Capitol Reef: Sheets Gulch + Sulfur Creek June 16-18th 2011

[gloo]

Wohoo, my first trip report. Bare with me since I might not do this right haha. I don't have a snowball's chance in hell at winning the june contest so i'm bunching the whole trip into one report.


Me and my friend Ren left early afternoon on June 16th for Capitol Reef. Its actually my first time there – I usually avoid crowds and NPs are known for crowds. We got to the Fruita campground around 5 and wandered around aimlessly looking (like idiots) for a campsite. We finally cornered the campground host and luckily there was 1 site left: a walk in campsite with no firepit. Guess we brought all that wood for nothing. Oh well.


We did the quick Fremont hike overlook hike that night, I think it was like 2 miles. Nice easy hike to get the trip going. We were tired so ended up going to bed at 9:30. Probably the earliest I have gone to bed in years. At about 9 the next morning we rolled out of bed and the two who drove up that morning had already arrived at our camp and looked on the verge of pulling a prank...plan averted.


We headed out to sheets gulch along the bullfrog nottam road. I used some non deet bug spray that I just got. I immediately regretted it. We got hounded by what looked like big grey flys. Luckily as we entered the narrows we gave them the slip. We encountered a large scout troop on the hike but beyond that we had the trail to ourselves. Its a really fun hike and a lot less technical that I had the impression it would be. Dunno if that's a plus or minus. We climbed up under elephant arch (that's what climb-utah calls it – is that the real name?) and dinked around for a bit before heading on. I thought the trail was about 9 miles but by the end we logged just about 13 miles. A solid hike and lots of fun.


Came back to camp and made dinner...we burned our tin foil pizza but hey we still ate it. Weather turned on us – it started raining and we rushed to clean up camp quickly and head for the tents. Sat in the tents just chatting for the rest of the night.


Last day of the hike we hit up sulfur creek. I'm used to not seeing crowds nor extreme hiking noobs so this was different for me as I saw both. I wouldn't consider it a hard hike and it was sure fun to show off how comfortable we were with some of the terrain haha. I brought along my 60D on this hike (but not sheets) so I got a couple of decent shots. It was hard though – there were people who would linger around the places I wanted and I made a bad choice and didn't use my nd8 filter. According to my GPS I went 7.1 miles total on the hike which is about 2 more than the hike claims to be. I know we did a lot of goofing off but I didn't realize we did that much.


After that, we split off and me and ren went along the main road looking for some good shots and some scenery. We weren't ready to head home yet. Of course we immediately noticed Fremont falls (I think that's what they were). Either way, they caught our eye immediately so we stopped got some shots and then looked at each other with that, we gotta do this look. So we jumped right in. The back current was really strong and I got caught in it after I came up, I had to give it my all to get out of it. Worth it though, it was fun and we got some good pics from it. Walking past the TV the other night I caught a clip on a kid almost drowning in the very spot. Yikes.


We stopped at chilzz in torrey on our way out of capitol reef and headed home. Good shakes and cool looking family business. Overall, a great trip. Weather was phenomenal during the day. Mid 70's both days.

[gloo]

pics:
Group pic on sulfur creek!


Ren diving right in, sequence shot :D


single shot


Yours truly. Pale in comparison to diving, but still...


Incredibly awesome - this is all petrified wood! from sheets gulch





if you haven't noticed, we love jumping off stuff.


mud sliding. its the new thing.


sufur creek waterfall 1

sufur creek waterfall 2. there are some great falls on this hike :D

[Iceaxe]

[QUOTE=gloo;460639]We climbed up under elephant arch (that's what climb-utah calls it

[Iceaxe]

And I can't believe someone would actually dive into this swimming hole.....

[gloo]

yeah, the official name is quite boring. Elephant arch is the perfect name for it haha. as far as diving...if you're gonna go stupid, you gotta commit to it, right? Course I'm one to speak. I considered doing something cool, but in the end I just didn't trust the high waters enough

[CarpeyBiggs]

sweet tr. thanks gloo.

[Branch]

Looks very cool. Been meaning to go there.

[gnwatts]

Nice TR.