The Middle Fork

 Woody and I were scheduled to hike up the Middle Fork of Taylor Creek to count people. I had never been to the back of the Middle Fork, so I decided that this was a good day to do that. We saw the arch crew while we were out there working on the restoration of the Taylor Creek cabins. We made it all the way to the Double Arch Alcove, which for most people is the turn around point. But on this day, we went farther. We ran into a semi-dryfall if not for the small spring coming out of the dryfall about halfway up. It was only a small flow of water, but still interesting for where Zion likes to place it's springs.
We had to go around on the right where there was a steep sandy slope. Once above that, the signs of people started to dwindle away except for the few that had followed us. We went farther and farther up this brushy canyon until it got more narrow. We had to climb either up or around a certain number of obstacles until we got to the back of the canyon where there was an impassable obstacle. We looked at it and it may have been possible to get around it on the left, but it would have been challenging. We weren't quite up for that on a day we were specifically just supposed to be counting people. Curiously, there was an old junky rope hanging at the end of the canyon. Woody and I cut it with a rock as high as we could to keep people from trying to climb up it. We turned around and went down the canyon. There was another large alcove on the left as we went downstream, so Woody and I decided to check it out. It turned out to be this amazing spot.

It was enormous in scale and looked like a prime spot to have a camp spot. We looked around and sure enough there was an old campfire. I thought it could be a place to find pictographs, but there were not any pictographs there. Just this beautiful, cool spot as an oasis to the 100 degree heat we were hiking in during every other day. After that it was back to the canyon proper, then the trail, and the hike out. We were counting people and we were over what was the standard for that area. Woody, somehow got into some poison ivy and had to go to the clinic a couple days later. I didn't get any, but he had it pretty bad. Fun little exploration in the Kolob area.