Spring Creek Canyon

My beautiful wife turned 30 last week.  On the down side, that means I can no longer tell my buddies that I am married to a chick in her 20’s – something I have been milking for a long time.  On the up side however, since she somehow seems to get more amazing every year, I can excitedly look forward to our next year together even more than the year before. (For those of you who know her well, you know just how lucky I am, and are probably wondering how I ever snagged her in the first place.  P.S… I’ll never tell.)

Why am I prattling on about Stephanie you ask?  It is because otherwise she would be conspicuously absent from this post.  For her birthday she flew back to North Carolina to visit her Mom and a few of her closest girly friends.  They all rented a cabin in the mountains where I imagine they probably giggled a lot while drinking wine around a fire pit and eating bon bons in their flannel pajamas – but that is just a guess.  I anticipate she will create a post from that weekend, but in the meantime, I have a post of my own.

Here it is.

So with the wifey out of town it was just me and the dog sitting on the couch watching Breaking Bad and eating block of cheese.  Ah the life of a bachleor!   And if you know me at all, you will know that lasted about 30 minutes before I was horribly bored and pacing the floor looking for something to do. So Maggie and I decided to go hiking. (Actually it was mostly my decision, but I am pretty sure she agreed.)

My first idea was to climb a mountain - something I have been putting off since I got here.  There is one mountain in particular which has been rubbing me the wrong way - peeking at me tauntingly over the sandstone cliffs to the Northeast.  Unfortunately after quickly researching the idea of climbing one, it turns out that most of the mountains in this area are - not surprisingly - somewhat large and what they call “very challenging”.  It is as though they are specifically designed to prevent people like me – with limited physical stamina - from ever climbing them.  With some quick calculations, I quickly deduced that the chances reaching the top of one and getting back down again before dark was… let’s say risky.  (OK fine… it was suicidal.)  So after careful consideration, and remembering that Stephanie specifically made me promise “I won’t kill myself climbing a mountain while you’re gone” (she made me look her in the eyes and repeat that part twice), I decided on a canyon instead.  At least it would be a narrow canyon with big choke stones and the danger of flash floods so that made me happy.

If you look at a list of hikes in the Saint George area, chances are Spring Creek Canyon won’t even appear.  That is just the way it goes out here.  There are simply so many great hikes to do, that some have to be left out just to keep things sensible.  This one is especially overlooked, mostly because it falls just outside the boundaries of Zion National Park.

These are the hikes I look for.  Overlooked means no people.  Outside the park means Maggie can come along.  Perfect.

What I realized right out of the gate is that I hit the timing for this hike perfectly.  The bottom of this deep and narrow slot canyon is lined with scrub oak trees that were at the height of their yellow fall colors.  This mixed with a few orange and red maples, dark green junipers and the red rocks of the canyon walls made for some incredible scenery.

This is a great slot canyon with smooth shear walls reaching over 750 feet high, and in a few places as little as 5 – 6 feet across.  Think of walking down Wall Street if the buildings were only 5 ft apart.  That said, it turns out it was mostly easy hiking, with only a few places where the canyon was choked with boulders that you had to climb over to keep going.

Maggie was a great companion.  She is an experienced hiker but her short dog legs can make scrambling over large boulders difficult.  Fortunately, from previous outings, she has learned that when she approaches an obstacle she can’t surmount on her own, she stops and waits patiently for me to pick her up and push her up and over – an insult she would never normally abide.  Coming down off a ledge is even funnier – she crouches down and inches right up to the edge so I can get an arm under her and gently lift her down.  She runs around excitedly in figure 8’s after each one as if we just conquered Everest.

 

It still blows me away that scenery like this is right out our back door.  We left the house at about 1 pm, were on the trail before two, knocked out a 7-8 mile hike and were back home again in time for dinner – alive and well.  As promised.

Up next… Two days on Zion’s West Rim Trail.