keithd
03-09-2011, 09:26 PM
Well, I thought I would try my hand at my first trip report, so let's give this a shot.
Back in January, my wife and I sprung for a scenic flight out of Moab over the Roost, Lake Powell, the Maze, and the Needles. It wasn't easy to pay that much for a couple of hours in a plane, but I just felt like I wanted to get a better idea of some more remote places that I might want to explore. I took my GPS and marked a lot of places that I thought looked cool.
One of those places was a huge slickrock area along Lake Powell just outside of Ticaboo. From the air it looked like a mostly flat slickrock area that would just be fun to hike.
So this past weekend we headed out to Bullfrog to see if we could find the slickrock. We drove up a decent dirt road just south of Ticaboo, and found a nice overlook of the slickrock, and it still looked really big and relatively flat: all kinds of fun. We were able to get pretty close to a canyon that evidently cut through the slickrock. It turns out that the canyon was Smith Fork.
We parked the truck and headed across the desert towards the canyon.
42349
We found a shallow side canyon that only had a little bit of scrambling to make our way into Smith Fork.
42350
And then we started down canyon towards Lake Powell. Keep in mind that we were looking for the slickrock, and we didn't have any information at all about the canyon, so we weren't really expecting anything. The canyon got narrow and deeper as we went, and we kept running into lots of tumbleweeds blocking the canyon.
42352
After a couple of miles or so, we came upon a really nice, albeit short, narrow slot side canyon.
42351
We were able to climb out of the canyon onto the slickrock that we were looking for.
42353
42354
But it turns out that the area wasn't nearly as flat as it looked from the air, or even from the overlook! It was still big, and it was really nice, and we hiked around for a while.
But then we decided that the canyon itself was pretty fun, so we headed back down into Smith Fork and continued down canyon. The canyon got pretty narrow and deep in several places, and we really enjoyed it.
42355
A lot of the reason we liked it was because we had found it ourselves. I've found since then that the canyon is detailed on some websites, but we had never heard of it, so it felt like we had found it all by ourselves. And we had it all to ourselves, so that was also nice.
We reached our turn-around time right when we got to where the old lake levels used to be. But looking around, I thought we might have a fighting chance of climbing out of the canyon at that point. We climbed out of the canyon over the slickrock domes until we came to a cliff band. We figured we were stuck and going to have to descend back to the canyon and backtrack out. But fiddling around the cliff, we found a spot that we thought we might be able to climb. I'm still not sure how we got lucky enough to find one good spot, but we did, and we were able to climb out of the canyon without risking too much death. Then it was just about 3 miles of desert hiking back to the truck, while my wife used a magnet to look for meteors, and she seemed to find all kinds of iron rocks.
But we had a great time just because we felt like we were exploring, and that was interesting. Usually we head out to places we read about, so it was fun to find a place on our own.
As a side note, we drove around outside of Hanksville on Sunday and found the Mars Research Station...weird.
42356
And here's a map of our route:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=37.615387,-110.653868&spn=0.029983,0.066175&t=p&z=14&msid=215791867867832861001.00049e19fe196c79bd70e
Anyway, first trip report...am I long-winded enough?!
Keith
Back in January, my wife and I sprung for a scenic flight out of Moab over the Roost, Lake Powell, the Maze, and the Needles. It wasn't easy to pay that much for a couple of hours in a plane, but I just felt like I wanted to get a better idea of some more remote places that I might want to explore. I took my GPS and marked a lot of places that I thought looked cool.
One of those places was a huge slickrock area along Lake Powell just outside of Ticaboo. From the air it looked like a mostly flat slickrock area that would just be fun to hike.
So this past weekend we headed out to Bullfrog to see if we could find the slickrock. We drove up a decent dirt road just south of Ticaboo, and found a nice overlook of the slickrock, and it still looked really big and relatively flat: all kinds of fun. We were able to get pretty close to a canyon that evidently cut through the slickrock. It turns out that the canyon was Smith Fork.
We parked the truck and headed across the desert towards the canyon.
42349
We found a shallow side canyon that only had a little bit of scrambling to make our way into Smith Fork.
42350
And then we started down canyon towards Lake Powell. Keep in mind that we were looking for the slickrock, and we didn't have any information at all about the canyon, so we weren't really expecting anything. The canyon got narrow and deeper as we went, and we kept running into lots of tumbleweeds blocking the canyon.
42352
After a couple of miles or so, we came upon a really nice, albeit short, narrow slot side canyon.
42351
We were able to climb out of the canyon onto the slickrock that we were looking for.
42353
42354
But it turns out that the area wasn't nearly as flat as it looked from the air, or even from the overlook! It was still big, and it was really nice, and we hiked around for a while.
But then we decided that the canyon itself was pretty fun, so we headed back down into Smith Fork and continued down canyon. The canyon got pretty narrow and deep in several places, and we really enjoyed it.
42355
A lot of the reason we liked it was because we had found it ourselves. I've found since then that the canyon is detailed on some websites, but we had never heard of it, so it felt like we had found it all by ourselves. And we had it all to ourselves, so that was also nice.
We reached our turn-around time right when we got to where the old lake levels used to be. But looking around, I thought we might have a fighting chance of climbing out of the canyon at that point. We climbed out of the canyon over the slickrock domes until we came to a cliff band. We figured we were stuck and going to have to descend back to the canyon and backtrack out. But fiddling around the cliff, we found a spot that we thought we might be able to climb. I'm still not sure how we got lucky enough to find one good spot, but we did, and we were able to climb out of the canyon without risking too much death. Then it was just about 3 miles of desert hiking back to the truck, while my wife used a magnet to look for meteors, and she seemed to find all kinds of iron rocks.
But we had a great time just because we felt like we were exploring, and that was interesting. Usually we head out to places we read about, so it was fun to find a place on our own.
As a side note, we drove around outside of Hanksville on Sunday and found the Mars Research Station...weird.
42356
And here's a map of our route:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=37.615387,-110.653868&spn=0.029983,0.066175&t=p&z=14&msid=215791867867832861001.00049e19fe196c79bd70e
Anyway, first trip report...am I long-winded enough?!
Keith