Utah’s last winter was relentless with a constant barrage of storms. While the season’s grip on most of Utah was unyielding, we headed down to our favorite sunny section of the state, Moab. We don’t often visit Moab in February, but it’s not that hard to convince us to go anytime. We were joined by the families of a sister and later a brother. Here’s how our winter trip away from winter turned out.
Hell’s Revenge is rated a 6 out of 10 on difficulty without its optional obstacles yet it remains one of Moab’s most popular 4×4 trails.
Our first full day, we went on a Hell’s Revenge jeep adventure with Dan Mick’s Jeep Tours. Dan Mick is a legend in the jeeping community, and we were lucky enough to have the man himself as one of our drivers. His son Richard, a talented helmsman, was our other.
Whether you are on foot or on wheels, Moab is magnificent.Hell’s Gate, a horseshoe-shaped add-on most jeepers skip, heads steeply down a ravine and then back up it.
The Hell’s Revenge 4×4 Trail is 6.5 miles long and only recommended for experts, hence our hiring of drivers. My sister’s family hadn’t done any jeeping before, and they were surprised by the ruggedness of the “expert” terrain. Going up the Baby Lion’s Back, a thin sandstone fin and the first substantial obstacle encountered on the trail, our niece’s delight grew in proportion to her mom’s terror. That pattern remained constant our entire tour. We did Hell’s Gate, an optional side loop through a treacherous gully, and added extra obstacles including the Escalator and Mickey’s Hot Tub. The Escalator was the craziest of the three. It was also crazy to have a legend like Dan Mick driving us. And yes, Mickey’s Hot Tub was named after him because he was the first person nutty enough to drive in it.
Mickey’s Hot Tub is a deep pocket in the sandstone, one of the few in the area vehicles are allowed to crisscross.The Escalator is a sequence of natural steps climbing up a slickrock wall that are almost undercut. According to our guides, it is the most difficult obstacle along Hell’s Revenge.
The next day, we hiked in Arches National Park, a place my sister had never been despite all her years in Utah. Although temperatures were only in the high 40s, the sunshine made the outdoors quite pleasant with a jacket or two as we trekked 2.5 miles RT to Tower Arch. Tower Arch is always a favorite of ours due to its lack of popularity. We also checked out Double Arch along with the Windows and Turret Arch on the Windows Primitive Loop, which is 1.2 miles and definitely not less popular. We finished that hike in the dark, which freaked my brother out a bit. It’s a productive day when you make your brother a little nervous in pursuit of a completely harmless activity.
Tower Arch’s 92-foot span is willowy yet solid.The same arch from a different angle can appear completely changed.
Along with cherished trails, we introduced the group to the Love Muffin Café and some of our other favorite Moab eateries.
One can find the solitude at Tower Arch that many of the other arches in the park lack.
On the way home, we stopped at the Athena Launch Complex near Green River, a place we promised a niece and nephew we would take them. We didn’t ruin anyone’s exploration with information about the purpose or identity of any of the fragmented remains at the compound. Instead, we let the group discover and brainstorm the functions of the lingering pieces before finally revealing all we had learned at and after our last visit. See my post on that last visit if you are curious about this intriguing defunct site.
Double Arch attracts tourists and filmmakers alike.
Our short but unclouded outing to Moab let us temporarily ignore the ferocity of winter and introduce family to some of our beloved routes and restaurants. It was naturally delicious!
To rent a cabin near Solitude or Brighton Resorts in the peak of the downhill season, one must act in summer. That’s when we secured the Limber Pine Lodge for a little winter getaway with family in the later part of January last year. Reserving in summer requires faith that snow conditions will be adequate to justify all your efforts. Praying to the snow gods helps. On this occasion, our devotion was rewarded. The frost immortals blessed the slopes with more accumulation than hoped, and we gratefully accepted all they bestowed. You may recall that Utah’s last winter, 2023, was rather unbelievable. That’s the record-breaking snowbank from which this story emerges.
My dad didn’t stay at the cabin, but he did join us for a day on the slopes.
The Limber Pine Lodge is located near the Milly lift at Brighton. Although a perfect location, as mentioned, renting a cabin for a snowboarding trip in January in Utah is always a bit of a gamble, but we hit the jackpot this time! Brighton had already accumulated over 120 inches even though it was early in the season. There was so much snow covering the cabin that several of the windows had been boarded up for reinforcement. The roof was obscured under layers of white that resembled properly laminated pastry dough. Icicles wider and taller than me encased the structure like the deadly bars of a crystal prison. The front door opened to massive ice pillars and a pile of snow almost as tall as the door frame; it was not an entry or exit point any longer.
Is this much snowpack normal for Utah in January? No.
Eager for a flurry of interactions, snowboarding at Solitude was first on our outdoor agenda. It was delightful of course. Afterward, our niece joined us at the cabin a night earlier than the rest of the gang. Since I was just returning to activity following a break in my foot and dealing with a related knee injury, I decided to put on some shoes the next day rather than a board. While Jason went boarding with a friend at Brighton, our niece and I took to Solitude’s Nordic Center. We spent a couple hours completing 2.8 miles along the Cabin and Silver Lake Loops. I’m not sure how blizzards became the weather standard for us while snowshoeing, but that’s what we got again. With clearly marked trails, there was little opportunity to lose ourselves literally like we did at Soldier Hollow just weeks earlier (post pending), but we did lose ourselves figuratively in the churning flakes. Outside the pressed snowshoeing trails, our snowshoes sank over a foot into the mounting precipitation. In some spots, we could plunge our poles completely into the loose powder without impediment. Unreal!
Snowshoeing is the quiet and steady inverse of snowboarding’s fast and flashy character.
We only saw a few other groups during our entire journey adding to the sensation of being adrift in a shifting, alabaster realm. Snowshoeing is slow and deliberate; the pace may have been too measured for our niece. There was no complaining, but she seemed eager to go back to the cabin and the wild sledding track and elaborate fort she had created with Jason. More family arrived that night.
Falling into powder this deep is soft and easy, but getting out of it is another matter.
Jason and I got out of bed at 6:40 the next morning to start boarding preparations as soon as we saw Brighton’s report of 12 inches overnight. The snow at Brighton was even more amazing than expected! Giddiness abounded. Two nephews and a niece all rode with us and progressed to Rachel’s Run, my custom path that is a mix of blue square and black diamond. Another nephew went off on his own for a large share of the day and progressed to who knows what.
From Snake Creek Pass, Heber Valley, Mount Timpanogos, and Big Cottonwood Canyon are all displayed.
We tried to go to dinner at Honeycomb Grill at Solitude that evening; my brother had made our large group a reservation. However, there was an accident down the canyon, and we barely made it into Brighton’s parking lot after being stuck in a traffic jam for over an hour. We resorted to eating at the Alpine Rose at Brighton. It wasn’t remarkable, but at least it was hot. Somehow, after that tiring day, we got enough ambition to play some games, and the next morning we dug our cars out of their waxen cocoons to start home.
Powder up to the knees? Yes, please!Snow brings joy.
Our Limber Pine Lodge outing proceeded much better than anticipated thanks to an unprecedented amount of snow that fell at precisely the ideal time. Praise be! The snow gods answered the powder prayers of this slope enthusiast!
In January of this year, the Sundance Film Festival commenced in person for the first time since COVID burst on the scene in spring of 2020. We weren’t sure how lingering crowd avoidance and the online availability of some screenings would impact the festival’s attendance or how we would feel about going back to theaters after the convenience of watching screenings in our sweats at home. Here’s what transpired, what we saw, and our thoughts on it all.
Jason and I watched three films at the festival this year, significantly less than the two prior years, those in which we critiqued films from our couch. Per our usual, our curiosity got caught up in the documentaries, and that’s all we saw. Why fewer? Traveling and waiting in lines are part of the great festival time suck. The hours on roads and in queues add up and it’s not feasible to do a whole slew of screenings, unless you have no other assigned life tasks.
Did others find the festival unbearable without their pjs? There wasn’t much of a line at our first screening even though we arrived later than we typically prefer, just 35 minutes prior to start time. Our theater didn’t hold a huge number of people, about 140. It did fill up, and two other auditoriums were loaded for screening the same show at the same time. Since we didn’t enter the others, it is impossible to guess how packed they were. Our second screening was in the Grand Theatre, which holds 1,100. It was about 80% full. For our final movie, back in the same theater as our first, every seat was again occupied. Attendance seemed solid but probably not as high as in the past. What about the shows themselves?
The Longest Goodbye, which was part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition, is specifically about keeping astronauts sane in space and more broadly about the impact of isolation on mental wellbeing. For a space mission, the breaking point of each piece of equipment must be calculated and tested extensively. Unlike that equipment, the soft, squishy humans, vital components of mission success, can’t be quantified. How do you predict, control, and rectify the psychological impact of separation, stress, and lack of privacy on space explorers? With a three-year mission to Mars on the horizon, the question of how to keep fallible humans mentally sound, motivated, and productive is a difficult but critical one.
What were some of the most interesting nuggets panned from this flick? Space travel is evolving. In the 50s and 60s, it was about quick-thinking heroics in brief situations. Now, it is more like a marathon where astronauts must fight sensory monotony as much as high-stakes situations.
I appreciated the film’s portrayal of astronauts as human beings foremost and heroes secondary. Today’s astronauts, like their predecessors, are not superhumans but talented, regular people striving toward greatness. However, that doesn’t mean they easily acknowledge their human shortcomings. As this documentary conveyed, they often resist opening up about their psychological strains because they fear they will not be chosen again for space travel if their inward struggles are known. This drastically impedes NASA’s ability to monitor and understand the mental state of their crews.
Although their reporting system has flaws, NASA has put considerable effort into understanding isolation psychology. Their studies on the topic have helped more than people above; they’ve helped people below. NASA assisted authorities in keeping 33 Chilean miners and their families rational and functional when the miners were trapped underground for over two months in 2010.
Larger takeaways from this documentary? You don’t have to be in space to experience seclusion. In 2020, we all suffered ample amounts of alone time. It may take decades before we understand the full impact of that isolation.
The Q&A for The Longest Goodbye featured the two primary filmmakers, Ido Mizrahy and Nir Sa’ar. They spoke about how hard it was to get access to the active astronauts featured in the film. Apparently, NASA was much more comfortable with the idea of the documentary when they heard PBS was on board. Yes, PBS will be distributing this film, and you should be able to watch it in early 2024.
Our second show, Deep Rising, was in the Premieres category at Sundance. This documentary is fundamentally about who do the seas belong to? And what is the cost of companies extracting metal-rich nodules from the bottom of the ocean’s deep, two to three miles down, to power the battery cells of electric vehicles?
Rare minerals like nickel and cobalt are used in energy storage for the batteries found in everything from electric vehicles to cell phones. As the electric vehicle market has boomed, the quest for these uncommon metals has escalated. Although EV drivers regularly pat themselves on the back for their environmental awareness, the metals used in their batteries often come from mining operations catastrophic to ecosystems and fueled by coal. For instance, nickel-rich soil is being torn out beneath rainforests via a grimy coal-powered operation in Indonesia. The country has made a deal with Tesla to buy that dirty nickel for five billion dollars. “Green” energy isn’t as green as you’d think.
Pictures in Sundance’s dark theaters never turn out fantastic.
The latest jeopardized environment in the quest for battery components is one of the least understood ecosystems on the planet, the deep ocean. Nodules found on deep-sea floors are high in scarce minerals. Hence, companies are now competing for the technology to extract these potato-sized stones and the legal authority to do so. The International Seabed Authority, an organization created by the United Nations back in the 1990s, is supposed to oversee deep-seabed mining and the environment fallout from it. However, since international waters belong to no nation, this group appears to have many conflicts of interest.
What does that potential money behind nodule extraction and the disorder of the only organization with some authority over these operations mean for the oceans’ darkest waters? Unfortunately, we don’t know enough about these mysterious regions to ascertain that. We do know these nodules only grow millimeters in millions of years, so they cannot be readily replaced, and mining operations inevitably disrupt ocean floors. Those should be enough reasons for pause and consideration before commencing a deep-sea free-for-all, but vigilant heads often do not prevail when lucrative gains are at stake.
Along with gorgeous and fascinating footage of gelatinous life forms in the abyss, this documentary provided a substantial amount of information on a subject we knew little about. In fact, that was one of the filmmaker’s primary incentives to make the movie. He logically feels that because the oceans belong to all of us, we should be knowledgeable about the interests potentially threatening their wellbeing.
While informative, the film jumps around quite a bit making it hard to follow at times. Plus, it doesn’t give an indication of where we should go from here. What is the call to action? What are the alternatives to providing demand for these minerals and depleting our oceans?
The Q&A, which included director Matthieu Rytz and the Chilean scientist featured in the film, Dr. Sandor Mulsow, offered clearer solutions. Those solutions? Green hydrogen, produced from the electrolysis of water, along with batteries made from more common metals like iron phosphate. Iron phosphate is slightly heavier and less efficient, so it doesn’t stay charged for quite as many miles as other types of EV batteries. However, iron is much more common in the Earth’s crust and, therefore, much easier to source without devasting environmental impact. Tesla is trying to decrease its dependency on nickel and cobalt and now does offer a lithium iron phosphate battery. About half of the company’s vehicle production has switched to utilizing these batteries.
Jason Momoa is the narrator of the film and was at the festival but didn’t come to our screening, probably because it wasn’t in Park City and many actors don’t venture out of the Park-City scene when attending Sundance. Take note filmmakers, the Salt Lake City crowd is much more representative of real audiences than the Park City peeps. Getting outside the Hollywood bubble is worth it.
Judy Blume Forever, the last documentary we saw at Sundance, is about, you guessed it, Judy Blume. Judy Blume has written over 25 books, many for children and young adults. Such favorites as Tiger Eyes, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Blubber, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. These titles will sound familiar to those who grew up in the 70s and 80s. I read her books as a kid. However, I wasn’t aware of how many of her works got banned in those days for candidly covering the awkwardness of puberty and adolescence.
Judy Blume Forever incorporates interviews with Judy as well as some of her readers. Her motivation for writing those controversial books? She believed she should be honest as an author and include situations kids were going through but adults wouldn’t talk to them about. She hated adults “keeping secrets” when she was a kid.
Judy Blume, currently in her 80s, isn’t writing anymore but is still full of spunk and candor. She continues to fight against the “moral majority” that now seems more intent on banning books than ever. Through the decades, she has gone out of her way to respond to readers who wrote to her, establishing long-lasting relationships with some of them. These letters are now at the Yale University Archives.
We found Judy Blume Forever a vibrant documentary with good flow and interesting content. Amazon bought it, so expect it to show up in Prime. Our screening was followed by a Q&A with the directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok, along with one of the producers.
Attending Sundance in person for the first time in three years was mostly an upgraded experience. It meant we couldn’t see as many shows due to the required driving time and theater lines, but it also meant we could enjoy screenings with friends again. Two came with us to The Longest Goodbye. And although Q&As via Zoom back in the COVID gap were still enjoyable and enlightening, it was more rewarding to interact with directors and producers physically present. Like those Zoom years, each of our 2023 screenings had a Q&A. Yay!
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