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.

Firepit Knoll

Well, we really wanted to try out Jacqueline's new snowshoes so that I could show her just how awesome they are. Here is some product endorsement, buy MSR Denali Snowshoes and you will not be disappointed. They rock! Anyway, Jacqueline did not know this yet, so I wanted to introduce her to the new and exciting world of snowshoeing. So we drove up into the park. The Kolob Terrace Road was supposed to be closed at Maloney Hill, so we headed on up. When we got to where it was closed, there was no place to park. We had to drive a couple of miles down the road before we finally found a spot where we could park the big red van. Then we got out, threw our backpacks on, and off we went up the road. We talked about what to do. It would be quite a ways to get back to where it was closed and frankly walking the KT road is not my idea of a good time. I have always wanted to go to the top of Firepit Knoll, but this would prevent us from doing any snowshoeing. We could see the top from where we were and frankly it seemed to be snow free. It seemed like a good alternative, though, so we decided upon that. We walked past the Hop Valley Trailhead and then turned off on the road out to the Firepit residence. We went to where I figured it looked the least brushy and then started heading uphill. It was a beautiful day and it felt good to the expending a bit of energy after being basically laid up with my injury. The air was calm with no wind, unlike the previous day when I had trouble breathing on my run. Jacqueline was pace setting and I think she was attempting to set a speed ascent record for Firepit. I took over after a bit and she liked the pace better. We continued up and soon it got steeper and more snowy. I tried to show Jacqueline how to kick steps, but she did not like it. The snow was very hard and the angle kept getting steeper. Our adventure seemed doomed. Luckily, strapped to Jacqueline's pack were her new MSR Denali Classic snowshoes. I assisted her and getting them on her feet, a very easy process. Then she stood up and started walking. Amazingly, she felt confident in every step. See, built in to the snowshoes are a crampon. That must have been a revolutionary development in snowshoe technology when someone said, "Hey I don't see why we need to have people use tennis rackets on flat land and sharp, impaling spikes on steep slopes. Let's combine them." Well, it was a great idea, for on this day the snowshoe was used for two purposes. First, as the crampon to get a first time user up a steep slope. Then, once we reached the crater, to keep Jacqueline from sinking in some steep snow. I just used my boots up the slope, as I understood the concept of kicking steps from doing it since my youth. Once on top of the crater, though, I chucked on the snowshoes just to enjoy using them. It was really neat up there. I knew that Firepit was an extinct volcano and I knew it had a good crater, but it was so much better to see it in person. We decided to circumnavigate the crater. The views were awesome and anyone who has not seen Zion in winter needs to come on out and enjoy the beauty. We made it all the way around and then decided to take a trip into the crater. It feels weird to be standing in the presence of a volcano no matter how many hundreds of thousands of years the last eruption was. We headed back down after a while. I kept the snowshoes on just to aid my descent. Jacqueline kept them on a little while longer, but the descent was quick. In fact, the whole trip was quick taking only about 2.5 hours, when we intended to be out for the whole day. Oh well, we'll have to try again to get a really big day in there somewhere around the corner.

Birch Creek

So for everyone just dying to see what happened to my lip, oh boy, here it is! And for everyone who does not know what happened, here is the story. New Years' Day evening, I was getting up out of the chair in the basement, when I put my weight in the foot part of the weight bench. It was up so down swung this metal thing. The next thing I knew, Jacqueline was screaming and I had no idea what was happening until there was blood running down my face. I don't even remember pulling the leg thing from the weight bench off my face. I just went to the bathroom sink, started spitting blood into the sink, and I told Jacqueline to go get me a towel. It bled quite a bit, but the towel stopped the bleeding. Jacqueline was going nuts, but I was pretty chill about the whole deal. I guess that is shock kicking in. We drove down to St. George and they fixed me right up. The doc called it a through and through. That was because my lip was split completely all the way through. He did a good job fixing me up, though. It only took about two hours and they put the Georgia-Hawaii game on the tv for me to watch. It went well and to look at it from a mirror, it seemed not so bad. Then came the sitting around and healing process. My lip swelled up like a balloon, like a big pus filled balloon. Then it started to go down and I was able to get my stitches out only six days afterward. I also was able to get a job on that day too working for H&R Block during the tax season. Oh boy! I finally was able to get a hike in on Thursday, a mere nine days after the injury. I decided to take it easy and just go somewhere up in the main canyon that I had not taken the time to explore yet. Birch Creek is right across from the shuttle bus stop for Court of the Patriarchs. Since it has no official trail on any maps, it does not see the volume of people that other areas in Zion see. It is much like the drainage for the Emerald Pools, except quite a bit bigger. I set off and there was a trail for me to use. It took me past the area where the horses turn around from the Sand Bench Trail. Soon I was heading up the canyon and the trail stayed quite good. I had excellent views of the Court of the Patriarchs, peering up to see if anyone was on Tricks of the Trade on Isaac. The trail continued, but it climbed the north side of the drainage. Soon I was quite a ways above the creek. I did not think that snow would be an issue since there was not much on the ground. Unfortunately three other people had hiked this trail before, thus turning the snow into ice on the trail. It became a bit difficult when the trail started to get steeper and head over some large dropoffs. On any other day in Zion, I might be complaining about how muddy or how sandy this trail was, but on this day it was just ice. I continued up until I was only about fifty feet below Abraham. I figured that was about as far as I needed to go and I guessed that this trail was most likely a climbing access route. I had a great view of the two tiered half frozen waterfall coming out of Birch Creek. I was not exactly where I wanted to be, as it would have been nicer to check out the creek. So I went down a different way, which was much easier to walk on the snow rather than the ice. When I hit the creek, I decided to go up it. First it was dry and then it became very wet. It was difficult at times to get around the water when the rocks were slick with a thin coat of snow. I made it to where the water came in from a spring similar to Weeping Rock. After that, it dried out once again. It became mainly a snowy rock drainage and after a while, I decided that there had to be a better day to explore this kind of stuff, maybe when every rock does not have a layer of snow on it. I decided to try out one more drainage before I called it a day. So I went up the drainage between Abraham and Isaac. I expected it to be much like the drainage between Isaac and Moroni. It was very similar in a couple of ways. First there was lots of structure and a pipe that drained water from the area. Birch Creek was one of the main settled areas in Zion, so it has lots of arch sites from settlement. This seemed to be an active site, though, probably a reason that there isn't a trail up here. Next, there was quite a bit of water. I figured there would be a waterfall to check out and there was. I went up to the waterfall and figured that was good enough of a day. My healing lip did not like the cold too much, but I enjoyed the short 2.5 hours of hiking in an unexplored area for me in the park.