All these years at Zion and I had never been through Kolob Creek. Well, that was going to change. Derrick and I were scheduled to go through it and sure enough when the time came, we had favorable weather and a low discharge from the reservoir. I was excited. There is something about Kolob Creek that makes you a bit nervous because of the notorious accident that happened there years ago, but conditions were nowhere near that now. Derrick and I were going to do it as an overnight rather than hike out the MIA route. It sounded more fun to me that way. We got a good start in the morning with a drop off at Lava Point.
From there we had to bushwhack our way through the woods until we were able to track down the first rappel. It was from a tree and the canyon really looked beautiful below with kind of a green garden like setting with a low flow of water. It was a moderately long first rappel and then we pulled our rope and had completed Kolob Creek. Now the only job left was to do the rest of the canyon. It went pretty quickly. There were a series of shorter than longer raps through pools of water that needed quite a few floating disconnects.
Then we climb out and do it again. This canyon is magical. It quickly became one of my favorite canyoneering canyons in Zion. There were waterfalls, swimming, rappelling, and stunning beauty. We finished it up with a really long last rappel. This was all just so incredible and I think even Derrick who hated water was enjoying it. Once we had done the last rappel, the journey still continued. I was a little frustrated because my camera LCD screen was no longer working but I was still able to take some pictures.
There were waterfalls coming in from the side and even though it was no longer technical, there were still beautiful narrows all the way through the canyon. Derrick and I followed this thing downstream with just the longest stretch of narrow canyon that I have seen.
There were a few more water features with short drops that we had to navigate. We were a little too lazy to put our wetsuits fully back on, so we toughed it out as we climbed down these shorter drops and swam through the pools.
Two really interesting things that happened. First, we were following along the water when all of a sudden, gone. The water literally went straight into the ground. Seriously, around one corner we were over waist deep in the water. The next corner it went subterranean and the rest of the way through the canyon was dry. The other really odd thing was there was an incredibly fine dust coating the canyon for about a mile.
This dust must have come from a truly massive rock fall but the source of it was unknown. It was awesome to see two things in nature that I had never seen before. Derrick and I found a good spot to throw down a sleeping pad for the night and had a decent meal and a good rest. In the morning, we followed the canyon out until we reached the Narrows.
I was incredibly impressed by just how long this canyon ended up being with so much Narrows. I immediately wanted to go back to spend more time in there. True wilderness and just stunning beauty in a way that you can not take a picture of to capture. We hiked out the Narrows with the throngs of other humans but we really enjoyed that two day trip.
One of my favorite places in the world is Deep Creek. After taking the trip through there a few years earlier with Kelsey and Nick, I wanted to go back. There is just something so incredible about how remote and untrammeled that place is that makes one excited to experience it. This time I was going with Ian. We got Robbie to drive us up to Webster Flat which was an entire day of work for him because we had to drive all the way to Cedar City, then out towards Cedar Breaks until we found the Webster Flat Road. From there, we drove a ways down this dirt road.
We were using an old route description so finding the head of the route was not entirely perfect. We found where a sizable stream crossed under the road and decided to start from there. We had over 40 miles to get back to Zion Canyon which we could see from the road above was a long ways a way. The way started with us crossing the creek next to an empty house. From there it was just walking in and out of the creek in open fields with large trees next to us. The way was rather easy with no real obstacles to get in our way. There were some rockfalls to climb around from ancient volcanism.
The main creek drainage came in but we seemed to be on the right track. We were quickly deep in the canyon though with the cliffs rising steadily further above us. Soon we came upon a female deer with two brand new fawns. She took off like a crazy lady up the hill and just left these newborns there alone. We felt really bad about disturbing the peace, but hoped she would find her way back. She was a mile out of sight before we even left the fawns. We continued down canyon and the way became more brushy. There were times that we had to fight the oak and times where we would walk directly in the creek.
Sometimes we would go way up to get around obstacles, but all the time we kept Deep Creek in sight. One aspect of being out here that was truly remarkable were all the beaver dams. There were multiple places where we had to find a way around the lakes that were created by beaver. I was glad to see that here was a place where the beaver could thrive. There were also places where there were small waterfalls to get around. They offered a little bit of interest for us to break the monotony of the mountainous stream. We continued the first day until we got tired of walking and we found a place that was flat and dry to camp.
The next day we continued downstream.We had made quite a bit of progress that first day so we knew it was not going to be incredibly long before we made it to where Crystal Creek came in and the end of terra incognita. First, we ran into the largest of lakes we had seen yet. Before 9 am, we had hit a road and we followed that. It kind of took the whole wilderness experience away, but that is okay. We soon hit the confluence of Crystal Creek and Deep Creek. Since we knew we had a little bit of extra time, we decided to hike up to the waterfall.
It was well worth it and Crystal Creek really is a highlight of this trip not worth missing. When we made it back to the confluence that is when it starts to get really narrow. Hog's Heaven with a giant flow of basalt loomed to the east. We just followed this canyon downstream as it got more and more narrow. Ian really was enjoying it even though we had to be way more careful with our footing up here. The rocks were actually slippery because people had not been walking over them for decades. We decided that we were going to try to make it down to the confluence of the North Fork of the Virgin River.
It was hours of narrow canyon walking that luckily never required us to get wet. We did a good job of staying upright given the slippery rock, but truly the experience can not be wrapped up in words. It was high canyon walls on a beautiful June day to enjoy. Before dinner time, we made it to the confluence. Here we were able to hear other groups start to make their way down the canyon. We camped in the administrative site under the overhang that I love. The next morning it was the usual of checking permits and talking to visitors as we casually made our way out to the trailhead with a bit of social trail work along the way.
The masses of people was always overwhelming but it was refreshing to both of us to know that there is a place like Deep Creek out there that still is pristine and still is amazing, yet not many people have the time or energy to make it there.
