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Spring had finally arrived and it was time to take the boys out for my annual birthday desert camping trip. April was off running 22 miles for her marathon training so the Boys, Whitney and I left the house early Friday and made our way down to the Swell. We set up camp in our normal spot in Temple Wash then made our way down to Goblin Valley to do a bit of hiking. The weather was perfect as we wandered our way to the top of the Curtis formation above the goblins.

Whitney

The wind really started to pick up so we made our way back to the car and drove over to the Temple Mountain area to check out the old town site.

We made our way back to camp and hiked around on the slick rock with the boys as we waited for April and the Roots. After everyone set up their tents we drove north a few miles along the front of the Reef to Farnsworth Canyon. I am a big fan of this short little canyon, it’s perfect for the kids and sees little traffic.

The wind kept things pretty cool during the night before it slowly tapered off. The clouds were a bit dense for star trails so I just  took a few long exposures around camp and called it a night.

Alene and Tyler

April and I

Saturday morning we were up and moving not long after the sunshine hit our camp site.   We drove the few miles down the road to hike up to the Wild Horse Window just north of Wild Horse Creek on the Reef.   We had tried to do this hike a number of times over the last few years but had never made it all the way up to the window due to sick kids, heat, or lack of daylight.

On the hike down Whitney, Bowen and I cut south into  Wild Horse Creek to hike the short slot at the end of the Canyon

After a quick lunch we drove over to Little Wild Horse Canyon to do some more hiking.  Bowen (3yo) lead the way almost all the way to the end of Little Wild Horse with no assistance at all.  Due to his size advantage it can be tricky to keep up with him in the narrow sections of the canyon.

Snow

We wrapped things up at  Little Wild Horse arond 3:30 and made our way back to camp for a little relaxing before heading out to Goblin Valley. We wandered around the valley and let the kids run wild as we messed around with some levitation shots.

Saturday night was pretty clear so I  set up to do some star trails.

Clint and I left Orem early Saturday morning with plans to camp and do a loop hike up Arch Tower Canyon to the top of the San Rafael reef then back down Cave Canyon. The weather had looked iffy all week but we packed up the truck while the snow was still falling and headed out to the swell. We turned off highway 6 just before green river and drove the 4×4 road out to the mouth of Cave Canyon. The temperatures were in the high 30’s as we started out hiking on the east side of the reef towards Tower Arch Canyon.

Tower Arch canyon was nice, and I was glad we did it but not really worth doing a second time. To get through the lower end of the canyon there was a fair amount of scrambling up dry falls, bypassing of more than a few potholes, and a bit of bushwhacking.

Coolest part of Arch Tower canyon was the area full of potholes just above the large dryfall about 1/3 of the way up.

Luckily we were able to bypass this one in the narrowest part of the canyon.

Arch Tower

Looking down canyon at Clint and the Tower.

Just as we made it to the top of the Reef the clouds started to give way to blue skies. We hurried along to the edge of the reef to get some shots of the amazing views. The light on Mexican mountain was pretty incredible with the dark storm in the background.

pretty stoked

That snow started getting awful close…

We only had one hour of good light before we had to make the obvious decision to pack up everything and start hiking down off the reef. As we hiked towards Cave Canyon we soon noticed we were off route, we had cut down the wrong drainage and had passed Ednah Bridge. By the time we notice our error and how to correct it the storm was on top of us so we put our cameras in dry bags and geared up for the snow. Our hike down cave canyon was cold, wet, slippery, and due to the rain/snow I could not take any photos of the little water falls pouring into the canyon. The water flow was really too mild to be considered a flash flood but it’s always amazing to see desert canyons come to life with flowing water. We made it back to the truck at the mouth of Cave Canyon 4.5 hours after we started out, we packed up and got off the rough 4×4 road just before the snow really started to come down hard. We had no desire to get stuck in the desert so we made the decision to bail out on camping and head home after driving the Green River cutoff.

Track Log of our hike.

View Arch Tower – Cave Canyon Loop in a larger map