Camping! (Lots of Pictures!)

So, camping was fantastic. I love Spring Break. It is a brilliant thing, indeed. In high school, yeah, we got a week off, but all of our teachers would give us SHITTONS of work to do over the break. I swear for the most part, I had more homework/day than when I was actually attending school. This would have been okay were it not for the fact that my family was actually out, you know, doing stuff.

I love having a week off with zero work and zero worries. Time where I can just go out with my friends and… camp.

So, without further ado, the pictures! We arrived in Goblin Valley around six, and were able to set up the camp without any issues. We picked a really gorgeous camping spot and ate wonderful camping food. The sunset was fantastic. I was having issues getting my camera to pick up the color orange, which was highly unfortunate, but I finally got it to cooperate. I was really glad, too, because the sunset really was fantastic.

One of the interesting things about the desert that a lot of people don’t realize, or forget, is that no matter how hot the desert is in the day, it will be cold at night. I have seen it get near freezing in the middle of summer. All of the desert creatures come out at night; it’s when the desert comes alive. It’s also why I brought long underwear.

Keeping this in mind, you will understand how disastrous it was that Bryan forgot his sleeping bag. He borrowed my bivvy bag, so that he would be able to sleep, but it was still quite awful. Bryan was not insulated whatsoever, and I (being a cold person in general) was not nearly warm enough without my bivvy bag. Bryan got about one hour of sleep, I got about four, and Mark got around six because he had a splitting headache most of the night. In short, it was pretty horrible.

We woke up the next morning, and while breakfast was being prepared, I wandered around camp a bit and shot some photos. This is roughly the same view as the sunset image, though in the daylight (obviously). I wish my other campsite photos had turned out, by my camera and I were having a bit of a dispute at the time, and this is the only decent one I managed to get.

Redrock country is named aptly. The rocks are all shades of red-orange, from light pink to flaming orange. Everything that enters redrock country comes back also in varying shades of red. My hiking boots, for example, used to be brown and green. Now they are red and redder.

The three of us decided that another night camping would be hazardous to all of our health. We chose to drive to Torrey (about an hour away), where my parents have a small house, and stay there. Warm, cozy beds would be appreciated. I was a bit sad to not officially camp the entire time that we were in Southern Utah, but given the circumstances, there was not much choice.

All of us were a bit too pooped to do the Little Wild Horse hike (one of the best hikes of Goblin Valley, and probably my second favorite slot canyon so far), so we decided to do a small hike in Capitol Reef (near my parents’ cabin) and save Little Wild Horse for the next day. Bryan suggested "The Waterfall Hike," an unnamed hike that my family absolutely loves, but that he has never hiked himself. I thought this was a great idea, and directed our trio toward the waterfall!

There are two things that bring water to rivers and streams in Utah. The first, of course, is precipitation. That is the main source of water during the summer months, and for the waterfall hike to be exciting, it should have rained fairly recently. The second thing that brings water is the spring run-off. When the weather starts warming up, all of the snow up in the mountains starts melting, and the water runs down all of the streams and rivers, to lower elevations. I have never done this hike in the Spring before, and was surprised not only by the amount of water in the little stream, but by how cold it was!

The waterfall here is usually quite fun to use as a water slide. It was a wee bit too cold to try that, so we just imagined it, instead.

The boys were so patient with me while I ran around and took pictures. I finally packed up my camera, and we headed up the small canyon on top of the waterfall. We left behind our shoes, because there was so much wading involved, there was really no point in bringing them. This hike is also traveled so infrequently that we sincerely doubted anyone would see our shoes, let alone steal them.

The canyon walls were pretty high along the hike. Some parts of the canyon probably only get light when the sun is directly overhead in the sky. We were surprised on more than one occasion by snow being present! I say surprised, because we really were. Snow in redrock country tends to be the same color as all of the dirt in the area. If you are hiking, and, say, enjoying the scenery, you can very easily step in a big pile of snow! One of the downsides of doing this hike in bare feet. 😛

One of the other prevalent colors in Southern Utah is yellow. There is a lot of sulfur around, as well as a bit of uranium. The land is littered with uranium mines, and in some places there are piles of old mine tailings. If you stay away from the mines and from the tailings, there’s no radiation hazard, but it’s good to be on the lookout.

Here’s Bryan actually standing on some snow. See how hard it is to tell?! I was pretty lucky to get this shot. He jumped off it the snow very quickly.

We spent a very comfortable night in warm, cozy beds, and woke up the next morning to do the real hike of the trip: Little Wild Horse.

The Little Wild Horse hike is, as I mentioned before, a slot canyon. Slot canyons are both very beautiful, and very dangerous. The danger comes from potential flooding issues. If it begins to rain anywhere along the canyon or anywhere that feeds into the canyon, you get a flash flood. Flash floods are fast, powerful, and deadly. Because the canyons are so narrow, the water gets very high, and runs very fast. Water slams around the various twists and turns of the canyon. If you get caught in a flash flood in a slot canyon, you have no way to climb out. You are dead.

But don’t worry! Flash floods are easily avoided. You just have to watch the weather very closely. If it is raining anywhere nearby, get out. It’s that easy. Fortunately, as we arrived, there was not a cloud in the sky. We could hike the canyon no worries! Which is super fantastic, because it’s such a beautiful canyon.

As we entered the canyon, I was instantly reminded of the many times I had hike the canyon as a kid. My mom would always tell exciting stories as we hiked, and give my brother and I hard candy to suck on as we hiked. I remember my dad saying that it felt like being digested by some huge beast. One of the first sights that greeted us was a wall that reminded me of nothing but melting flesh.

Everything is so pink and organic, it is really easy to forget that the walls are rock. I like reaching my hand out to feel the rough surfaces and remind myself. Sandstone has a very unique texture. It is halfway between rough sand and rock. If you rub it, fine powder comes off on your hands.

Slot canyons can get very narrow. Little Wild Horse never gets more narrow than shoulder-width, but some slot canyons require you to turn sideways, remove any backpacks, and squeeze as much as you can. Pretty much every person who has hiked their share of slot canyons has some story about how a fat person has gotten stuck, and everyone in the canyon had to wait behind them as they extricated themselves. I’ve always felt that slot canyons should have a "Must be this thin to enter" sign, but perhaps that is a little bit too politically incorrect.

Here is a lovely example of why flash floods can be so dangerous. This large boulder was placed where it is today by a flash flood. Not only is it scary that the water has the force to pick up something this large, but the thought of being tossed around in water where many-ton boulders are also being tossed around is terrifying. Always check the weather before hiking slot canyons. Always.

One of the cool effects of these floods is that they also pick up little rocks. These little rocks can get stuck inside of small holes, and then they are pounded around and around in a circular fashion as the water courses by. This leaves thousands holes all along the cliff faces, in very cool shapes.

I call this shot "Sons of Geologists", as both Bryan and Mark are the sons of geologists. They stopped to look at rock formations a lot.

The light fades very quickly in a slot canyon, and the bright orange walls begin to fade into shades of pink and grey.

It’s pretty tricky to capture how twisty and turny Little Wild Horse is, because it’s definitely a 3D experience, and film, sadly, is only two-dimensional. This image gets a fair amount of the essence of the place.

Every now and then the canyon opens up into a much wider area, and we are stuck by sunlight. I love how the sun brings out the reds and oranges of the rock faces.

Back into the canyon, Bryan points out an interesting feature of the rock in this area. There are limestone deposits inside of the sandstone, which don’t get worn away as quickly as the rest of the sandstone. Because of this, black limestone juts out of the rock face, polished smooth by years of rushing water and the hands of visitors to the canyon.

And the last shot of the hike. We climbed out of our beautiful canyon, covered in red dirt. I had started the trip a pleasant shade of light blue. (I was intrigued by some sunscreen that I found at the cabin, which is supposed to go on blue and rub in clear. Except the "clear" bit was slightly exaggerated. I wasn’t as blue as the sunscreen started, but I wasn’t really human-colored, either.) I ended the hike a lovely shade of red-orange. Everything ends the hike a lovely shade of red-orange.

As I told Bryan, hiking socks aren’t real hiking socks until they’ve been given the red dirt treatment.