With so much snow on the ground and the weather being so cold this time of year, I've been doing a lot of "virtual" exploring of the San Rafael Swell, and making plans for a few hikes for when the weather warms up. I came across some pictures that show the route up the southeastern side of Sid's Mountain, and it looks easier than I expected. The parking area is fairly close (within one mile) to where the route tops out on the plateau, and the steepest part looks a little less rugged than I was expecting based on the Google Earth imagery. I had already been planning on hiking the route this year, but now I think I will try it the first chance I get, possibly as early as the end of next month.

I also recently stumbled across pictures of some people taking a western route up onto Sid's Mountain that was previously unknown to me. Mike and I hiked through Saddle Horse Canyon in October 2004, trying to find a route onto the plateau from the west, but we were unsuccessful--we ran into a lot of vertical cliffs with no possible way over them. From looking at these pictures and comparing them to Google Earth, I was able to determine where they reached the top of the plateau. It turns out that Mike and I were only one-third of a mile from there before we gave up and headed back down-canyon! I actually dug up my old GPS tracklog from that hike and imported it into Google Earth, and it looks as though if we had walked another tenth of a mile, we would have been able to see the route up onto the top. It's one of those things that I can only laugh about now, but if I had found this out at the end of that hike, I would have screamed.