Moab and Such

Southern Utah

During the two weeks I had training in Logan, there was also Memorial Day weekend. Aaron Harker and I had planned on going to southern Utah for the weekend. We met up with Aaron in Brigham City and then drove the rest of the way to Moab that night. We slept on a tarp and our pads just on the side of a gravel road that led to the Mountain Biking trail we did the next morning. It was a really fun trail, which was about 4.5 miles one way over quite a bit of slickrock to Arches National Park boundary where we went on a short hike back to see a place called Klondike Bluffs. After that we went and found what looked like a nice place to go on a short hike to a swimming hole, unfortunately a few hundred other people had the same idea, so it was pretty crowded, but it still felt great to cool off by jumping off the top of a waterfall to a small pool at the bottom.

One of the things we wanted to do while we were down there was hike through a slot canyon. We found one that sounded pretty fun called Horse Play Canyon, it didn’t require any ropes and said that water was avoidable. It was over by Hanksville, Utah. We spent the night in my tent there, getting blasted by sand because of how windy it was. We also found a scorpion under my tent when we packed it up. We went to church there that morning, and then found the canyon we were going to hike. It was about 30 miles out in the middle of the desert. The canyon was pretty darn narrow in places, and quite a tight fit even for me. We made it through just fine though, although we were really sand blasted by the end since the wind was gusting up to 50 mph. We decided to avoid the sand that night to sleep in the car in the church parking lot. We then woke up the next morning and drove back home. It was a great adventure!