Trail Pictures

White Canyon

White Canyon

White Canyon

White Canyon

White Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

Moqui Canyon

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The weekend of 19 Mar 10, I decided to do a little more exploring around White Canyon and

near Lake Powell down in southern Utah.  This area is one of the most remote areas in the

state, and I really like it down there.  I was by myself this weekend, so I left Salt Lake on Friday

afternoon and drove to just outside of Hanksville, and camped on the BLM road going out to

the Angel Point trailhead.  On Saturday morning I drove out to the Burr Point trailhead, and just

enjoyed walking around on the desert floor, looking out over the slickrock around the Dirty

Devil River and the buttes out toward the northern section of the Glen Canyon Rec Area near

Canyonlands.  This area is really pretty, and I think I'd like to do more hiking down in the Dirty

Devil.  After leaving Burr Point, I decided that I needed to head back into Hanksville, because I

was worried that I wouldn't have enough gas to do the whole weekend...there are no towns

between Hanksville and Blanding, which is over 100 miles, and I would be doing a lot of

sidetrack driving in between.  I did later learn that there is an unattended gas station at the

Park entrance at Hite.  That was good to know.  But after getting gas, I headed on east.

My first stop was the mouth of White Canyon just past Hite.  Tracy and I had been here before,

but it had a lot of water in it at the time, so I wanted to see if it had less water now.  It didn't.  It

had more water.  So I sat there awhile packing my new daypack that I had picked up at REI on

my way south, and then headed on to the Black Hole.  I knew that I didn't want to hike into the

Black Hole (Google Map), because it's at least deep, very cold water, but it can also be very

clogged with logs from flooding.  But I did want to at least hike down to White Canyon and see

what it was like.  I had a litte trouble keeping up with the cairns to get down into canyon, but

eventually I found my way down with no problems.  The water in White Canyon was running

pretty deep from, I assume, snow melt runoff, so I just enjoyed the view at the canyon floor and

then headed back up.  After leaving the Black Hole, I checked out a couple of other entrances

into White Canyon, but the water was just running too deep and cold to bother getting into the

canyon, so I headed out the Lake Powell.  I made a detour to check out the Clay Hills Crossing

take-out on the San Juan River.  I was supposed to canoe down here a week earlier with my

brother and a group from where he works, but he ended up not being able to go, and I got

sick.  But I wanted to see the river down here.  After that, I drove out to Halls Crossing at Lake

Powell, and just enjoyed sitting on the side of the lake for awhile.  That lake is really pretty, and

this time of year there's almost nobody out there.  Every time I go out there, it reminds me that

I need to live on the lake.  After an hour or so there, I headed out to Moqui Canyon (Google

Map) to camp for the night.  I did some great stargazing, a little walking, and just enjoyed the

evening in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

On Sunday I got up and hiked down into Moqui Canyon.  I had to walk along the desert a little,

because there was a short stretch of deep sand on the road, and I wasn't comfortable trying it

by myself.  I think I could have made it just fine, but there was no sense in risking it for an extra

3/4 of a mile of walking.  The descent down into Moqui was crazy steep, and the sand was

crazy deep.  I don't know how often it's done, or if it's only been done once, but someone took

a tracked vehicle down that road and graded the sand.  There's actually a road going down

into the canyon, but I have no idea how they got the vehicle down there and back out again.  I

guess a tank can do about anything.  But there's no way you could drive a truck down into it.

Once at the bottom, Moqui is really pretty, but it's really exposed.  In the heat of summer, it

would be too hot to be comfortable down in there.  I didn't see a single soul all morning, and

the only sign I saw that other people had been there was a set of two ATV tracks...no other

foot prints at all.  The canyon was really pretty, and it would be nice to do some longer

dayhiking there.  The walls are steep, and the canyon is open, easy hiking.

Today, though, I had a long drive home, so about 1 pm, I made it back to the truck and started

back north.  This was a really nice trip, because I love the solitude and remoteness of this

area.