Trip Report, Culvert Canyon and Dragonfly (attempt)

[Scott P]

February 27: Culvert Canyon/Corona and Bowtie Arches/Delicate Arch

The original plan was to climb Mount Antero a Colorado 14er, but since the committed people said they would rather wait for better weather Justin Kuhn and I headed for Moab for Friday and Saturday. We had a class in Grand Junction on Thursday anyway and Moab is only 1.5 hours from there.

First on the agenda was Culvert Canyon. We part at the trailhead and quickly made our way up canyon on the east bench before dropping into the canyon. We hiked down the canyon in warm weather but found that most of the potholes in the shaded sections of the canyon were frozen over. Most of the canyon is fairly wide and open, but it does have one slot section. The slot was pretty neat since it had water flowing over the slickrock into a crystal clear pool of water. The only down side was that we had to wade across the water to get down the canyon. We waded across the ice cold pool of water (belly deep) to a nice rappel into a grotto. The rest of the canyon just had minor scrambling.

Next we decided to make the easy hike up to Corona and Bowtie Arches. The arches were impressive, as always.

After doing the easy hike to Corona and Bowtie it was decided that there was still time to drive over to Arches National Park and hike to Delicate Arch in time to see the sunset. We drove to the National Park and quickly hiked up to the arch. Since we still had time available before sunset we climbed some of the bumps and ledges in the slickrock around Delicate Arch and visited two other arches as well. Justin dropped his camera down a 75 foot cliff while climbing up to one of the arches. We watched it bounce down the cliff and watched the battery fly out while the camera continued to bounce down the cliff before landing in the bottom of a sandy wash. I was able to climb down to the camera using a series of ledges and amazingly I found that after putting the battery back in the camera it still worked.

We returned to Delicate Arch and watch the sunset paint the rocks the rocks pink and paint a lighter pink on the La Sal Mountains before returning to the vehicle. We were able to get several photos before the camera died for good.















February 28: Dragonfly Canyon/Eye of the Whale/Tower Arch

We hung around Moab until 9 am in order to get a new camera (the other camera was dropped off the cliff-see February 27 entry) and headed back into Arches National Park for an attempt of Dragonfly Canyon. My foot was really hurting, but I don

[moab mark]

Nice pics. Looks like you had a good time.

[Cirrus2000]

Good stuff, Scott. Nice pics - thanks!