Who moved my cheese?

The next morning, we drove up the road to a trailhead. I was looking forward to hiking on a real trail. No more crazy steep rock scrambling! Our destination was a slot canyon called Buckskin Gulch.

When we reached the highway turnoff for the Buckskin Gulch trailhead, John said something about it not being right. He had been there once before, but it was twenty or more years ago. How could he possibly remember?

The trailhead signs were entirely clear. This was the Buckskin Gulch trailhead. So we put on our boots, and off we went.

And we went, and went and went. It was a pretty trail, and easy. But where was the slot canyon? There were nearby rock formations, so surely we were almost there?

Almost there?

Almost there?

We trudged along this valley and it started getting pretty hot.

Surely we’re almost there?

By then the sun was high, and we’d made it to a few cliff faces, but we still hadn’t found the slot canyon.

Biska was hot, and we decided to turn around. Even if we were almost to the cool and shaded slot canyon, we had come too far on the open plain, and we’d have to hike back through it in the heat.

Here’s John with his Garmin trying to figure out – where are we? Turns out we were just over halfway to the slot canyon. That made no sense. This was marked as the trailhead to the slot canyon. We should have had half a mile of hiking to the canyon, not several miles.

Time to turn around and hike back out. There’s always tomorrow.

After we got back out, we discovered that it was indeed an unnecessarily long way to the slot canyon. There was a closer trailhead to the slot canyon that John was remembering, but it was no longer marked as the trailhead for the slot canyon. It was only marked as the trailhead for some other trails.

Our initial guess was that they were trying to divert some of the slot canyon traffic elsewhere because the original trailhead also went to a very popular rock formation called the Wave. You need a permit to go on that trail. We weren’t interested in hiking to the Wave, so we didn’t need a permit, but we wanted to park in the same parking lot as for the Wave. Do they no longer let slot canyon hikers park there? Is it now only people with permits the hike the Wave?

The new trailhead they came up with for the slot canyon turned out to be 6 extra miles of hiking (three in and three out) just to get to the canyon. That’s not ok! Not when there’s a closer trailhead, a mere half mile from the slot canyon!

We decided to try again the next morning, and this time we’d try to park at the original trailhead – if we could.

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Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism