Jason and I are all about experiencing life and sharing experiences with others. This ideology led to us giving our family members their choice of one of four activities in lieu of birthday presents in 2023. One of these options was a trip into Utah’s unconventional and under populated West Desert for some world-famous rock excavating. Eight of our family members chose this as their birthday activity and three others tagged along. The primary objective was trilobite fossils, but we found many other solid masses of significance. Here’s the scoop on our scooping.

We started this stone excursion with a stop in Eureka and nearby Silver City. Eureka was once Utah’s 9^th-largest city. It’s story of boom and bust is typical of any mining mecca, except the boom lasted for over a century. Once home to nearly 4,000 people, Eureka is now an interesting and colorful settlement of 650 hardy residents and many relics of the past. If you are passing through, I’d recommend checking out the historic brick buildings, Porter Rockwell’s cabin, and the Star Theater’s projection equipment from 1935. (The theater itself closed in 1958.) We also stopped at Crazy Mary’s Rock Shop in the Gatley Building, which was constructed in 1898. Mary kindly gave us a tour of the old structure including its 20-foot indoor well used for cooling purposes during the prohibition days.

From Eureka, we traveled to neighboring Silver City, a true ghost town. At one time, Silver City was home to a population of 1,500. From 1869 to 1915, it went from being a mining town to an ore sampling mill and smelter. After 1915, the mill closed, and by 1930 Silver City was mostly deserted. Massive concrete foundations with compartments, tunnels, arches, and towers are the principal remains at the location. We explored these and then headed up the road to the mouth of Dragon Canyon where the Dragon Mine still operates. Outside the gates of Dragon Canyon, we found a promising patch of dirt and started digging. There, we believe we found samples of hematite but plan on further analysis to confirm.

Long before the brief influx of miners, the West Desert was home to lasting residents, trilobites. Trilobites, one of Earth’s most successful lifeforms, evolved over 300 million years into more than 25,000 species. These sea-dwelling creatures flourished about 1,000 times longer than the entire span of current human existence.

Roughly an hour past Delta, an outcropping of Wheeler Shale containing some of the highest concentrations of trilobite fossils in North America was forced to the surface from thousands of feet below by warping and weathering. This remarkable layer is open to curious enthusiasts for personal excavation and fossil removal at U-Dig Fossils: Quarry. That was our destination the next day.

While trilobites survived for hundreds of millions of years, the trilobites at U-Dig are from just the Cambrian Period, 500-550 million years ago. A lot of fossils can develop over 50 million years though. They are prolific at the site, and no one walked away empty-handed.

We chipped and pried through rock in one of the quarry’s prehistoric pits from noon to a little after 5:30, almost closing time. At least, some of us did. You see, there was no rain in the forecast that day, but that didn’t stop it from raining. The showers started about 3:00 and continued the rest of the afternoon. The less resilient members of our group left early because they didn’t appreciate the soaking. Jason and I, along with a few others, kept at it and found some great specimens while chilled and water-logged.

The following day, we headed to Obsidian Hill in search of Apache Tears, which are rounded obsidian pebbles. We found them and a whole lot of jasper. Unfortunately, the gnats found us. I obtained at least thirty gnat bites that afternoon. Jason didn’t get nearly as many, but he got one inside his ear and couldn’t sleep that night because he was in so much pain. The origins of these gnats were a mystery as there didn’t seem to be any water or anything else of gnatty interest nearby.

Utah’s West Desert is a fantastic place to travel back in time 150 years or 550 million years. The oddities are plentiful in that parched expanse. If you have a curiosity about rocks or just an inquisitive mind, it might be time to take your own family on a West Desert, dirt-sleuthing experience.

As I mentioned in my last post, food and footpaths are primary attractions in Torrey. We couldn’t jump right onto a trail the instant we arrived, but we didn’t waste any time getting to the eating. That evening we dined at my favorite section of Hell. Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm has been a beloved out-of-the-way dining location for us since we first discovered it about 15 years ago. The required 50-minute drive up Boulder Mountain is quickly forgotten when the Jenchiladas, Blue Ribbon Black-Powder Biscuits, blueberry bread pudding, and seasonal favorites hit the tongue. This time, those seasonal offerings included asparagus and peas from the Hell’s Backbone Farm. Delish! We loaded up past our max fill lines and then dodged black free-range cattle on the dark trip back to Torrey.

The next day, we hiked in Capitol Reef National Park on the Navajo Knobs Trail. The Navajo Knobs are a cluster of bumpy outcroppings at the tippy top of one of the park’s many plateaus. Hikers can bail halfway up this path to complete just the Rim Overlook or continue another 2.4 miles to reach the top. We weren’t sure how 2,400 feet of elevation change would go over with my testy, recovering knee. Hence, we’d settled on ending at that halfway point and only 1,110 feet of altitude variation. However, once we reached the Rim Overlook, I could tell we would decide to go all the way, 9.4 miles RT, knee aside. Why waste all the already-exerted effort?

Past the Rim Overlook, the route to the Navajo Knobs keeps mostly to cliff edges but rarely close enough to make the typical person nervous. (That includes me in this case!) Although the trail is almost exclusively uphill, the grade stays below 30% except during a short, final scramble up one of the knobs. While some guidebooks claim there are two knobs, that’s not true as there are a whole cluster of bulbous bulges of varying sizes protruding from the plateau top. The trail leads you up the westernmost one.

The views along this path were spectacular and alien even to us, Utah natives. The plateau traversed is not straight but noticeably angled, giving a greater appreciation for the wrinkled nature of the Waterpocket Fold, Capitol Reef’s defining geological feature. This lovely setting must be too strenuous for most as we saw just two people in total once we passed the Rim Overlook. I was okay with that.

It took us five hours and 40 minutes to complete the Navajo Knobs, which apparently is in the “normal” window. Also in our normal window is not making it back before dark. We were typical in that regard as well. We only needed flashlights for the last third of a mile though, and that’s better than our average.

For our last day in Capitol Reef, we decided to hike another route classified as strenuous, the Freemont Gorge Overlook, even though we’d pushed my knee and our legs in general the day before. (For the record, my knee handled the challenge with dignity and only a little swelling.) The path to the Fremont Gorge Overlook, according to the park’s trail guide, is identical in length and almost equivalent in elevation change to the Rim Overlook. Therefore, we were expecting another enduring uphill workout. Instead, we got ups on either end of a long section of level.

The route climbs one steep 300-foot hill and then kicks back for an extensive, nearly flat traverse across the meadow topping Johnson Mesa. Johnson Mesa’s crown is strewn with desert grasses and lava rocks spewed from Boulder Mountain 20-30 million years ago. Glaciers brought those giant stones to Capitol Reef at the end of the last ice age where they now look completely out of place. That curious meadow is followed by another long climb, about 700 feet in elevation.

The Fremont Gorge Overlook is about 4.5 miles RT. It took us a bit under three hours and required less energy than the Rim Overlook portion of the Navajo Knobs Trail, despite their supposed similarities in length and elevation change.

Please note, the Fremont Gorge Overlook has absolutely no shade on it. If you hike it in the summer, I’d highly recommend going early or late in the day. The other thing it had absolutely none of? People. We saw exactly no one on it, which made it all the better.

That sums up the Torrey piece of our desert extravaganza. The entire holiday pie was magnificent and memorable from its smallest corridors to its vastest vistas! I’ll end with one final comment on luck. Spring weather in Utah can be temperamental, but it was nearly ideal during our entire trip. It oscillated from the low 70s to the mid-80s and was almost always windy. It never got uncomfortably hot, but we did make use of jackets on occasion. The day we left, temperatures dropped down into the 50s, and it started raining. The luck of the slickrock was on our side!

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.