So by now you all must realize that I love those slot canyons. So many to explore, yet so little time to do so! These images are from a weekend trip to the San Rafael Swell. This is a great area for canyon exploration for me as it is within reach for a regular weekend trip.
On this trip, I decided to take SuzAnn to a slot canyon I had done with my sister Carlin and her family years ago. The only difference being that we planned to connect it with another slot canyon called Bell Canyon. The hike would turn out to be about a 10 mile loop.
We left the Salt Lake valley straight from work on a Friday night and made it to the trailhead around midnight where we found a side road to pull off and set up the tent for our 2 nights stay. The surrounding area is very barren with only a small bush here and there and generally no trees except for nearby the canyon entrances.
Morning dawned clear and very cool with temps around 35 degrees. But the temperature warmed up nicely as day progressed, getting to around 50-55 degrees. Perfect hiking weather!
Little Wildhorse is generally family friendly, with little obstacles to prevent navigating the entire canyon.The difference from my trip here years ago was a section about 3/4 of the way in that was blocked with a large chokestone with deep water on the far side. An alternate trail had been navigated to bypass this section by climbing up out of the canyon to a series of ledges.
The mistake we made was to follow another couple thinking they knew something we didn’t. The out come was a 2 mile out of our way hike that ended up about a hundred yards away from where we started. Certainly learned my lesson to rely on my own navigational skills and not others. That way if something went wrong I would have no one to blame but myself. At any rate, no harm done, just a little more hiking than we had hoped to do.
Once you reach the end of Little Wildhorse Canyon, you have to make a long (couple miles) loop around some cliffs to get to the entrance of Bell Canyon. This section began to fatigue me and thoughts of only being about halfway through the journey were entering my head. I rationalized it by telling myself that Bell Canyon would be “a walk in the park” and all downhill.
Well the all downhill part was about right! But the canyon turned out to be far more difficult than Little Wildhorse. The was on dryfall after another to negotiate. Some drops as much as 15-20 feet! Most were negotiated by me downclimbing/dropping to the canyon floor and the letting SuzAnn use my body as a ladder/staircase to get down. It was actually quite a bit of fun except the two of us were getting very tried and daylight was running out.
We did make it back to the trailhead without any major incidents, but what the trailhead signpost said shoud take 6 hours ended up taking us about 8 1/2! We then returned to our little tent for the old standby dinner of Ramen and canned chicken and a well deserved rest before our trip home the next day.
The San Rafael area has numerous other slot canyons that we will have to go back and explore in seasons to come…
