Utah photo dump 3: Bryce, Zion, and Kanab

Day 6: Escalante to Kanab via Bryce Canyon National Park

We hiked three trails in Bryce Canyon National Park: Mossy Cave Trail, which we visited early enough in the morning that only one other car was in the parking area; Queen's Garden - Navajo Trail Loop, which felt hugely crowded after three days in Escalante, even though there were some quiet stretches; and Bristlecone Loop at the southernmost end of the park. The acrophobe required crampons for the first two hikes, while S got by just with grippy hiking boots.

Mossy Cave Trail:

Bryce has the world's largest collection of hoodoos.

Mossy Cave: icicles in the winter, mosses in the summer.

Queen's Garden - Navajo Trail Loop:

Queen's Garden is named for the pinkish top of the hoodoo in the
center of this photograph; apparently it looks like Queen Victoria.

My camera doesn't capture elevation differences well;
this part of the trail had a dozen or so switchbacks.

Bristlecone Loop. Hunh, Somehow I managed not to take any photos of the most interesting part of this trail, which was the large expanse of deep snow we got to tromp through (plus a ton more hoodoos). So instead, here's a photo of an arch that we stopped to see on our way back from Bristlecone Loop, plus a shot of the first movie theater I've been in since the start of the pandemic (Bryce Visitors Center, 20-minute film about the park). Speaking of the pandemic, Utah is still plastered with signs saying people must wear masks indoors, but few people actually wear them. (We do, which makes it easier to identify us as tourists.)

Day 7: The Wave lottery, Kanab morning hike, Zion afternoon hike

We spent four nights in Kanab. On our first morning, we and about 100 other people showed up at the Kanab Center to toss our names into the lottery for permits to The Wave, the area's most iconic and most photographed striated sandstone formation. Ninety of us left the lottery permit-less, while ten lucky folks won permits allowing them to hike to The Wave the next day. The whole system is going online starting March 15, which will make life easier for everyone, albeit less entertaining for those who (like me) enjoy gawking at rituals like this. Diehards can resubmit their applications the next morning, but we had too many other things to do.

We followed the lottery with a hike that AllTrails calls "Kanab City to Connector Trail," but signage calls it S---w Trail. Someone has crossed out or painted over the word "S---w" much of the way up the trail; Googling suggests the name may eventually be revised. 

S---w trailhead

Looking north at the end of the trail

Heading back down to Kanab

In the afternoon, S Zoomed into a dissertation defense. Afterward, we took advantage of the remaining three hours of sunlight to zip over to Zion for a 6-mile rim hike. 

Jolley Gulch

Day 8: Zion

We were so enchanted with the alpine scenery on the rim that we decided to spend the next day exploring more of Zion. Our original plan was to do an 11-mile loop from the east rim down into the canyon and back up again. Unfortunately, the dirt road to the start of the trail was inaccessible even to 4wd vehicles due to mud, and we weren't inclined to hike an extra 3 miles through mud in both directions to reach the trailhead (despite descending from a long line of people who walked 3 miles to school every day, in the snow, uphill both ways). 

Instead, we drove back down to the park entrance and, along with 1,000 or so other people, into the bottom of the canyon. There were traffic jams at popular spots.

Everyone wanted to hike the Emerald Pools trail.

During peak season, you can only access this road via shuttle bus, but when we visited on Thursday March 3, the shuttle bus was running only on weekends--meaning we, along with everyone else, could drive the entire length of the road and create traffic jams together. Turns out we were driving in with the mid-morning crowd. This is the crowd that wants to see the canyon in the morning light, but doesn't get their act in gear to drive in early enough to beat the crowds. (In our defense, our act was totally in gear for the mudded-out rim trail.)

We eventually made it to the end of the road, where all of the parking spots were taken; so we back-tracked a little to a pull-off, then walked back to the end for the Riverside Walk. 

Here are all the cool kids, wearing waders and water
shoes, setting off for The Narrows. The trail is the river.

Afterward, we drove back to the traffic jam sites, where by late morning parking spots had become available, and set off on the stunning Emerald Pools trail. 

Turkeys!

Lower pool...

Upper pool. Didn't photograph middle pool.

The views were consistently gorgeous.

Six miles walked so far, still lots of time, so we headed to the Visitors Center and hiked the Watchman Trail.

I've started a series of photographs of S channeling
Caspar David Friedrich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer 

Gentle readers, I hear you asking why we didn't hike the famous Angel's Landing Trail at Zion. Acrophobia, my friends. And crowds. If you're planning to go to Zion, know that the park is going to start requiring permits for hiking Angel's Landing, starting April 1, 2022.

On the way out of the park, we stopped for one more short hike. I made it about halfway, then declined to cross some wooden-plank covered cantilever-supported scaffolding over a canyon. (My personal Rules of Acrophobia have a whole internally consistent section on bridges; I didn't know cantilevered scaffolding was included in the Rules until I encountered it at Zion, but it makes total sense). S and 100 other folks went all the way to the end, and none of them plunged to their deaths.

Day 9: Kanab Cottonwood Trail & soup

Rain was in the forecast on Friday. In the morning, we made it halfway through the 8-mile Kanab Cottonwood Trail before the clouds moved in, the wind picked up, and we decided to bail. We went back to our AirBnb, made a pot of lentil soup, and unmemorably frittered away the afternoon by not hiking.

Despite having lived in Tucson for four years,
I forgot that desert rain is often very localized

Utah photo dump 7: the acrophobe's lament, two more arches, the lay of the land, one more slot canyon, goblins, and our Top Three

Day 15: Moab to Green River

If you are acrophobic, do not try to hike Fisher Towers on a cold, fiercely windy day. We made it almost all the way to the end of the trail, but some tears may have been shed coming back down.

View across the valley from the trailhead. Lovely day.

Another view across the valley.

Hiking up...

...and up

...and down this 8-foot ladder...

There's a section on ladders in the Rules of Acrophobia.

Sigh.

...and up...

...and back down...

Sunlight!

Driving out of the valley. The reef straight ahead
is the edge of Arches National Park.

Next hike: Corona and Bowtie Arch Trail. Although it involves arches, this trail is west of Moab, outside of Arches National Park. Corona Arch is spectacular: 105 feet high, 140 feet wide. There were some challenges for the acrophobe, but slickrock is much grippier than the crumbly Moenkopi sandstone of Fisher Towers, the ledges were much wider, and the sun was out. Plus there was a cheerful fairy godmother offering how-to-get-down advice at the trickiest spots to get down, which helped too.

 

Petroglyphs on the road to the trailhead

Some of the slickrock was steep. Climbing up here was pretty easy.
I slid on my butt coming down, which was also pretty easy. 

This 8-foot ladder is acrophobe approved.

First view of Corona Arch

We've only seen two blooming plants on this entire trip.

Bowtie Arch

View back down into the valley

Can you spot S under the arch?

We stopped back in Moab to tank up.

Last hike of the day: Dead Horse Rim Trail Loop in Dead Horse State Park, which offered great views of the surrounding land and made everything look much less high, since it was all far below us.

Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer collection continues.

Day 16: Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons, plus a valley of Goblins

We made Green River our last stop so that we could hike one last slot canyon loop trail: Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons. The signage says this is the most popular hike on the San Rafael Swell. It's an hour's drive from Green River, into the a very remote area--yet all of the roads are paved, which makes it easily accessible. There were five or six cars in the parking area, which made it two to six times busier than any of our slot canyon hikes in Grand Staircase - Escalante. The canyons include all sorts of boulders and ledges and puddles to climb over, and Little Wild Horse canyon is impressively long, but the slots were never as narrow as the other slot canyons we had walked through. 

Check out the thickness of this bark!

My favorite photo of Carly on this entire trip.

The striations looked like a topo-map. It felt
like we were walking through a fractal.

Big rock--enough room to duck under.

Judging by the colors, a relatively recent rock fall in Bell Canyon:
red iron oxide on the outside, unoxidized sandstone on the inside. 

Little Wild Horse and Bell Canyons are just a few miles away from the equally remote Goblin Valley State Park. This former tidal pool must be a giant mud/clay-slip field when it rains, but when it's dry, you can tromp around the hoodoos.

The photo below was taken in Goblin Valley State Park, where of course one should only drive 10mph--but the thought of driving across the topology of Utah at 10mph made me laugh.

After hiking, we returned to small-town Green River, which is a tad empty in mid-March. I figured it would be pretty easy to nab a Strava Local Legend title there, and hold onto it for a few months (vs. the mere 24-hour taste of legendry I experienced at Horseshoe Bend), so I convinced S to walk the 0.3-mile Riverwalk near the John Wesley Powell River History Museum with me a whopping four times. Only problem was that the Riverwalk wasn't yet a Strava-recognized "segment," so S attempted to turn it into one on our fourth time walking the trail, without success. So much for that.

Green River claims to have the World's Largest Watermelon slice. It's parked in the lot behind the John Wesley Powell River History Museum, on a trailer with a few flat tires--so if we hadn't aimed for that Strava Local Legend title, we never would have seen it.

Schmusi schmusi mit dem G'spusi

The Green River runs through Green River, UT.

The next day we drove back to Salt Lake City, went for a walk in Liberty Park, ate lunch at a vegan dive where Utahans actually insisted on wearing masks, killed an hour at the Museum of Contemporary Art, hopped on the TRAX to the airport, and flew away. The End.

At the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art: "Vote for War" postcards
paperclipped to voter registration forms, by Trevor Paglen (2016)

Our top three places to explore if we come back (unordered):

Capitol Reef National Park; Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument; and Natural Bridges National Monument. And as long as we're in the area (ha! this is how you get five places on a list of three), the ruins and canyons around Bluff and Blanding, and Canyonlands National Park.