The first day of our S Utah vacation. After attending church in Hurricane, we milled around the Zion visitor center while waiting to check into the Canyon Ranch Motel in Springdale (a nice value, clean spacious rooms, a shaded grassy area in the middle of the units, clean outdoor pool, friendly managers). After getting settled, we set out in the early evening to check out a hike on the east side of Zion just past the big tunnel. I'd found the description of the Shelf Canyon hike in my months of searching the internet and planning for this trip. It is a half-mile hike into a narrow canyon that narrows down to a slot at the end of the canyon. It is not an official trail, nor signed, nor anything. The mouth of Shelf Canyon is located at the canyon overlook parking lot on the north side of the road about 500 ft east of the canyon overlook trail.
We arrived to a traffic jam due to the presence of a herd of 20 to 30 bighorn sheep on the south side of the road (well, a Zion NP traffice jam, not a Yellowstone traffic jam, which meant about 15 cars filling the small lot). We eventually found space to park, loaded up the packs, and set off to find the trail into the canyon. It was a beautiful evening, 80 degrees or so, shaded by the mountains from the evening sun.
We found the trail down into the canyon on the east side of the canyon, dropping into the canyon from the shoulder of the highway. As we started down we found a couple stray sheep just off the trail.
Once in the bottom of the canyon, we started up the slickrock bottom. The first part of the trail was a mixture of walking in the sandy bed of the wash along with quite a bit of slickrock scrambling as we worked our way back up into the canyon. It narrowed down quite a bit, and there were a few tricky places where you had to work your way up and across fairly steep sandstone faces to get around big boulders or pools. Difficult enough to make it fun and a little exciting. Melinda, our 9-year old was frightened by a few of the passages, but was able to do it with my help. Coming down I used a short length of rope around the girls in one place for safety in case of a slip.
As we progressed up, the canyon narrowed, trees and brush drew in closer, and the walls grew higher. Then suddenly in front of us, the canyon narrowed to a slot. Yes! Just what we were looking for!
We entered the slot, shoulder width at its narrowest, splashed through a short, ankle deep pool, and began climbing broken sandstone boulders as we neared the end of the canyon. After a short scramble, the canyon ends in a narrow, dark slot, with numerous shelfs and ledges, really quite a fun place to explore. And from the dark canyon bottom, you look up past the sheer, red sandstone walls close by on either side of you to the narrow slit of light far above. This is it! This is what we came to explore on this vacation - cliffs and canyons with a unique beauty unlike anywhere else! A great short hike/scamble to start our trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment