trail runners?
Yeah -- it's definitely a place only for those who trust their feet and aren't afraid of heights. But... as I assure my mom, it actually looks MUCH worse on video than it does in reality. The route follows an old road which some people still illegally use (see other comments -- it's a point of contention for locals.) I believe that is what contributes to the added trash in the area (esp the bulky items.) I've run into a few trail runners in the past -- but only in more popular area like Zion or Canyonlands. Thanks again for watching! 🌞
Adam E. here.. That blue cooler has been there for at least 3 years i can't believe it's still there. Last time i was there it was full of gross water and some trash, so at least it's empty now. It may have been left by an illegal off roader. I reported some guys stuck in a waterhole to the BLM law enforcement at one time and he told me there is largely 1 guy responsible for continuously busting down the fence and trying to make illegal new roads in the area. He's been fined several times but it's apparently his life's mission to destroy the Canaan Wilderness.
That is so crazy -- I didn't know the cooler had such a history (others have commented too.) BUT... it still shouldn't be there IMHO! It's such a contentious area re: the Wilderness status and I kinda see both sides -- BUT, destroying/trashing the area is the exact opposite way to win the support of the community. It's such a beautiful area, but I saw more trash here than I did anywhere else along my trek to Green River!
@@Acrossutah It's gone from generally unknown to a recommended tourist dayhike in just a few years.There's been a ton of degradation on the Water Canyon trail. I would have taken that cooler down myself but the two times i've passed it I was not heading down Squirrel Canyon.
The cooler is a "cache" for water bottles that the locals bring up every so often. Also, the tire tracks and gate crashers are also most likely locals. They used to use that road daily for decades to access the sawmill. Then one day during the Obama administration, the whole area was swept up into a wilderness designation very quietly, and most folks never even knew it was going to happen. If memory serves, that area (and many other random tracts of land speckled all over like 10 states) got put into a wilderness bill by a West Virginia congressman who had never even set foot in Utah. So an existing road that was in use and there before 1972 got shut down with not much local input, and those folks lost the ability to ride in their backyard because someone who lives 1900 miles away says it should be wilderness. The authorities have tried numerous ways to block the roads, but they get torn down all the time. I don't condone riding or driving over barricades, but in this case, I feel the govt overstepped it's bounds and shut down an existing and legal road without local input or vote. I side with the locals on this issue, though I don't agree with their destructive indifference.
Thanks for the detailed added info. I somewhat agree with you in general and that's why I added that note in the video that I actually support multi-use land designation (in some places.) I however don't think that locals get to do anything they want -- especial on Federal land. It's even more odd here because the federal land is in Utah, but many of the locals would be in Arizona. It was sad how much trash I saw on this stretch and another commenter talked about seeing tire burn marks on the White Domes last summer. That and leaving coolers out there permanently is not acceptable. Also... just to clarify, the locals didn't lose the ability to ride in their backyard... just in one relatively tiny portion of it which is more sensitive/fragile than the surrounding area. I agree there should have been more input involved and honestly I'm torn on my personal opinion on the matter here. Besides the White Domes and parts of the Windlass area -- this could be a very ATV-friendly area and a few bad seeds shouldn't ruin it for that whole community (in the name of conservation). In dunno. All the same... thanks for watching and the comment. ✌
@@Acrossutah I don't know if you're aware of this, but the locals in this case are a bit different.... The majority of them up until 2018 are/were Mormon fundamentalist polygamists. Their leaders moved them there to escape society's prying eyes, and to form a town that sits half and half on the Utah/Arizona border so when law enforcement came, they could hop the line and escape jurisdiction power. In other words, they don't have much care for govt or govt land titles. These people have no television, no bowling alleys, no theaters, no entertainment at all aside from hiking and driving on the mountain that sits literally in their backyard. So that's what they do. I'm not condoning what they do in any way, just passing along the info. What happened down there was nothing short of a secret land title escalation with little to no public input, and that kind of thing infuriates me. This would be like the govt coming in one day and making the whole area from Cascade Springs to Tibble Fork a wilderness area without notifying or letting anyone in Heber have a say. It wouldn't go over very well, and it shouldn't. These local land grabs by distant congressmen who are just looking for an "environmentalist merit badge" they can stick on their resume/legacy actually affect real people and real lives of those that use the land the most. Right across the way, there is/was already a National Park with lots of wilderness which is off limits to many kinds of activities. We simply didn't need to add more on the other side of the river, especially since there was a legal county road on that mountain already. Just my opinion.
Yep -- I know about the unique culture there (well... the history at least, it seems to be changing in recent years I think.) It's definitely a complicated situation and I really do have mixed feelings about it. Part of me thinks we do need to save the wilderness from ourselves at times, but... I'm also not sure that I trust the people assigned to do that. And then there's also the debate re: the true original "locals" and their say in all of this. BUT... that's all a deep rabbit hole that I'm really not qualified to speak on and thus rarely feature the politics too prominently on the channel (despite some requests.) Thanks for sharing more context. 👍
Yeah... it was really bad at times, but luckily not while I was on the arch (but... as I've stated elsewhere the first part of the arch is quite wide and is NOT as bad as it looks on camera.) Actually I had a BUNCH of bad wind on this trek, so it's going to be a trend throughout the series unfortunately. Thanks for watching!
Thanks! Yes, I've considered that as I definitely do have more footage from some of my earlier trips that never got published. I even had some old "tape" footage digitized in hopes of making some new videos. But alas... it all takes longer than I anticipate so TBD if I'll find the time (ie for now I'd rather be out hiking making new memories/videos!) Cheers! ✌
Yeah -- that spot is definitely not for anyone with a fear of heights! BUT... the truth is that my wide-angle "floating" camera makes it look worse than it is in reality. The first part of the arch is is quite wide and level, but to continue past where I turned around requires a bit more nerves and sure feet! Thanks for watching and the comment! 🌞
Yes... virtually! 😉 I'm not sure if that was really serious, but... I do welcome people to write me via my website to talk about travel plans. My logistics are usually complicated, but if I'm ever in the same area as someone else I love meeting up. Cheers! ✌
Oh boy! That wind on the arch gave the video a little “earthquake” action. Thank you for not walking all the way across. 😊
Yep -- that was the section I was afraid you may not like! The wind definitely added an element of anxiety, but really the first part of the arch is quite wide/level. Many people go farther across, but that was beyond my comfort level. Thanks again for watching! 🌞
@@Acrossutah Aww…I like all of it. Even your snake friends.
I love daily format. Every night a little piece of heaven to watch. Thank you , young man. Keep going. See you tomorrow.
Glad to hear it. Hope you still feel that way in 20 days. Or 30. Or more! 🌞✌
Still loving the new daily format, and I growl right along with you at all the trash people leave behind!
Good to hear! Yeah... I don't get the litterbugs, but in general I actually saw very little on this trek in most other locations. Thanks again for watching!
I look forward to this every day. Thanks, Jamal!
Awesome -- Thanks for watching! 🌞
Wow! Enjoying the daily format. Thanks for letting us share in your adventures. Joyce
Glad to hear it -- thanks for watching and the comment. 🌞✌
What an incredible place to experience. Thanks for taking us along!
Thanks for watching! 🌞✌
I would have been very concerned had I been on that arch! Thanks again for the excellent videography and travelogue through our beautiful deserts of the Southwest. You do us (the viewing public) a great service by posting your travels and sharing your adventures. Thanks for all of your sweat, toil, and efforts to bring us this video. Riveted until the end!
Thanks -- I appreciate the appreciation! 🌞 As I tell my mom re: walking on the arch, the first part really is quite wide and is not nearly as bad as it looks on video! BUT yeah, still not to be taken too casually especially if going all the across as I've seen people do. Thanks for watching! ✌
Another great video.... looking forward to the next one 😃
Awesome -- thanks for watching! 🌞
I am loving how we get to see even more of the terrain and amazing features you encounter with this new format!
Glad to hear it. I definitely shot more on this outing so it seemed like a good way to share the content without make a crazy-long video. TBD how the format plays out, but for now... thanks for watching! 🌞
Superb cinematography!!!!
Thanks! I appreciate you for watching and the comment! 🌞👍
You made it further out on that arch than I would have.... Very beautiful areas you have shown. My Utah Bucket List will never stop growing! Thanks for another great video.
Thanks again for watching! 🌞
Warming to the new format.
Great! (But... it's OK if you don't -- I'm still on the fence about it myself!) In any case... thanks for watching! 😀
Great videoing and editing, 4:12 portion we are so fortunate to have cameras which are those 360 cameras when edited to the finished view, give these really exciting angles which are just unheard of if you just consider cameras 30 years ago.
Going half way on the arch, that's a top ten highlight, thanks.
7:00 the cooler (explained in the comments above/below)
Thanks -- glad you are enjoying the series. Yes, I've been using different 360 cameras in my videos for nearly 10 years now and I really love them (especially the newer ones). They are not as high quality as a traditional camera, but I love the unique/flexible shots which help tell the story. I try to compliment that footage with my higher-rez cameras for the "beauty" shots. Thanks for watching and the comment! 🌞✌
What an amazing scenery out there. I am torn between saying these places are too far away for me to explore, and not far away to prevent unrespectful visitors to reach them and leave their trash. Sad view.
Yeah... I agree. The good news is that for much of the rest of my trek I saw very little trash. Also, others have said this area hasn't been that bad in the past, so maybe it's a recent phenomenon and can be turned around. Thanks again for watching! 🌞
I loved this video and the footage of the white domes and the water canyon arch! Spectacular!! I like to follow along where you are in the video and then find it on Google maps - The new format is great in my opinion ❤❤
Thanks -- glad you enjoyed the episode and liked the new format. I finished another big hike in June so more videos will be coming later this summer. 🌞✌
Also, last time i was at the arch it was similarly windy, too dangerous to walk out on the span. The wind up there is no joke.
Yep -- others had sad that as well, Mother Nature doing her work I guess! 🌞
Thanks. Appreciated.
Thanks again for watching! 🌞
Hiked Squirrel >arch> water canyon loop last spring. Cooler was there then. Hayduke hikers have documented it as well. Surely from the off road trail that follows that formation. Wind was there that day too!
Diggin the daily vids!
Thanks for the info -- didn't know the cooler had such a history, another commenter said it's used by locals as a water cache. BUT... it still shouldn't be there IMHO! The wind is definitely going to be a theme through this series -- seemed worse this year than ever before. Thanks for watching! ✌
I came up Squirrel Canyon to hit the old road you walked, but I was looping down Water, fun to see where it goes. Trash? Amazing, but it is obviously also related to wilderness violations - UTVs etc are not uncommon up there, as you saw in the tracks. The next vid will be fun too, I love Parunuweap.
Yeah, as another commenter pointed out this route and the Wilderness status is a point of contention with locals. I actually think much of it could be open to ATV use, but... going off route, burning up slickrock, leaving so much trash, etc. needs to be eliminated. Thanks for watching!
Jamal, with all the organising, walking, filming, post-processing and what have you, how on earth do you have time to watch Netflix, so that you now also start you videos with: “Previously on...” :-)
Love your videos and the awesome scenery in Utah. We’ve been there a couple of times, just as tourists, and therefore not in the ‘deeper’ areas you go.
Keep safe,
Cheers from Austria (from a Dutch guy)
Haha -- thanks! Yeah... I was wondering how my "Previously" and "Next Ons" would be received, but I wanted to make each day make sense for any views who jumps into the middle randomly. TBD -- the whole daily format is somewhat an experiment for this series. Thanks for watching and the comment! ✌
I thought that when you were on the arch there may not be a day four🤓
Yep. 😱 But actually, as I assure my mom... the wide-angle "floating" camera really does make it look worse than it is in reality. The first part of the arch is quite wide and level, but continuing past where I turned around is left for those braver than me! Thanks for watching and the comment! 🌞
You're still rocking that fly creek. Wish I could figure out how to do what you do.
Yep -- that Fly Creek has seen it's better days for sure, but I still love it. I talk about its condition some a little later in this series. Thanks for watching! 🌞
Totally 'bitchin' places up there, and not inside Zion, making it even better. Whoa! Some view down. What have you got- some kind of drone on a stick? 😄 It sort of reminds me of a place above Bishop Ca, even that twisted round tree.
Yeah, this was my first time up there and I really enjoyed it. Not a drone, but a 360-degree camera on a long selfie stick. Software makes the stick "invisible" for the final video and lets me customize the point of view. Thanks for watching and the comment! ✌
Great hike so far, Jamal. This is great to watch, and I expect you had a lot more fun doing it.
I definitely had a great time on the hike... and a few not-so-great moments at times! 😉 Thanks for watching!
I've been looking for that arch forever, thanks for sharing this info Jamal! That's the one south of Zion right?
Yep -- Canaan Mountain Wilderness south of Zion. I think most people do it as a day hike up Water Canyon or Squirrel Canyon. Not an official "trail", but it is a fairly established route. Thanks for watching! 🌞
@@Acrossutah 😃
Yeah hard no on that arch for me, but I enjoyed the video. My amygdala is way too big to try stuff like that, plus, I fall down all the time even on flat ground. Stay safe out there! Too bad about the trash, too big to extract without vehicle support. Did they bring it in with vehicles? Do you ever hike in trail runners?
Yeah -- it's definitely a place only for those who trust their feet and aren't afraid of heights. But... as I assure my mom, it actually looks MUCH worse on video than it does in reality. The route follows an old road which some people still illegally use (see other comments -- it's a point of contention for locals.) I believe that is what contributes to the added trash in the area (esp the bulky items.) I've run into a few trail runners in the past -- but only in more popular area like Zion or Canyonlands. Thanks again for watching! 🌞
Adam E. here.. That blue cooler has been there for at least 3 years i can't believe it's still there. Last time i was there it was full of gross water and some trash, so at least it's empty now. It may have been left by an illegal off roader. I reported some guys stuck in a waterhole to the BLM law enforcement at one time and he told me there is largely 1 guy responsible for continuously busting down the fence and trying to make illegal new roads in the area. He's been fined several times but it's apparently his life's mission to destroy the Canaan Wilderness.
That is so crazy -- I didn't know the cooler had such a history (others have commented too.) BUT... it still shouldn't be there IMHO! It's such a contentious area re: the Wilderness status and I kinda see both sides -- BUT, destroying/trashing the area is the exact opposite way to win the support of the community. It's such a beautiful area, but I saw more trash here than I did anywhere else along my trek to Green River!
@@Acrossutah It's gone from generally unknown to a recommended tourist dayhike in just a few years.There's been a ton of degradation on the Water Canyon trail. I would have taken that cooler down myself but the two times i've passed it I was not heading down Squirrel Canyon.
The cooler is a "cache" for water bottles that the locals bring up every so often. Also, the tire tracks and gate crashers are also most likely locals. They used to use that road daily for decades to access the sawmill. Then one day during the Obama administration, the whole area was swept up into a wilderness designation very quietly, and most folks never even knew it was going to happen. If memory serves, that area (and many other random tracts of land speckled all over like 10 states) got put into a wilderness bill by a West Virginia congressman who had never even set foot in Utah. So an existing road that was in use and there before 1972 got shut down with not much local input, and those folks lost the ability to ride in their backyard because someone who lives 1900 miles away says it should be wilderness. The authorities have tried numerous ways to block the roads, but they get torn down all the time. I don't condone riding or driving over barricades, but in this case, I feel the govt overstepped it's bounds and shut down an existing and legal road without local input or vote. I side with the locals on this issue, though I don't agree with their destructive indifference.
Thanks for the detailed added info. I somewhat agree with you in general and that's why I added that note in the video that I actually support multi-use land designation (in some places.) I however don't think that locals get to do anything they want -- especial on Federal land. It's even more odd here because the federal land is in Utah, but many of the locals would be in Arizona. It was sad how much trash I saw on this stretch and another commenter talked about seeing tire burn marks on the White Domes last summer. That and leaving coolers out there permanently is not acceptable. Also... just to clarify, the locals didn't lose the ability to ride in their backyard... just in one relatively tiny portion of it which is more sensitive/fragile than the surrounding area. I agree there should have been more input involved and honestly I'm torn on my personal opinion on the matter here. Besides the White Domes and parts of the Windlass area -- this could be a very ATV-friendly area and a few bad seeds shouldn't ruin it for that whole community (in the name of conservation). In dunno. All the same... thanks for watching and the comment. ✌
@@Acrossutah I don't know if you're aware of this, but the locals in this case are a bit different....
The majority of them up until 2018 are/were Mormon fundamentalist polygamists. Their leaders moved them there to escape society's prying eyes, and to form a town that sits half and half on the Utah/Arizona border so when law enforcement came, they could hop the line and escape jurisdiction power. In other words, they don't have much care for govt or govt land titles. These people have no television, no bowling alleys, no theaters, no entertainment at all aside from hiking and driving on the mountain that sits literally in their backyard. So that's what they do.
I'm not condoning what they do in any way, just passing along the info.
What happened down there was nothing short of a secret land title escalation with little to no public input, and that kind of thing infuriates me. This would be like the govt coming in one day and making the whole area from Cascade Springs to Tibble Fork a wilderness area without notifying or letting anyone in Heber have a say. It wouldn't go over very well, and it shouldn't. These local land grabs by distant congressmen who are just looking for an "environmentalist merit badge" they can stick on their resume/legacy actually affect real people and real lives of those that use the land the most.
Right across the way, there is/was already a National Park with lots of wilderness which is off limits to many kinds of activities. We simply didn't need to add more on the other side of the river, especially since there was a legal county road on that mountain already. Just my opinion.
Yep -- I know about the unique culture there (well... the history at least, it seems to be changing in recent years I think.) It's definitely a complicated situation and I really do have mixed feelings about it. Part of me thinks we do need to save the wilderness from ourselves at times, but... I'm also not sure that I trust the people assigned to do that. And then there's also the debate re: the true original "locals" and their say in all of this. BUT... that's all a deep rabbit hole that I'm really not qualified to speak on and thus rarely feature the politics too prominently on the channel (despite some requests.) Thanks for sharing more context. 👍
"the wind isn't too bad" --- looks pretty bad actually!!
Yeah... it was really bad at times, but luckily not while I was on the arch (but... as I've stated elsewhere the first part of the arch is quite wide and is NOT as bad as it looks on camera.) Actually I had a BUNCH of bad wind on this trek, so it's going to be a trend throughout the series unfortunately. Thanks for watching!
Go back and revisit some older trips under this new format. I love what you’re doing!! Thank you
Thanks! Yes, I've considered that as I definitely do have more footage from some of my earlier trips that never got published. I even had some old "tape" footage digitized in hopes of making some new videos. But alas... it all takes longer than I anticipate so TBD if I'll find the time (ie for now I'd rather be out hiking making new memories/videos!) Cheers! ✌
I have vertigo already. minute 5:05
Yeah -- that spot is definitely not for anyone with a fear of heights! BUT... the truth is that my wide-angle "floating" camera makes it look worse than it is in reality. The first part of the arch is is quite wide and level, but to continue past where I turned around requires a bit more nerves and sure feet! Thanks for watching and the comment! 🌞
Can I join you?
Yes... virtually! 😉 I'm not sure if that was really serious, but... I do welcome people to write me via my website to talk about travel plans. My logistics are usually complicated, but if I'm ever in the same area as someone else I love meeting up. Cheers! ✌
Fines for illegal motorized use, yes, but cops just aren't out there to enforce the laws.
Yep -- it's a tough situation to get a handle on in a remote spot. Thanks for watching! ✌