Utah photo dump 4: missed opportunities, cornucopia of riches, and ruins

Day 10: Kanab to Page via 89A

We knew a few days in advance that it was supposed to rain on Saturday, the day we had planned to hike another slot canyon on our way from Kanab to Page AZ. Wire Pass is a wide-ish slot canyon, a tributary to Buckskin Gulch; Buckskin Gulch is the longest (13 miles!) and deepest slot canyon in the southwest, and possibly in the world. We had hoped to hike Wire Pass plus a little bit of Buckskin Gulch, but everything we had read about slot canyons included warnings about flash floods. It doesn't take much rain to flood a slot, and it doesn't even have to be raining where you're hiking: rain from as far as 50 miles away can drain into the slots and flood.

Nonetheless, as we drove along highway 89A, the dirt road to Wire Pass and Buckskin Gulch beckoned. We drove a few miles down it, watching tendrilly poufs of rain and virga scattered across the sky. The road seemed quite passable for our 2wd rental car, but we turned around after about five miles because it was clearly raining near us, if not on us. On our way out, a dozen cars passed us heading toward the canyon, and we wondered what they knew that we didn't. Or what we knew that they didn't. Oh well. We have something to come back for.

Rain followed us, preceded us, or dumped on us the entire way--and in Page, briefly turned to gravelly snow (what Germans call Graupel--not quite hail)--but we happily filled the Buckskin gap with three flood-unlikely hikes:

First, Toadstool Hoodoos along 89A in Grand Staircase - Escalante: 

Second, The New Wave near Page AZ. Signage calls this the Beehive Trail, and AllTrails calls this Rock Lane Trail, but it's popularly called the New Wave to encourage those of us who don't win the Wave lottery to enjoy other eroded striated sandstone formations in the vicinity. You can't see the wind in the photos, but we considered ourselves lucky to have been blown away only figuratively.

The trail was impeccably marked.

And third, the iconic Horseshoe Bend just south of Page. I briefly held the "Local Legend" title on Strava for "most attempts completed" on the "To the Bend" segment in the past 90 days. The number of "efforts" was a whopping two, because we had 45 minutes between our arrival at the overlook and sunset, and decided to kill time by walking back to the parking lot to use the pit toilets, then walking back to the overlook again. The record was seized by another walker the very next day, who "set the new bar," also with "2 efforts," so either she walked faster or peed faster. In any event, we were already on the road again and thus unable to seize the title back. 

A fraction of the many, many people waiting for the sun to set. 

Another photo for the Caspar David Friedrich 
Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer collection 

Day 11: Page to Blanding via Monument Valley and House on Fire Ruins

This was a long driving day, but we still managed to fit in over nine miles of hiking. First stop, Wildcat Trail in the stupendously fascinating Monument Valley. The trail takes you around the west mitten.

Our next destination was a canyon a little west of Bluff, UT, and our navigation device directed us to take UT highway 261. We figured it was, you know, just a highway--but it turns out 261 is the "Moki Dugway Scenic Backway," which is the usual insanely scenic Utah road until it becomes a gravel road that switchbacks 1,200 feet up the side of a cliff over the course of 3 miles. S kept saying "wow, this is quite the view," while I clutched the door armrest and kept saying "eyes on the road, eyes on the road!"

Our goal was Mule Canyon, to see the House on Fire ruins. We'd read that there are more Anasazi ruins in the canyon, but we didn't manage to see any others.