USA 2019: Kolob Canyon

It's been a long time in the planning but we've finally embarked on our three week road trip around the National Parks in mainly Utah, but also a little bit of Arizona thrown in at the end. After a long, long flight out (Newquay - Heathrow- Dallas - Las Vegas), we landed in Las Vegas and, spending one night in an airport hotel there, we picked up a hire car and headed roughly north-west on I15 to Kolob Canyon, an outlier of Zion National Park (thanks to MMcN for the recommendation). A quick trip up the 5-mile scenic drive took us into the scenery we'd come to see - red rocks and deep canyons.

The start of the Kolob Canyon

The red in the rocks comes from Ferric Oxide.

We overnighted in a very comfortable AirBNB in Hurricane and the next day went back into Kolob to walk the Taylor Creek Trail. This took us down to the floor of a finger canyon where we followed a branch of the Taylor Creek up to a waterfall at its end.

We were walking in quite benign conditions - the weather was good and the water levels low. It was only a matter of a few weeks that access to Kolob has been possible due to the snow receding. In fact, a few of the nearby trails were still closed because of rockfalls and the levels of creeks being too high due to snowmelt. The terrain was very different to our normal walks on moorland and coast.

The trail and the creek interweaved for the entire length of the walk. We must have crossed it some 50-60 times. It was quite a gentle flow and very easily negotiated - just slosh across.

The creek - again.

The trail went between the walls of Tucupit and Paria Points and, as we went further in, the walls got narrower and our steady ascent got steeper.

I'm not sure how high these peaks were. We started walking at around 5000ft. The vegetation was manily sage, juniper and pinon trees.

We came across two old cabins - this is the first of the two and is the Fife cabin - that had been abandoned since the 1930s. These are now classed as archeaological monuments and are symbolic of a way of life long past. Apparently the original occupants scratched a living from timber and harvesting the nuts from the pinon trees. I'm not sure they were up here all the year round as the winters' are very harsh for many months.

Looking back down the trail.

The folds in the rock formations were neverendingly fascinating. Not a bit like Dartmoor granite.

The distance between the walls of the canyon got narrower and narrower as we reached the top.

Looking up.

The creek bed mirrors the surrounding geology, with its multicoloured rocks. Compare and contrast with the shades of grey we'd see in a stream on Dartmoor.

Just an interesting pattern on an old tree stump.

I found the colours in the rocks fascinating.

And this is the waterfall where the walls of the canyon meet at the Double Arch Alcove.

Another one of nature's interesting patterns. I presume the holes were the result of the activity of some wood boring insect.

 After we had completed this walk we moved on to our next stopping point, just outside of Panguitch, some 180 miles north west. The drive was not what we were expecting as it took us through the Dixie National Forest and the Cedar Breaks National Park. At the highest point we reached 9000 feet and there was still lots of snow everywhere. For the record we stopped off at Aunt Sue's cafe at Duck Creek on the way over.