Cow Canyon

My new job at H&R Block has forced me to sit at a desk for ten hours a day M-F, so now on weekends I need to get out. The first of these weekend warrior trips was commenced in the Virgin River Gorge. For all of you who have driven from Las Vegas to St. George, the Virgin River Gorge is the section of highway where you are forced to go 55 mph. Other than that, it is also very scenic and in the summer incredibly hot and dry. So I figured, if we were going to do some exploring, the middle of January seemed like the best prospect. I picked out a route on my new National Geographic Topographical Map software and then got excited.

 Excited enough to pull Jacqueline out of bed on a Sunday morning at 6:30am. She did an excellent job of getting ready quickly and we were out the door and then to the trailhead at the Virgin River Gorge Recreation Area at 8:00am. Our reward: a crossing of the Virgin River with an air temperature of 31 degrees. Knowing that this is going to be incredibly painful, I took off my shoes, socks, and pants, to make the crossing in just my shorts. Once the first step was taken, I had no choice but to get going. It was painful and the only relief I got was when I finally got my shoes, socks, and pants back on. It was an easy crossing though with only knee deep water and a sandy bottom.

 I encouraged Jacqueline and man that girl must love me because she made that crossing with tears coming out of her eyes. Jacqueline has Reynaud's disease which causes a lack of circulation to her extremities, which basically means that this crossing was probably a lot worse for her. I got her shoes and socks back on and although she was not too pleased with me for my choice in winter hikes, we continued on our way. We had a bit of a challenge getting to where our canyon was supposed to start because the river ran into cliffs and we did not want to go back into that thing. So we went up and down steep sides twice until we finally came to a huge opening that we figured was our canyon. 

This was where the cows come in. Almost as soon as we got into the canyon, we ran into a herd of cows. I am glad that someone decided to domesticate the cow because these are some big, dumb creatures. Jacqueline enjoyed their company, but it was kind of a comedy. We were trying to walk on the opposite side of a large drainage so that the cows would just stay put. But every time we got close, they would take off running up canyon. Finally we came to a spot in the canyon that it was incredibly wide. This was our chance and we snuck aroung the cows, having to be at least 50 yards away from them. After this, the canyon narrowed quite a bit and we found ourselves having to make choices on which way to go a lot earlier than I ever expected. 

We continued to make them, though, as the canyon just kept getting narrower. Finally, we ran into a wall about 15 feet high that was not particularly easy to get up and probably a lot more difficult to get down. We decided that we may go around. That meant going up. There was a gully that provided fairly easy access to the plateau above. We both scrambled up to it to a very nice vantage point. There was a huge cairn indicating that we were not the first souls to exit the canyon at this point. We got a good look up canyon the rest of the way and frankly it did not look very exciting. I was surprised because we were supposed to have eight miles of just canyon. It could not have been that long at this point. The only thing left to do to salvage this long hike, was to continue to travel upward. So we did. We followed the ridge, that incredibly was not too steep. Then we ran into the most unlikely of things: a road. So we followed that. It felt good actually to use the road because we could move swiftly not tripping over boulders for the first time all day. We followed the road and I kept checking the map to realize I had no clue where the heck we were. So we pointed to the tallest thing we could find and went to the top of that. From our viewpoint we realized that instead of Sullivan Canyon, we ended up going up Mountain Sheep Canyon. The mouths of these canyons were within a quarter mile of each other. I just saw a big opening and took it. Still our view from the top was incredible and the day was definitely not a waste. My thought starting out was that we could climb to the top of Mt. Bangs, but from where we stood we knew that would not have happened. It is just so difficult to make adequate progress on jagged loose terrain. So we had to head back down to avoid running into issues with daylight. The way down was mostly easy except the gully drop that we climbed up in the beginning. Most of the rock is limestone with big cholla and barrel cactuses around to possibly fall on, thus making the trip down even more precarious. We feel so lucky to live in such a diverse environment as we could drive an hour in any direction and have different landscapes, climate, and topography in those directions. On this day it was the desert in winter and our trip through Cow Canyon ended with a couple more hours out. This times we were able to hustle past the cows. We just loved the scenery as the desert is very beautiful when it is not cooking you like an oven. The end of our hike was rewarded with a much less painful crossing. All and all, we were out for nine hours, went anywhere from 14-18 miles, and gained and lost once again 3000 ft in elevation. Pretty solid day for a trip during the time when daylight is only around for ten hours.