Climbing the Highest Thing Around

Well we had definitely settled into the new house. It had been a trying process of moving back to St. George with trying to buy a new house while we still owned another house back in Oregon, but we did it and now we had two houses to pay for instead of one. This meant that we were just going to be in the house with what we currently owned and were not buying any additional furniture. This kept us pretty tight with money and trips in general, so I figured why not give it a shot to go visit someplace very nearby.
So I gave it a shot since we were living in Coral Canyon and set out directly from our house. We had a paved bike trail that went up the hill and followed around until it went back down the hill. The point where it was going back down the hill I cut off into a wash. The scrambling was rather difficult at times, but after a while I found my way up this wash to a culvert where I could see there was a much easier path to get here. This culvert was huge, so I followed it and it led me directly into Red Cliffs Desert Reserve after crossing right under the freeway.

From here I had a choice after I followed this tricky wash upwards. I could follow the trail it ran into or I could continue up the wash. I chose to continue up the wash. There was no trail, but the going was rather easy with a few obstacles that I could choose to go around. The rocks were pretty neat and the views were great also. It took me through a slick rock wilderness until I popped out with a view of the peaks. There were definitely two prominent sandstone mountains and I decided to head toward them to try my hand at climbing one of them. The terrain led me past large deposits of Moqui marbles and a large amount of well preserved desert country.

When I got to the base of the biggest peak around, I realized it was just a big crumbly mess of rocks. I decided to try climbing it anyway and even though it was not incredibly steep, the looseness of the rocks made the climbing somewhat risky and difficult. There were a couple of places where I thought this might be a bad idea, but instead I continued upward until I reached the summit. The view was spectacular and you could see red rocks for miles. I decided going back down the way I came may not be the best decision, so I traversed the peak to see if I could find a better way down.

This took me across the entire ridge of the peak which wasn't actually too bad. I finally found a way down that looked a bit less sketchy because there was more vegetation, but there were quite a few spots that I had to pick my way down to find something that would not endanger my life. Eventually though, the going became a lot easier and the only thing I had to fear was the occasional stabbing from a poky desert plant. Back on solid ground I found a trail to follow which actually led back around to the base of the peak that I had just climbed. It was super sandy, so staying on it wasn't a great option, so it was back to cross country hiking.

I decided to go back down pretty close to the way that I had come up. This led me back to the house and while the hike had only taken a few hours, I had been able to see amazing red rocks and climb a mountain peak right from my front door. I would say that living here was going to suit me just fine.