Spring Creek

Amazingly, I got Jacqueline up early in the morning on a day that she was doing an evening program. The occasion: a hike into Spring Creek just north of the Kolob section of the park. The drive was only about half an hour from our house in Toquerville. We parked at the edge of a dirt road and then began walking up it. As soon as I was about five minutes into the hike I realized that I was here before. This was the spot that I hiked last year with Alan and Ellen. Oh well, we did not go that far, so Jacqueline and I could have a good time with it. We were hauling on this day, as we only had a few hours before Jacqueline would have to go home and get ready for work. We made it to the narrow part almost immediately after the spring that gave the drainage its name gave out. It was a genuine slot through some of it, while other parts were more open. The canyon was beautiful and I pointed out to Jacqueline where last year I saw the owl. We continued our way up and the going was pretty easy. 

There were places that we had to get up and over or around, but usually it was just an open flat canyon. There were some trees down occasionally and some side canyons to look up, but mainly we just tried to move fast. We were only allowing ourselves 75 minutes each way, since we left at 9:15am and we needed to be back by 11:45am. At about 10:15 we came upon a side slot that looked appealing. We decided to spend our last fifteen minutes checking that out. It was a good decision. The canyon was very narrow and vegetated. It was not a true slot, though, as much of the narrowness was box like instead of cave like where the walls close you in. We continued until we hit the magic minute of 10:30am where we were forced to turn around. I thought we did as well as we could with the time that we allowed ourselves. We made it farther than when I went with Alan and Ellen, which just shows how tough my beautiful fiancé is. It still left us with more to do later. 

On the way back, it seemed to take all the time that we allowed ourselves also, which just goes to show that the both of us were in pretty good shape by this point in the season. I was happy we could make that hike as we always talk about using our mornings more productively and this time we did it.