SEPTEMBER 2023
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| NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO SPRING CANYON |
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| SPRING CANYON |
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| SPRING CANYON |
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| MIRIAM & ELI IN SPRING CANYON |
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| SPRING CANYON |
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| SPIRE IN SPRING CANYON |
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| SPRING CANYON |
Spring Canyon is a very impressive eleven mile-or-so through hike within Capitol Reef National Park that receives surprisingly little attention, given how easily accessible it is. Our group had originally planned to hike the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming over Labor Day, but decided to head to southern Utah instead at the last minute due to how cold and rainy it was forecast to be in the Winds.
We began our hike at the Chimney Rock trailhead, and hiked about three or four miles to our first camp site at the junction of upper and and lower Spring Canyon. The first mile or two are through open desert, with a bit of a climb at the start before entering the canyon. Once you enter the canyon, it is about nine miles of non-stop amazing scenery. The canyon never get very wide, with towering walls on both sides. I was shocked at how pretty it was, as this hike had never been on my radar before.
Once we came to the junction, we hiked up Upper Spring Canyon about a quarter-mile to our campsite. After setting up camp, we hiked about a half-mile further up the canyon to a spring. The spring was very small at the time, and we were just barely able to find a pool deep enough to put our water filter in to pump it. On our way back, we witnessed a flash flood coming down the canyon. We heard what sounded like rushing wind coming down the canyon, and eventually saw what looked like white lava, followed by a rushing brown river.
We were able to make it back to near our camp site hiking along the side of the canyon, but were separated from it by the flash flood. We ended up waiting about an hour-and-a-half for the water level to drop enough to where we felt safe crossing it back to our camp, which was around nine o'clock at night. The flood continued for another hour or so before it finally finished. The next morning we checked the spring again, and it had been too muddied from the flash flood to pump any water from, though luckily we had brought a lot of extra water with us.
We the packed up and continued down Lower Spring Canyon to the next spring, where we had planned to camp, but that spring had also been too muddied from the flood to pump water from. We ended up continuing down canyon several more miles until just a little before the exit at Highway 24 and found a nice camp site. The scenery was amazing on this stretch, but the ground was very muddy from the previous night's flash flood. There was a lot of slipping and sinking in the mud and quicksand, and we actually had to stop and spend about fifteen or twenty minutes digging out one of our group who had sunk especially deep.
From our camp site, a small group hiked the rest of the way down to the car and filled up some water containers at the Visitors Center and brought them back just to make sure we had enough for that night and the following morning. All and all, it was a very fun and eventful trip.