Trail Canyon

I got a call from Eric on Saturday morning and his idea was to go check out Trail Canyon. Since that is a place that I have wanted to visit for quite some time, I was excited. We headed out at 11:00am and were to the Right Fork Trailhead before noon. Right Fork was similar to last weekend except we found a trail to avoid all of the tough rock scrambling around the Left Fork. We ended up at the Trail Canyon junction and started heading up. Immediately we saw the signs of last year's massive flood. Trail Canyon flashed big time and the impact was rather severe. We could see where the floodwaters were twenty feet up on the walls. It was crazy. We continued our hike and expected to be cliffed out at anytime. We just never were. Once we had to scramble around a pour-off but then we saw something unique to find in Zion. A slope to access some higher country. It was rather easy going and the burn from a few years previous helped us to push on through. When we made it above the slope, we continued up the drainage until we ran into another slope to ascend. Above that was some of the most spectacular views of Zion. In one direction, you could see Tabernacle Dome, Firepit Knoll, Red Butte, Spendlove Knoll, Cave Valley, etc... In the other direction, there was the West Temple, Kinesava, The Towers of the Virgin. It was amazing and we both realized the exciting potential of Trail Canyon. From our viewpoint, we looked out to our left and thought about the broken steep slope and whether that was possible. It was possible, it seemed, just difficult. 

Instead we headed south to check out Cougar Mountain. Wondering whether we could reach the summit, we caught our view over the next ridge. The answer for this day seemed to be no as we were going to have a tough time keeping enough daylight. We were surprised to see just how flat it was near the top. It was also exciting to see all the hoodoo type formations that resembled Cave Valley. We decided to forget the summit on this day and instead headed over to an arch. From there we were granted with a view straight down into the Coalpits drainage. It was just awesome and we fully appreciated the spot we were located in. The nice part about it was that we agreed it was easy to get to. We did not have to risk our lives with any crazy maneuvers, so coming back was not a daunting task in any way. Turning around was a good idea as we popped out a little bit after six. It would not have been fun to get stuck out there just to reach the summit of Cougar Mountain.