My family routinely slides through slot canyons. While some of these are too tight for my tastes, all are an excuse to travel to exquisite desert terrain with people I love. Such was the purpose of an outing we took to Hanksville, a little town in southeastern Utah, last spring. Jason and I extended this trip to Torrey to celebrate our anniversary. It was the American Southwest for adventurous families at its finest.
If you aren’t a Utah native (We prefer the term Utahan.), you may not be familiar with the concept of a slot canyon. Slot canyons are formed over millions of years by water exploiting cracks or weaknesses in rock, typically through violent flashfloods. Utah’s unique, arid ecosystems contain over 1,000 slot canyons, the highest concentration of these curious fractures in the world.
Before slipping into slots though, we need to discuss spires. After arriving in Hanksville, a group of us set about photographing an elegant spire with a graceless name, Long Dong Silver. Long Dong Silver is close to Hanksville but still remote. Hiking to it is easy if you can figure out where to start. While the name sounds like something a junior high student came up with, the spire itself is magnificent. Furthermore, the entire landscape around Long Dong is crumbling at an extraordinary rate making it feel timeless and temporary all at once. Comprised of delicate shale, all stone surfaces disintegrate when touched, including the spire. Multiple websites claim Long Dong Silver is popular with rock climbers, but I find that hard to believe considering the feature’s fragile nature. A climber in our group said he’d never attempt it as it wouldn’t even hold an anchor. It held up great under a lens though.
Although Baptist Draw, a 3B III slot with some of the highest walls and darkest passages in the San Rafael Swell, was the main reason for this family trip, I found some adventure add-ons in the area, which is my custom. One of these add-ons was the Little Wild Horse Canyon/Bell Canyon Loop. The next morning, we set out to conquer that pretty pony.
Little Wild Horse is classified as a 1A II slot, which means it requires no technical gear and is basically just a regular, dry hike most of the time. All that sets it apart from a trek through any wilderness is squish. As is common with slot canyons, the path through Little Wild Horse becomes tight in sections. It narrows to about three feet wide with walls 50 feet tall for around 10 minutes. This portion, a favorite for many, was my least preferred of the hike. Below I will explain the above.
As I mentioned, there are over 1,000 slot canyons in Utah, but they do not receive equal attention. Little Wild Horse, for unknown reasons, has become THE slot to do in the state. By “do,” I do not mean complete. Instead, I mean hike precisely 1.1 miles to reach the slimmest section of the canyon, get your Instagram pictures, turn around, and then push against the flow of all the people heading the other direction in that same three-foot-wide gap. Just to be clear, three feet is roomy enough to fit through without turning sideways, but it is not wide enough for two-way traffic. We ended up waiting a while at the start of that segment for about 30 people to exit before entering, and then we still had to try to squeeze past more groups as we went through. It didn’t work well. I think websites and news stations need to stop promoting that U-turn as the best route for this canyon, and the BLM should make traffic in Little Wild Horse one-way on busy weekends. That’s my two unsolicited cents.
We did eventually make it past that clog and back to enjoying the slender wonders around us. Beyond that popular turnaround point, the people thinned drastically, and we only saw a sprinkling of parties the rest of our trek. What constituted the rest of our trek? Hikers can emerge from Little Wild Horse and travel down a dirt road to access Bell Canyon, another slot. Through Bell they can complete a loop that will return them to the parking lot. This is the path we followed.
Bell Canyon is a Class 3 hike, just one step away from rope requirements. It has more obstacles than Little Wild Horse, in the form of chokestones and pouroffs, making it more challenging and fun. We also appreciated it for what it lacked, namely people. That shortage instantly promoted it to our preferred canyon of the day.
While no one hurt themselves navigating the mild obstructions in Bell, I fell and hit my head on a rock while trying to take a picture. Photography is a precarious pastime! Jason was over to me in a jiffy afraid I’d be spouting blood, but no open wounds were generated. I just had a headache and felt a little funky the rest of the night.
We finished the 8-mile Little Wild Horse/Bell loop in about seven hours. I liked Little Wild Horse but felt it was overrated and overused. Bell was better.
The following day was earmarked for Baptist Draw. However, four of us decided not to attempt it based on concerns over the claustrophobic characteristics of the canyon and some irritating injuries. Instead, Jason found Crack for us.
Crack Canyon is another slot that doesn’t require technical gear at a 2A II classification, at least until a chokestone with a 10-foot drop blocks the way a couple miles in. It took us five hours to complete 4.9 miles RT going through three sections of narrows. We loved this canyon. Everyone agreed they fancied it over those the day before with its bright colors and contrasting whites. Along with tint it provided texture in the form of tafoni, spherical rock cavities resembling the abandoned stone villages of some ancient, miniature civilization. Although the chokestone plunge requiring ropes eventually halted our downstream progress, we experienced the best of the slot beforehand.
Despite its beauty, we saw only a handful of people in Crack. It’s interesting how crowds flock to outdoor destinations selected by their Instagram feeds and miss nature’s true nature.
The next day, my sister was planning on returning home after we made a quick stop with her at a local rock shop, but then the owner told us about a nearby area bursting with jasper due to a recent flood. We couldn’t resist checking it out. Regrettably, we hadn’t brought any of our tools for rockhounding on our vacation. That’s how we ended up with the closest items we could find at Hanksville’s tiny market including gloves, buckets, scrapers, kids’ beach shovels, and even a metal stick of unknown purpose. Our unusual gear worked well enough, and we found buckets of jasper and other forms of chalcedony during two hours that felt like half an hour as rockhounding is a labor of discovery that conceals the passage of time.
After rockhounding, Jason and I headed to Torrey and the next section of our trip. Torrey is a small, artsy town at the mouth of Capitol Reef National Park with excellent food and classy lodgings. We used it as a base for hiking all day and eating all night. That footwork and those gastrointestinal endeavors will be the topics of my next post.