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Thread: Smith Fork Canyon

  1. #1

    Smith Fork Canyon

    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.

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    We found a shallow side canyon that only had a little bit of scrambling to make our way into Smith Fork.

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    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.

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    After a couple of miles or so, we came upon a really nice, albeit short, narrow slot side canyon.

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    We were able to climb out of the canyon onto the slickrock that we were looking for.

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    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.

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    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.

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    And here's a map of our route:

    Viewing on a mobile device? Click this link to open the map: 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

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  3. #2
    Awesome TR for your first one! I like your way of choosing a location to explore. Crazy about having to bushwhack through tumbleweeds. I think I would have had a difficult time turning around to go back without first reaching the current water level.
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  4. #3
    Excellent report. The tumbleweeds are indeed a nice touch.

  5. #4
    Nice looking canyon.

  6. #5
    Content Provider Emeritus ratagonia's Avatar
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    Nice TR, and uh, you did a better job of staying out of trouble than we did!

    http://www.math.utah.edu/~sfolias/ca...ale/?i=psychoD

    Tom

  7. #6
    Excellent report. Yep, I bet the tumbleweeds sucked!


  8. #7
    We did debate continuing on to the current water level. But we try not to push back the turn-around time once we've decided what it will be. Of course, we ended up finding a way to climb out without backtracking, so we easily had another two hours to explore, if we had only known!

    Tom, that sounds rough...I'm glad our exploration was much easier!

    My wife really hated the tumbleweeds. She wears shorter boots and lighter pants, so they were cutting into her pretty good. Usually I would climb through them and then try to move them out of the way for her. We ran into blockages like that about 5 times, I think.

    But it was a fun, easy day!

    Keith

  9. #8
    Content Provider Emeritus ratagonia's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by keithd View Post
    My wife really hated the tumbleweeds. She wears shorter boots and lighter pants, so they were cutting into her pretty good. Usually I would climb through them and then try to move them out of the way for her. We ran into blockages like that about 5 times, I think.

    But it was a fun, easy day!

    Keith
    Do you carry a lighter? Tumbleweeds are an invasive species, fair game in GCNRA.

    T

  10. #9
    Nice TR Keith. Sounds like me a few years ago. Next you realize how much more you can see if you learn this technical thing. Tom.....dude. You have stories.
    "I approach nature with a certain surly ill-will, daring Her to make trouble"

    -Edward Abbey

  11. #10
    I do carry a lighter...and the thought did cross my mind. But I figured with my luck I would start some weird rock fire, or something!

    I have taken a technical canyoneering class, and I am really wanting to do more technical stuff, but I gotta find people to go with...my wife is not too keen on the technical canyons!

  12. #11
    Zions the "s" is silent trackrunner's Avatar
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    cool exploration TR

    there is an open invite for tech canyons next weekend
    http://www.bogley.com/forum/showthre...sh-roost-swell

    I understand you on starting some sort of rock fire. I too would be worry about starting a large brush fire or a slow burning fire that would block my exit or cause the wind to move the pile towards me.

  13. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by keithd View Post
    I do carry a lighter...and the thought did cross my mind. But I figured with my luck I would start some weird rock fire, or something!
    I wouldn't be surprised if a fire in a slot could suck out a ton of oxygen depending how tight the space was.

    (I've got experience with this in a snow cave )

  14. #13
    Thanks for the info, Trackrunner. Let me see what the calendar looks like for next weekend.

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