What to do when the weatherman is not your friend

[Painted Horse]

We usually go over to the South Slope of the Uintas for Memorial Day every year. I have some friends that moved over to Roosevelt. So it's a way to reconnect wit them. But this years weather forecast didn't look promising. So we wished our Eastern Utah friends well and we headed south trying to find some better weather.

We loaded the horses and trailered them down to the Bryce Canyon area. It had been a couple of years since I had rode in that area and we found some folks who had never been and thought it might be fun to show them some of trails.

Typical of traveling in a group, it was an experience in patience. A couple of hours into the drive down, the other truck called and said they needed a potty stop, So we pulled off in Filmore. everybody ran in bought subway sandwich for lunch. As we returned to the trucks, We found their dog, jumping around inside the cab had locked the doors. And of course the drivers keys were still in the ignition. So we spent a bunch of time trying to get various extensions of our arms thru the slightly open windows to unlock the truck.

We camped near the trailhead for Losee Canyon. And rode up Losee Friday evening. Had a great ride and was pleased to see lots of water coming down the canyon for us to water the horses with.


Even our first time riders had fun


Saturday I was up and had breadfast, then waiting around for our new friends to wake up. When they finally dragged out of bed, we got going and rode from Red Canyon up to Coyote Hollow where we had somebody bring the trail up and pick us up.


The wind had picked up on Saturday and was blowing pretty strong. By evening it was really gusting and all pretty much hid in our tents.

Sunday found the wind still blowing, so we decided to go ride some slot canyons in the Grand Staircase Escalante. We loaded the horses in the trailers and hauled them down thru Tropic and Cannonville. Took me a wrong turn or two to find the place I wanted to park and we got unloaded and headed down the canyon. We had a little 8 year old girl with us who just wasn't enjoying the outing. Between the wind, the horses being excited by the wind, she was bawling that she wanted to walk. So one of the adults took her back to the truck and waited for the rest of us to return.
Heading down the Canyon





Most of our new friends are dedicated motorcycle riders, So we duelly impressed them with getting the horses thru the canyons


As we trailered back from the Grand Staircase, We heard the weather forecast for 3" of snow in the Bryce area. Our new friends decided they had had enough and packed up and headed for home. Dave and I stayed, thinking we would take our chances with the weather. I'm not a fair weather rider, and little snow doesn't bother me unless it's blowing sidewize and pitting my face.

We woke up Monday to beautiful day. Wind had finally died down but the temps had dropped with the passing front. We decided ride up Casto canyon and loop over and back down Losee. that should have gotten us back to camp by noon so we could pack up and head for home at a reasible hour.

The ride up Casto was great. Lots of water for the horses.


But somewhere we missed the turn off for Losee and went all the way thru Casto and came out on the Fremont Trail. Being guys, we refused to turn around and go back looking for where we missed the turn and just decided to follow the Fremont trail until we could cut down and into Losee.

The Fremont trail pretty much stays up on the mesa and we never did find a cut off back down into Losee. We left the trail and wandered around trying to find a way off the Plateau, But were cliffed up with too steep of terrain to get the horses down into Losee.

We continued on across horse bench and found a drainage we could follow downhill. It turned out to be Corral Hollow and took us down into Red Canyon




We followed Red canyon down and back to camp. Our little 4 hour ride turned into 8 hours. But we enjoyed it and had exploring.

Now if the snow would just melt on the Uintas and the weatherman would give me a decent forecast. I'll be heading over that direction.

[trackrunner]

nice

[BruteForce]

Casto Canyon is awesome. Last year (September), a group of us got stuck in the canyon during a thunderstorm and flash flood. FANTASTIC!

[Sombeech]

Cool. We need some more horse riders here. Looks gorgeous down there.

[americanhero]

great report, nice pics

[Udink]

Way cool. Gettin' through that slot canyon looks like a lot of fun.

[Painted Horse]

Willis Canyon is way easier than some of the slots I've done over on the San Rafael Swell.



We were over on the Swell two weeks earlier and rode up Chute, Wild Horse, Earnie and Old Woman canyons.
With the EHV-1 virus, We have been taking the horses to remote spots to keep away from large gatherings of horses.

[accadacca]

Excellent!