Members of my family have participated in a canyoneering adventure every summer for a few years now. I suppose it has become a bit of a squelchy tradition. This year, we did not one but two slot canyons, plus threw in a coupe plays, some cliffs, and a little non-soggy climbing. We shoved it all into one packed weekend in Southern Utah.
Kanarra Canyon, which is located just outside Cedar City, was the first slot on our agenda. You can’t go to Cedar City in the summer without going to the Utah Shakespearean Festival; it is technically impossible. If you don’t believe me, look it up. Instead of trying to pull a Don Quixote and fight the impossible, we went to two plays before doing any canyoneering. The first was the best version of Hamlet I’ve ever seen, featuring Quinn Mattfeld. We also partook of the flashy silliness that is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Its catchy tunes got stuck in my head like always. Go, go, go Joe!
The following day, we went on to Kanarra Canyon. During the last 15 years, social media nearly spoiled this hike with its pictures and praises. Kanarraville’s 350 residents couldn’t shoulder the 40,000 visitors that trudged through their canyon and water source in 2015. Hence, the number of permits is now limited to 150 per day. The trail felt a little crowded with just that many; I can’t imagine how it would have been with 10 times more. Like waiting in the line at Space Mountain? The temperatures oscillated between too hot at our outset to too cold as the canyon deepened and tapered, but we were easily distracted from this discomfort by the lofty walls and idyllic stream. Even the youngest among us managed the terrain, yet it still felt like an adventure.
After Kanarra Canyon, we traveled to Zion National Park. There, the brave cooled off in a pool along the Lower Pine Creek Waterfall Trail the speedy way, i.e. cliff jumping. Afterward, we had just enough time to finish the short one-mile Canyon Overlook Trail before it got dark.
The next morning, my sister and I stayed with a nephew too young to obtain maternal approval to descend through Keyhole Canyon while the rest of the group… obviously, they went through Keyhole Canyon. Keyhole Canyon is reasonably short, about one mile, and unreasonably slim. Pictures alone are enough to make the claustrophobic panic. Those that went described the stagnant water they had to wade through as putrid and black in places, especially at the top of the canyon. We are talking a Death-Star-trash-compactor level of repulsive here. On the flip side, they said the light filtering through the crimsons of the Navajo sandstone looked like a subterranean sunset. The group had to do three rappels and completed the canyon in three hours. In the meantime, my sister and I completed some window shopping and snack consumption with the little guy.
Our weekend in Southern Utah was crammed with culture, cliffs, canyons, and claustrophobia via Kanarraville and Keyhole. At least it didn’t also include giardia or broken bones because those wouldn’t have sounded right in my last sentence.