Utah! White Canyon

Let me do a quick recap, since I posted the last couple of posts in the wrong order. I was able to reorder them on my blog, but I can’t do anything about the fact that the emails went out in the wrong order, for those of you who subscribe by email.

After a rough drive out to Utah, we spent our first night at a small creek near Grosvenor Arch, which turned out to be a muddy ditch overrun by cattle, so we only stayed one night. The next morning we drove around on the nearby ridges looking for a better site, but didn’t see anything particularly promising further up that road. So we went out to the highway and headed north until we found a different dirt road that looked better.

We were looking for the shelter of trees because a weather front was upon us and we didn’t want to be exposed in a windstorm. But in the desert, trees are more common in high elevations and we didn’t want to go up too high because it would be cold with the weather front approaching. Where to go?

We found the perfect spot under some big pine trees south of Canaan Peak, and spent two days relaxing and hiking. We had some wind above us in the trees, but it was surprisingly calm down at ground level. We couldn’t even tell that the winds were screaming out on the desert plains just a few miles away.

We left the pines on the last windy day. We drove through Escalante, Torrey, and Hanksville, which was a beautiful drive, and then we dropped south on Hwy 95 to White Canyon.

When we arrived at White Canyon it was still windy with dirt in the air, but it was stunningly beautiful.

The next morning we had calm weather and blue skies. Perfect timing!

We spent the day hiking around, exploring. Our morning hike was my choice – up a shallow canyon above White Canyon.

Look at those funny little balls of rock. Often when we’re hiking I wish I was a geologist and a biologist so I would know what I was looking at. I am an environmental scientist, but I mostly know about mitigating human impact on the environment, such as the regulation of air quality and water quality impacts. I don’t tend to know details about the specific rocks and bushes (unless they’re endangered).

This rock was crazy. It’s hard to see in the picture, but it’s about a foot or two tall, and only about an inch thick. It’s nuts how the sandstone will erode.

Here’s another example, again it’s hard to tell in the photo what you’re looking at, but that rock is less than a centimeter thick in places; a shell of sandstone that has been eroded from below.

John took a close-up of this little cave, because he loves caves

He leaned in closer and closer until he ended up with this photo:

And I was like, aak, yuck, no, it looks like my colon!

Better stick with the amazing vistas.

I quit at the bottom of this ledge, but John and Biska went just a little bit farther.

She’s turning out to be a fine rock-scrambling desert dog!

Time to head back toward camp.

Luckily Biska didn’t see this guy.

After we got back to the campsite, John’s next goal was to hike down into the main canyon. We had already hiked up-canyon that morning and I didn’t want to go down to the big canyon, so I decided to stay behind at the campsite.

Here I am, collecting heart-shaped rocks near our campsite. Biska’s like, “Mom? There’s nothing interesting in that pile of rocks. The exciting lizards are hiding in the bushes! You’re looking in the wrong place!”

Finding heart-shaped rocks in the desert is equivalent to my superpower of finding 4-leaf clovers. John tried to help, lol. He’s better than me at most things in life, but this is my superpower and he can’t compete.

Although I admit, some of those aren’t perfect hearts, lol. But no heart is perfect.

The weather started to look a little threatening for John’s hike down into the main canyon – possible afternoon thundershowers.

It can be very dangerous in canyons during and after rain events due to flash flooding. But in this case, we knew where it might rain, we understood the layout of the canyons in that area, and we knew the potential direction of water flow. So we were confident that current conditions were safe for his hike. Less predictable is lightning, but we didn’t hear any, even in the distance. The canyon was very close to camp, so we figured he would have enough time to get back to camp if needed.

Here’s pictures from his hike:

They had a fun hike, did not get rained on, and came back with beautiful pictures.

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