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.

Although we were in Moab just a month earlier and in Sun Valley less than 24 hours prior, we found ourselves in Moab again last March. Prompted by a niece’s spring break, we made use of the opportunity despite the inopportune timing of it. Jason and I acted as tour guides and took our small group of family to Canyonlands, Arches, and Dead Horse Point. The weather wasn’t ideal as the threat of rain was nearly constant. Mother Nature didn’t hold back, and we didn’t let that hold us back. In the end, the wind was peskier than the precipitation, yet it didn’t keep us from precipices. There were many tummy-tingling moments on this stormy retreat, and I’m going to tell you all about them.

The Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park was first on our agenda. When we initially arrived, the park’s renowned prospects were hidden by a thick layer of mist clinging to its sheer sedimentary escarpments. Also, it was snowing. According to an employee, conditions like these are uncommon in the park and a special treat. We did a very standard thing in the un-standard weather, we hiked to Mesa Arch (0.5 miles RT) hoping for the vapor to clear before we undertook other treks that were more view oriented. Mesa Arch is always a popular trail, but at least it wasn’t at peak tourist flow on this particular afternoon.

Afterward, we took the group on one of our favorite hikes in the park, the White Rim Overlook, as the fog had thinned. With just 1.8 miles RT, you get a jaw dropping reveal of the White Rim as it loops between one 1,000-foot ledge and another, a ribbon of chalky alabaster twisting through the flushed desert. At the trail’s terminus, the massive boulders perched on the edge of that parched abyss beckoned, as they always do, and we stepped out farther than our self-preservation appreciated while remaining safe. What a cool path and endpoint! We were expecting a drenching during this hike. It didn’t happen, but the rain began in earnest just as we were finishing.

The next day was supposed to be windy and wet, as in 35 MPH and sopping. The wet came and went early in the morning before we made it out on a trail. The wind came and stayed. We decided to hike the Devil’s Garden Trail in Arches National Park with some extra spurs to Navajo, Partition, Pine Tree, and Tunnel Arches, a total of six miles. The Devil’s Garden has a few adventurous sections and provides many opportunities for arch encounters. It can get quite busy, but on this blustery day the tourist numbers were manageable.

The wind was also manageable, except at Navajo Arch. At Navajo, the drafts funneled to about 50 MPH freezing our appendages and turning our hair into strand tornadoes. Another oddity at Navajo was the sea of rainwater filling its alcove and oozing out of its mouth, a memento from its recent drenching.

Recall the adventurous sections I mentioned earlier? As the path nears Double O Arch, it runs along a fin about six feet wide with drop-offs on either side, one of them much more substantial. While this short section is completely doable for the surefooted, it may be daunting to those height adverse. My sister wanted to turn around when we were two-thirds through it. I reminded her we would still have two-thirds to do and none of the reward if we went back, which kept her going. It was quite gusty up on the fin, adding to the sense of precariousness, but I’d speculate that it’s always blustery up there. Double O is one of my favorite arches in the park, so I didn’t second guess the willingness of my feet to keep moving.

Since we were so close to the Dark Angel, Jason and I wanted to continue to it even if the others were too tired or afraid of the approaching dark to join us. However, curiosity beat exhaustion, and we all visited the angel. The Dark Angel is the last remains of a fin. It towers 150 feet above the surrounding stone and sand. The path to it from Double O Arch nears the boundaries of the park and provides context for how Arches connects to Salt Valley and Klondike Bluffs. Our devilish route, with all its add-ons, took us longer than expected, and we made it back just before dark, which is earlier than most Sabin hikes end.

Before returning home the next day, we stopped at Dead Horse Point State Park. Dead Horse Point is located on a different portion of the same plateau crowned by Island in the Sky. The trails around its rim are more like walks than hikes, so we took a walk. Compared to the other days, the weather was mild during this outing. A couple jackets were necessary, but it was sunny and not madly windy. We did the East and West Rim Trails plus the spurs to the Basin, Meander, Shafer, and Rim Overlooks, 4.75 miles in all. You grow accustomed to the omnipresent drop-offs as you stroll these paths, and they don’t impact your tummy as much as originally. On a viewpoint sidenote, while the Dead Horse Point Overlook, which is at the end of the plateau, may have the best views, my favorite is Shafer. At Shafer, there are convenient rocks to use as contemplation or lunch spots.

On this impromptu trip, we encountered a range of tummy intimidators from direct drop-offs to precarious-to-pass fins. Plus, unusually wet and turbulent weather put a surreal and zesty veneer on one of our favorite fiery landscapes. Hooray for Moab tummy intimidation and variation!