Summit42.com

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

My brother was in Utah for work and wanted to head down south to do a bit of hiking. We tossed a few ideas around and found out Kendall had yet to visit Arches National Park. By 5:30am Kendall, Spencer, Clint and I were leaving Orem and driving to Moab. We arrived at the Devils Garden trail head at 9:30am and started hiking the loop soon after.

Kendall on a Fin on the Devils Garden primitive loop.

We took a long break at Private Arch to toss the frisbee around and take some photos.

We ran into hordes of people at Double O’ Arch …. as always Arches was packed . I took a few more photos on the way back to the car and managed to take photos of only one Arch on our 6-7mile hike. Awesome.

When we made it back to the trailhead the parking lot was jam packed so we got out of there as fast we could. We then drove out on the 4×4 road to Eye of the Whale Arch.

After we left Arches and made a quick trip into Moab to get some lunch and fill up on gas before we drove out toward Canyonlands – Island in the Sky.

We set up camp then drove into the park, we passed right by Mesa Arch because the parking lot was packed and a tour bus was just unloading. We drove down the road a bit to the Green River Overlook and enjoyed the view.

Soon we were back on the upheaval Dome road looking for the unmarked trailhead to Flase Kiva. I flaked on hiking out to False Kiva in March due to weather and cloud cover so I was pretty excited considering how big of a pain in the ass it was getting all the GPS information for the hike.

“The name False Kiva arises from the uncertainty around the circle of stones’ origins and purpose, not whether it is really an authentic” … more about Flase Kiva here.

Once you know where you are headed navigation is simple, was a pretty easy hike and the light was a bit dull but I had a great time.

We slogged back up the steep hill towards the car as the last of our daylight faded. We made it back to the car, tossed our packs in, and drove back towards the park exit. As we drove out we noticed the empty Mesa Arch parking lot so we stopped and got the camera gear out to hike the short trail to the Arch. The full moon had yet to rise so we took some long exposure shots on Mesa Arch in the dark and a bit of light painting with head lamps and my little LEDS.

Kendalls Ring on Mesa Arch

We made it back to camp just after 10pm, ate dinner and did a bit more painting before we called it a night.

In the morning we packed up first thing and drove home to spend mothers day with our families.