The actual Wildcat Canyon

Everyone goes for a hike on the Wildcat Canyon trail. This is a pleasant hike that follows an old road and thus stays rather flat dipping down once to hit the usually dry stream bed of Wildcat Canyon before climbing up to the West Rim and joining that trail. I chose on this day that when I made it to that dry stream bed to go down it. It was late winter, so the stream had some water in it but I was able to stay dry. I made it down there by following a lava flow that put me in the trees. At times I would traverse the banks, but most of the time I could stay right down near the watercourse to follow that through Wildcat Canyon.

It was a good hike, definitely remote, and quite a bit less brushy before the scrub oak started to leaf. This canyon is usually used as an access route into the Right Fork, so thus, it was not usually used. There were no signs of trailing of any sort even though this should be an easy spot to see social trails appear. There were canyons coming in on the left that just looked too appealing to ignore. The second of these I succumbed to the draw of exploring. I looked at my map and realized that I was not going to get anywhere significant, so maybe this canyon could be significant.

 Turned out that it was interesting. It got super narrow at time, but the most interesting part was just how far back it allowed me to go. I was able to go to the very back of the canyon where I could look straight up and see the path the waterfall would take during a rainstorm. This would be a huge waterfall and thus it gave me no hope of climbing up above. There is always that little voice in your head that thinks maybe you can climb out, but with a huge waterfall, that voice was shut down. I continued out of the canyon and was forced to turn around due to time constraints. It still could not stop me from checking out the first such canyon that came in from Sawmill Springs area near campsite 9. This one did not have that straight up wall feature and I even made a half hearted attempt to scramble on out. When it got rather steep and I was by myself, I figured this may not be a wise spot to get myself in trouble just to find out if it would go.

I turned around and headed back out of the canyon. Instead of going the way I came, though, I thought, what could happen if I just decided to go straight up all the scrub oak. Without being leafed out, this was something that was doable, so I did it. It was rather steep at times, but without the leaves, I was able to pick the wisest way up a dense jungle of 7 foot tall oak. Eventually after a sweaty climb, I popped out on the trail and continued back to the trailhead. I was happy once again to do something that I wondered if anyone else had considered trying out in Zion before.