Jason and I gave my family members their pick between four potential activities as their birthday presents in 2023. A morning of rappelling down waterfalls was the wildest of these alternatives. In August, the brave individuals who chose this option headed into the mountains with a few canyoneering guides. Here is the synopsis of that soggy and slippery adventure.
A hanging valley is a valley that enters a larger one at a higher elevation giving the appearance that it is hanging.
Our group started on some 35-foot cliffs in Big Cottonwood Canyon to improve our minimal rappelling skills. Then, we moved over to Little Cottonwood and the Lisa Falls Trail. Lisa Falls is a popular destination as the hike to it is extremely short, and it tumbles at an unusual askew angle over imposing granite blocks. Although Jason and I had been to the waterfall before, we’d never explored the elevations above it. As we discovered, what’s beyond is even more impressive.
Short climbing makes hazardous paths less likely to cause substantial damage.The Little Cottonwood Canyon glacier was the largest on the Wasatch Range, taking up 12 miles and spilling five miles out of the canyon into Lake Bonneville.
Lisa Falls extends out of a hanging valley formed by a glacier tributary. This valley is distinctly U-shaped and once held heavy ice that flowed into Little Cottonwood Canyon’s larger glacier. That greater glacier covered 12 miles of the canyon in ice up to 850 feet deep at one time.
Granite chiseled by ice and augmented by a mountain environment makes for a charming spot to dangle.
We used short climbing to get up this hanging valley. For those unfamiliar, short climbing is a technique used to make difficult terrain safer to scale. It involves linking multiple people together via rope to decrease the chances of any of them falling unhindered.
Jason is both curious and daring, the perfect combination of attributes for an adventurer.
After we had climbed this attractive crevice, we rappelled down. We did five rappels, three of which were slick and drenching. When rappelling a waterfall, you must face away from the rock and only use one hand to descend. Otherwise, the force of the water combined with the slippery surface may turn you upside down and/or cause significant rock whackings. Asking the inexperienced to do one-handed, front-facing rappels is asking a lot. Apparently, most of the waterfall sections in this canyon are classified as 3C, with the last of those being 197 feet long. I’m too inexperienced to fully understand the substance of those ratings.
This active spout was an alleged “dry” route.
However, although our route was sometimes tricky, the views distracted us from being intimidated. The area was beautiful beyond our expectations. We had no idea Lisa Falls extends so far up the mountain on a path that is exceptionally gorgeous. The scenery also distracted us from our sogginess. It turns out, waterfalls are wet. Everyone returned sopping and nearly all returned with scrapes. Our niece received the most significant abrasions of the outing when both her knees banged against a rock during a descent. Still, no one was complaining. On the contrary, the magnitude of one nephew’s smiles increased in proportion to the magnitude of the soaking he was presently receiving. Unlike him, I elected to take two of the optional “dry” routes instead of going down the area with the heaviest current. One of these was far from dry, and I got thoroughly re-drenched from the waist down.
It may seem obvious that waterfall rappelling involves wetness, but currents still surprise.
What an awesome adventure! Our clothes came back smelling of pine and mountain mint, the scents that permeated that alpine water. Like our fits, our bodies too returned refreshed.
My family has been going to the Utah Shakespeare Festival off and on for decades. In the summer of 2023, my clan made this outing work again over a long weekend. Family members came and went at an almost comical frequency, and Jason and I were the constants who stayed through their arrivals and departures. From transformative phrasing to transformative proliferation, the two of us relished the unrelated opportunities of the unique surroundings. Here’s a little taste of our relish and spread.
The first group of family who joined us in Cedar City was a sister and two nieces. With them we shared A Midsummer Night’s Dream and pizza. That play is a favorite of mine as it is silly, witty, and full of jackasses.
Double Arch Alcove tempts mindfulness with cooler temperatures and countless rhythmic drips.
The next morning, as family members were traveling back and forth, Jason and I headed to the Kolob Canyons portion of Zion National Park. Zion was the third most visited national park in the U.S. in 2023. However, its Kolob Canyons district, located separately in the northwest corner of the park, sees far less tourists. Kolob is home to a number of box canyons, gorges with only one entrance/exit and walls 2,000 feet high. We journeyed down one of these on the Middle Fork of Taylor Creek Trail.
Taylor Creek is likely the most popular hike in Kolob Canyons. We saw a fair number of people as we headed up but had the alcove and the return route entirely to ourselves. What alcove? Double Arch Alcove is the primary draw for the Taylor Creek Trail. Double Arch Alcove, despite its name, contains no visible arches. Instead, there you will encounter a dramatic grotto with sandstone shelves stacked in towering layers and covered in thick moss. Not only is the scenery captivating, but the moisture and shade create mild temperatures and a melodic stereo of drips, which enrapture other senses.
Fife and Larson worked on their cabins together using materials brought to the area by horses.
Double Arch Alcove is this hike’s endpoint for most people, but we decided to investigate what secrets the canyon beyond might possess. We were rewarded with a waterfall about half a mile upstream in a circular chamber carved by water. As scaling this feature was impossible without gear, it marked the end of our upstream travel.
Although we started hiking around 12:30 and finished up at 4:30, catching much of the August afternoon’s heat, we got sweaty but not sickly. That was thanks to temperature highs that were uncommonly low, just in the mid-80s, a nice treat for Southern Utah in its most searing time of year.
If you are familiar with the Taylor Creek Trail, you may be wondering why it took us four hours to finish about 5.8 miles, especially with an online completion estimate of two hours. Some of the blame for our dillydallying lies in man not nature. This path passes two small historic buildings constructed in the 1930s, the Larson and Fife Cabins. These structures were once owned by Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University). Professors used them while grazing sheep or goats in the area before it was a national park. Of course, we had to stop for a closer look not just graze by.
A little dehydrated but otherwise in good shape, we met up with a mostly different group of family that night for Romeo and Juliet. You always hope the ending of that play changes, but it never does.
The next morning, we went to the Festival City Farmers Market. Although this bazaar is tiny compared to Salt Lake City’s, it was still fun to scan and purchase some local wares and grub. Afterward, we held a picnic in a park we often utilized when we came down to Cedar City as youngsters. Then, it was off to Jane Austen’s Emma the Musical. This performance included both beguiling tunes and Mr. Knightley. Need I say more? Macarons and bookshops followed. Then, The Play That Goes Wrong. The Play That Goes Wrong is hilarious and extremely British. It was first performed in London starting in 2012 and has been running there ever since. It’s a whodunit play within a play. Spoiler alert: everything goes wrong.
That was the end of our shows but not the end of our adventures. Jason and I have wanted to see the Pando for a few years, so we decided to make that happen on our return drive. The what, you ask? The Mando? The panda? Pando, the world’s biggest and densest living organism, is comprised of a single quaking aspen’s clones- 40,000 of them. It is spread over more than 100 acres and weighs 6,000 tons. Any gym rat knows that bulking up takes time, and such is the case with Pando. Its age is estimated between 3,000 and 14,000 years making it one of the oldest, if not the oldest, organisms on the planet. Where can you find this dendrophiles’ delight? It is located near the shores of Fish Lake about 45 minutes from both Richfield and Torrey. Acquiring outstanding views of Pando, however, takes a little more effort than just getting to the lake. It can be hard to differentiate Pando from the other aspens around it. Here are the deets on how we remedied that.
Pando is Latin for “I spread.”
We parked our cars on the lake’s south side at Sewer Lagoon Road, just a bit off the main highway (UT-25). Then, we walked down the road about a quarter of a mile to an access point for the Lakeshore National Recreation Trail, which goes around the entire perimeter of the lake. Cars with enough clearance can just drive to this trail access, but one car in our group was too low.
We took the Lakeshore National Recreation Trail to the Rim Overlook, which has a posted sign. Then, we continued for a quarter mile past a gate at the top of the hill until we hit a rock outcropping on the left side of the path (west) with a fantastic prospect of Pando and Fish Lake. If you are looking out from that viewpoint, where can you see Pando? It will be to the southwest with its northeast corner at the campground, just west of the group sites.
This vista was better than others we passed on the way. Though the route was longer than what we found outlined online, the 6.2 miles RT were worth it. The scenery was a beautiful mix of forest, shoreline, and wetland, and we saw no one while hiking. Despite its lack of traffic, the path was well maintained. Overall, I was impressed with Fish Lake, and I’d happily come back. FYI, the trail is mostly flat for about a mile and a half and then heads up a series of switchbacks. My mother, who is in her 70s, made it a mile out without any problems.
Our oversized weekend flew by with a few chaotic moments as family members arrived and left. However, it was less hectic than other years since group numbers were low at any given time. Jason and I didn’t let chaos or cultural masterpieces impede us from appreciating natural wonders. From monologues to monoclones, the outing was anything but monotonous.
Posts about deserts aren’t usually brimming with water, but this one is so soaked I had to look up synonyms for rain before writing it. Those substitutes include shower, torrent, flood, deluge, drizzle, downpour, stream, and barrage. Since the following paragraphs are flooded, I will try to use that overflow of synonyms as frequently as appropriate so you don’t have to read through rain in every other sentence. With that introduction, let the barrage commence.
Last June, we traveled to Capitol Reef National Park with Jason’s parents even though we’d visited the park just a month earlier. We left on this vacation thinking the weather would ruin our trip, frequent rain was forecasted. It did not impair experiences. Instead, it added a wet layer of wonder to our outing.
Sunset Point overlooks Sulfur Creek, which feeds into the Fremont River near Sunset Point.
We made it to the park just in time to hike to Sunset Point (0.6 miles RT) and Panorama Point (0.1 miles RT- so barely getting out of the car) before dark. Clouds obscured the sun shortly after we arrived at Sunset Point, and the wind stayed busy. However, we’d been in a downpour our entire drive to Capitol Reef, so we were just happy that had halted. Don’t worry though, I promise this story won’t leave you high and dry.
We encountered this transitory waterfall just beyond the path to Hickman Bridge.
A 70% chance of rain and temperatures reaching the mid-sixties were predicted for the following day. The highest probability of precipitation started at 10:00 AM and extended until about 6:00 in the evening- so basically all day. Thankfully, the forecast had shifted by the time we headed into the park for no showers to occur until 5:00 PM. The delay of the storm turned out to be more wish than reality; I can personally verify Capitol Reef got exceptionally damp about 2:30, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
The skies were sunnier than expected as we ate delicious pies at the Gifford Homestead and took the boardwalk parallel to Highway 24 to see the Fremont Culture petroglyphs along the cliff wall. Afterward, we had plans to hike to Hickman Bridge (1.75 miles RT), one of the most popular destinations in Capitol Reef. The trek turned out to be anything but standard that afternoon.
We found water in weird places during our entire trek to Hickman Bridge.
Just as we were about to leave our vehicle and head onto the trail, it started pouring. Not a mid pour but a robust pour. So, we jumped back into the car and waited until it downgraded to just regular rain. After about 10 minutes, ponchos in place, we finally headed up. As we reached the first plateau topped by the path, we were surprised to hear what sounded like a waterfall. Jason and I had never noticed a waterfall on our previous treks to Hickman Bridge, so it was a bit disorienting to hear one close by. (How could we have missed a waterfall before?) It turned out that we had correctly identified the noise despite its strange placement. A normally dry wash was flowing with an abundant stream of water. Where it fell from a high spout, a waterfall about 20 feet tall had been created. It was the first of many unusual scenes we would witness that day.
Hickman Bridge is similar in dimension to the bridges in Natural Bridges National Monument.
The weather gradually cleared, and by the time we got to Hickman Bridge, it was sunny enough for all jackets to be removed. However, as we started to descend, storm clouds rapidly encroached, and thunder began rumbling. Within a few minutes, we found ourselves again in the middle of a soaking. We watched a wash, which had completely dried from the previous outburst in the time it took for us to get to the bridge, begin to fill up once more. It never quite got to a flowing point, but water was flowing chaotically elsewhere around us. Most astonishingly, it started streaming down the towering cliffsides encircling us in gushing waterfalls, particularly Navajo Dome. It was magical! The weather wasn’t what we would have picked, but in some ways, it was even better. With our ponchos in place, we got to enjoy this spectacular show with minimum wetness. Other hikers we passed were not prepared and spent the deluge huddled under rocks.
Within minutes of shower commencement, the walls around us were flowing.
The next day, we decided to undertake the Chimney Rock Loop (3.6 miles RT). The high was 60 and the rain drizzly during this trek. Unlike the day before, the precipitation stayed with us for two hours instead of just downpouring and departing. We didn’t see any flash flooding and only saw other groups at the beginning of the hike.
Conservationists working toward getting Capitol Reef designated a national park initially wanted it to be called Wayne Wonderland.
On a dry interlude, when in Torrey, the closest town to Capitol Reef, certain food obligations must be met. One must eat at Capitol Burger, Hunt & Gather, and Hell’s Backbone Grill. We hit all three. Capitol Burger is an unassuming food truck with uncommonly good reviews and uncommonly good burgers. To reach Hell’s Backbone Grill, one must travel an hour up Boulder Mountain, a tricky road to navigate thanks to the grazing cattle and prolific deer. The Jenchiladas and desert-rubbed cauliflower are completely worth it! At Hunt & Gather, a newer place located where Café Diablo used to be, we sat out on a covered patio and experienced a sudden onslaught of rain just as the sun was setting. Rain clinking against a tin roof ain’t a bad accompaniment to cast iron asparagus and Marsala tenderloin.
Being always prepared means packing more. It also means not getting soaked with every cloudburst.
The showers finally dissipated the following day, the first day we didn’t get rained on during this trip or our trip to Colorado the week before. Temperatures were perfect, in the low 70s, but it still felt a little too warm on occasion when heat was coming off sundrenched rocks. We hiked the Fremont River Trail, which starts out as a river meander then climbs steadily up the side of a plateau to two viewpoints. Some trail guides show the path ending at the first overlook. Don’t believe them. The second vantage point is the better of the two with fantastic prospects of Fruita and the sandstone domes above it. Most websites list this trail’s length at just two miles RT, but going to the second viewpoint will make the journey more like 2.6.
From the end of the Fremont River Trail, Fruita and the irregular vaults of sandstone beyond it are on display.
After another Capitol Burger and the departure of Jason’s parents, Jason and I decided to hike through Capitol Gorge to The Tanks, which is a mile each way. Capitol Gorge is mostly just a mellow walk in a wide wash, but it does have a couple points of interest, namely a wall of petroglyphs (many of which have been damaged by nature or man) and the Pioneer Register. The Pioneer Register is a cliff that was used by explorers and settlers between 1871 and 1946 to inscribe names and dates as they passed by. This wall has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999. Like the petroglyphs, it too appeared to have been defaced by modern morons.
Starting in 1871, explorers, pioneers, herdsmen, prospectors, and surveyors scratched their names on this wall in Capitol Gorge while standing on the tops of their wagons.
The Tanks, a series of water collecting bowls and our destination in Capitol Gorge, felt underwhelming at first glance. The largest of the three was completely dry even with the recent rain. However, as we were heading back, we discovered a more interesting grouping of tanks and a natural bridge, which had once been the wall of a tank, hidden lower down the same gully as the obvious three.
The Tanks, a series of small water-collecting basins, were dry on our visit despite the recent rain, but we did find a more intriguing string of pots and bridges obscured in the gully below them.
By way of advice, the gnats in Capitol Gorge are bad! If we stopped to take a picture, they swarmed us. We both got quite a few bites. Were they only present because of the recent precipitation, or are they permanent residents of the gorge? (I don’t remember dealing with them last time we were in Capitol Gorge.) Maybe bringing a head net would be a good idea on this hike.
Since I’m already giving advice, I might as well give one more piece regarding pies. The Gifford Homestead, a historic building inside the park, contains a pie shop. It goes through 20-30 dozen (240-360) pies every day. The pies are usually sold out by about 2:00 in the afternoon. On Saturdays, they are often gone before then. I am a pie snob, and these pies are worth the bother. So, if you are a crust connoisseur like me, I’d recommend hitting the Gifford Homestead by early afternoon to guarantee a flaky selection.
Rain is often considered the enemy of outdoor activities. Storms dash plans under their prolific drips. However, experiencing Capitol Reef’s wet side, a rarity, was captivating and unforgettable. It was good down to the last drop!
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