Backcountry Explorer

Embedded into the backcountry areas of Zion National Park, the Sierra Nevada, Death Valley National Park, and the Mojave Desert, Courtney Purcell's ramblings have also taken him all across the country and the world. From hiking, climbing and peakbagging in the Rockies, the Andes, the high volcanoes of Washington and Mexico, into the depths explored in spelunking, and the canyoneering of the Colorado Plateau, here you'll find trip reports, route beta and "stuff" relevant to the world of...

Langston Mountain in Remote Zion

Where: Zion National Park, Utah
When: Spring 2008
Partners: DB & Jared Seaquist

Deep, deep backcountry
In my apparently never-ending quest to summit everything I can get my hands on in Zion National Park, things have progressively taken a turn for the more and more obscure. Jared Seaquist was in town from Boston and he and I got in touch about doing something remote and funky. This turned out to be the perfect objective.

Langston Mountain is a mountain that probably hasn't seen an ascent in many years. With no clear line leading to the summit and its impressive grove of mature ponderosas, we followed a line that was amazingly scenic, frustratingly brushy at times, steep and loose in more than one place, and highly rewarding.

Potholes
Along the way to the top, we found remnants of an old stock trail built in the early 1900's, as well as an old retaining wall below a huge orange and red alcove deep in the backcountry. Photographs just can't do justice to an area this pretty.

Lunching in the ponderosa grove on top, I took a few minutes to walk a short distance to the north where the true highpoint of the mountain was. No cairn, register or other marker was found. The views off to Gregory Butte and Timber Top Mountain were sublime.

Jared
If someone would take a machete and about 100 man-hours to clear away the brush obscuring the old stock trail, this could be a classic Zion mountain hike.

Our roundtrip came in at around 10 hours, though old beta we'd stumbled across suggested "at least a full day" to do the mountain. Jared had to catch a red-eye back to Boston, so we shook hands, said our farewells, and promised to hook up again in the future.

A little scrub-down in Hop Valley
TOPO

*Photos courtesy of Jared Seaquist

...those moments when time stands still. The catalysts are as varied as the individuals who pursue this path: a meteor shower; a night sky so star-filled that it snatches your breath; another rise of the sun over distant mountains vast and untouchable; dodging a rock careening crazily down a gully; a desperate icy struggle through whiteout and ground blizzard down to the safety of camp after an unsuccessful summit attempt; standing atop a mountain with a friend, the whole world at your feet, a blinding sun blazing out of a flawless sky, taking the time to watch that sun dip below the horizon even though camp is still many miles and many thousands of feet distant; stumbling over boulders and through brush in the darkness; watching the starlight and the storm wrest for possession of the night sky, seated on a narrow ledge beside your rope-mate with only the clothes on your back for shelter, shivering the night away, knowing that, sometime in a distant place you cannot now touch, the world will once again grow bright, the sun will rise, and you will look out on the infant day with new eyes.

-Bruce Binder

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

-Edward Abbey