Dark Canyon, Utah, 5/2015
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Das Route
Last week a couple of friends and I had our annual hike. For various reasons (i.e several very unpleasant or nigh-fatal incidents) I am no longer allowed to decide upon what hikes this group does. Rather I present alternatives given some criteria for the others to choose from, and the pertinent criteria this year were dates in late May and a demand for no “cold suckiness.” These were nearly mutually exclusive and more or less required the southwest somewhere. And as it happens they gave me these criteria rather too late to apply for for permits the various parks- which really didn’t bother me, actually, since I prefer wilderness areas.
Eventually we favored a route in Dark Canyon, Utah, though we reserved the Mee/Knowles Canyon loop in Colorado as a backup in the event of bad weather. Traditionally, Dark Canyon is divided into upper and lower reaches. The upper canyon can easily be made a loop via Woodenshoe and Peavine Canyons. There is a long dry stretch, but one can cache water where needed via a 4WD road down into Peavine Canyon. However, everyone I asked told me that the lower canyon is much more spectacular. One can go in and out via the Sundance Trail and make a series of out-and-back hikes, but we prefer loops when possible and one is possible, though involved- a loop can be made of Youngs and Lean-To Canyons. This is the hike we ended up doing, though it involves quite a long drive on Forest Service roads. You could probably get part-way in a non-4WD vehicle, but you certainly couldn't make it all the way to the start of this hike in one.
I picked Sam and Mark up in Denver and we drove west on I-70, then south through Utah to Moab. There we took a moment to do a quick tour of Arches NP. The weather was delightful:
These are lovely un-enhanced photos (except for cropping):
I suppose that from Arches NP I should include photos of arches:
Here's the La Sal mountains in the distance, again:
Yes, it's hard to complain about that weather. We continued south and spent the night in Blanding. The next day we headed into Manti-La Sal National Forest and got all the way to Peavine Canyon before we realized that we hadn't filled the gas tank. We turned around, got gas, and returned, which delayed us considerably. I don't think we hit the trail until after 1300, but we did find a better way on and off of the mesa, to the south via the access road to Natural Bridges National Monument. The pass through The Notch is an exciting part of the drive:
But the views are good:
The final bit of Sweet Alice Road is definitely 4WD, and infested with cattle:
Here's why one should be careful when drinking from stock ponds:
We parked my truck at the old airstrip just north of Lean-To Canyon- leaving water cached in it- and did the five mile road-walk to Youngs Canyon.
There are no trails per se in upper Youngs- just game trails, and an occasional cairn anyplace someone once thought looked like a decent route. You access the canyon at that stock pond in the photo above- there is an obvious route down following the stock trails.
Initially, in The Horse Pasture, it's very sandy- but you just have to head down canyon any way you can. Later there is an impassible pour off in upper Youngs, and reports I researched online mentioned that one should ascend completely out of the canyon to the rim on the left (LDC) and then descend again to avoid it- I had found a rough strip map. But when we started trying to ascend to the left after a decently-sized side-canyon we cliffed out several times.
Sam and I had to discourage Mark from trying a short up climb that, yes, he *probably* could do but which would have been a bit too consequential in the event of a fall. It started to rain, and we backtracked, well into type 2 fun. Eventually, right at the mouth of the side-canyon we found a precarious route to the rim. We then walked along the rim fighting our way through the Utah Juniper and Big Sagebrush to the point where my strip map showed that one should drop back into the canyon, but it was getting dark so we pitched a dry camp there.
In retrospect and looking at the strip map, we had started ascending the wall to the left far too soon. I think there is probably a better defined and more popular route a bit more down canyon. Because of all of our rainy shenanigans trying to climb out I didn't take many photos of this bit. There are probably several routes up to the rim- you just have to find one. When we got to the top of our last one there was a small cairn, so someone had used it before.
EDIT—-
The route up on to and down from the rim is ROUGHLY thus:
This is the route we took, not the better one up to the rim that I suspect is downcanyon more. There are probably many, many routes up onto the rim in that side-canyon as well. The easiest route down off the rim proper is kind of hidden, but if you walk RIGHT ON the rim you'll find it- it's obvious, then.
The next morning I had quite a view for my bowel evacuation:
It was overcast most of this day just like the day before, and occasionally a light rain fell- all in all, not bad weather for Utah in May. I certainly wasn't as hot as I had expected to be. We'd had concerns about flash floods in the event of rain, but this was never the sort of deluge one gets during the summer monsoon- it was always just a light rain. Nonetheless, we planned to turn back rather than enter any slots if the weather threatened.
We looked around where my strip map showed the descent back into the canyon, and sure enough we found a well-cairned route with a decent trail. First we descended onto the saddle by the promontory in the middle of this photo (taken from the rim):
On the way down we encountered our first water- a full pothole:
At the saddle we had a minor adventure- I noticed that I had left my SPOT tracker at the dry camp on the rim. Both of my hiking partners were convinced that their various significant others would panic and start contacting law enforcement if they didn't get regular ok messages, so Mark was elected (2 aye, 1 nay) to do the 1-hour round-trip hike back to get it. Meanwhile, Sam and I hunkered down, checked the route a bit, etc. I had considered advising Mark to take his raincoat, but hadn't. Thus, predictably, it started to rain. Then hail. Sam and I had set up the tent and had a snack. Mark returned thoroughly soaked, casting very accusing looks at our dry state. But we had the SPOT back.
So we continued on- the route goes down the (very steep-looking) right side of that promontory in the photo above, to the canyon floor.
Past this point almost all travel is just finding a route along game trails. As long as you're headed down canyon you're ok.
Youngs had live water the whole way down to Dark Canyon, but as I mentioned the weather recently had been rainy.
It's quite brushy in spots. There is a pour off that you have to bypass to the left (LDC):
The trip reports in my research had mentioned a large poison ivy patch, and sure enough we encountered it- thick, and covering the entire canyon bottom. Sam and I stopped to consider routes to get past it when Mark just started barging through. Sam and I looked at each other, shrugged, and started following the path he had cleared. "I guess Mark is not intimidated by the poison ivy," I noted. It took a bit of pushing the shrubs away with our trekking poles, but ultimately we made it. Then, Mark stopped.
"I think we're getting to that poison ivy patch you mentioned," he said, while pointing at a thistle.
"Uh, Mark, that's not poison ivy. The poison ivy was that field of shiny three-leaved shrubs you just pushed through."
"Really? Plant identification never was my thing…"
"Clearly."
Thus was Mark's lack of poison ivy intimidation explained. But it turned out that none of us got more than a couple of tiny bumps, anyway, which is odd because usually I get it from just looking at the damned stuff.
Eventually, oh maybe a mile from the confluence, you have to take a path to the left (LDC) again, and climb a bit up the canyon side:
The lower canyon bottom generally seems idyllic and riparian:
There are a few more pour offs, though, and unless you're on this trail the bypasses weren't obvious. As the route starts to descend into the confluence with Dark Canyon you get an aerial view of the excellent campsite there:
The creek in Dark Canyon was quite full- no water worries on this hike! Just upstream was a pool big enough to swim in if you're so inclined. Young Canyon ends in a small waterfall:
The camp has great shade, and space for four tents, easily. Just 50m downstream is another tent site on stream right. Frankly, you could do this route with hammocks. It was only 1430 or so but we stopped and pitched camp. We all took naps, then did some exploring. As it got dark we started hearing the bleating of sheep, which puzzled us until we realized that it was really the toads.
The next day we hit the trail downstream towards the mouth of Lean-To Canyon. This part of Dark Canyon does see some traffic, usually from people who hike down from the Sundance Trailhead, and do dayhikes from a camp somewhere on the canyon floor before ascending back up Sundance.
"Lets go hike in the desert," he said. "Wide open spaces," he said:
Actually there were few places that dense, mostly just downstream of Youngs. There was almost always a viable route on both sides of the stream:
Sometimes you're right next to the stream, and sometimes you climb up the canyon wall a bit. But the route is always pretty obvious. (As I mentioned, this segment sees some traffic.)
Much of the ledge walking is on limestone with what I think are chert or flint nodules:
Some of the nodules are enormous, later on.
It's difficult to get a sense of scale from the photos, but this place is big. It has 2000 feet of relief- equivalent to some side canyons in the Grand Canyon. And without the crowds and rules.
We only had one sighting of other hikers about here, though I think it was two different groups that had co-mingled. They had all come down Sundance, and we passed their camps shortly.
Water was definitely not a concern on this hike:
In fact, we did stop for a swim, though the water was brutally cold.
There were at least four potholes on this segment that were literally the size of swimming pools- deep enough that you couldn't touch bottom- and the one shown was far from the best. The better ones were mostly in the up canyon half. Mark was very pleased to finally get to use the pack-towel that he has been carrying for four years.
I found what I think are fossil crinoids in one rock:
There are a few good campsites scattered along this entire route, but mostly small. Near the mouth of Lean-To Canyon there is a again a huge selection of excellent sites, and we chose one:
Again we stopped before 1500 and pitched camp to do some exploring. I climbed the scree behind the camp and took another photo of camp:
That's it in the cottonwoods. The views from there were outstanding;
After dinner we again fell asleep to the baleful lowing of the sheeptoads.
The next day we got up a bit early so that we could hike in the morning before it got too hot for the climb out, but it turned out that the clouds had moved in again and we'd only get occasional direct sunshine through the day. When we did it was intense, though.
The mouth of Lean-To Canyon has an immediate pour off, but it is easy to bypass on the left (LUC). I knew from my reading that about an hour up the canyon was a large impassible pour off and that to bypass it you have to start ascending the right canyon wall (LUC) almost immediately. And indeed there was a very obvious trail on the right, leading up, not 20m above the pour off at the mouth. The views were again quite good:
The trail quickly branched into several interconnecting social trails from hikers climbing up for the views, but it was generally easy to just stay on the one heading up canyon.
This bypass trail does go quite high.
Sam is the group techie. He has GaiaGPS loaded on his iPhone and keeps tracks of our hikes. If he sends them to me I'll post a map here for anyone who wants to replicate this madness. I have Gaia too, but have started to just use MilGPS to give me a grid, which I plot on a paper map when I need it- totally as an emergency capability, since for me half of the fun of hiking is the orienteering. Thus MilGPS meets my needs. Otherwise I just use my iPhone for photos. (But I have to admit that Sam and his GPS do come in handy. We can just hike up canyon and check our location now and again, without constantly having to count side-canyons to know where we are.)
I had always said that if I ever had to carry a metric crap-ton of water again that I would use my Aarn. There it is, and it does work very well to counterbalance all of that water weight.
And, y'know, I just noticed that my hat matches my shirt. Huh. I'm not sure if that's cool or if that's lame.
Here's the huge pour off:
That's me standing at the edge, for scale.
Here's a view down canyon, with homely 40-ish year old models:
After that there's quite a bit of easy hiking on the canyon bottom:
Though Lean-To is usually described as dry there was live water almost the whole way up for us.
One of the guidebooks that I referenced described Lean-To as "a real bear." The reason is several segments where the entire canyon bottom is full of talus. The first is a large segment of bus-sized talus, followed by several segments of minivan talus. You just have to find a route, there is no "correct" way through. It was indeed tiring. We stopped for elevensies in a little vale with a balanced rock:
We continued picking our way up canyon and eventually noticed that there was no creek any longer. It seemed to originate over a pour off on the left (LUC):
So we stopped and tanked up. I had been worried about water due to all of the reports of Lean-To being dry, so I had started with 6L but had already drank 2L despite the cool weather.
It turned out that this was un-necessary, though. There continued to be full potholes and occasional trickles.
Just before entering the park-like upper canyon there is a pour off that must be bypassed on the right (LUC). The route is cairned, and it was dry above this point. Once the canyon opens up you again just have to find a route out. There are probably dozens of viable routes out of the upper canyon to the left (LUC), which is the way back to the airstrip.
Here are views back down canyon during our climb out:
Stopped for siesta in an alcove:
And a view from the rim, looking back:
There are three side canyons on the left that potentially lead out, and we took the most direct one back to my truck. I hadn't been sure that we could ascend Lean-To in one day, but it was quite within our capabilities. Heck, we stopped at Subway and were back in a motel in Blanding before dark. Being less-than-expert canyoneers we had planned for five days, but did thw whole thing in four, and even those were short days. This could very easily be a three day hike if you don't start late on the first day as we did, and keep moving. If the sun is out and the weather hot ascending Lean-To that might slow you down, but I still think it's a one day ascent- you just might want to take a longer siesta.
This left the Memorial Day weekend pretty free for us, so we hit some sites on the way back to Denver.
First, Mesa Verde. Here's Balcony House:
And Spruce Tree House:
After a stay in Pagosa Springs we hit Chimney Rock National Monument:
I'm rather fond of this shot of Chimney Rock and Companion Rock, with the rain in the background:
And finally, back at Great Sand Dunes National Park. First, a view of the dunes from Medano Creek, showing the Memorial Day Crowds:
Partway up to High Point Dune, a shot back:
The view from High Point Dune is absolutely worth the climb, if you're ever there. Here's Mark:
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