Apr 18 – Kolob Canyons

Today we went to the one section of the park that we have not been to yet. The Kolob Canyons section is up in the northwest corner of the park and can only be accessed at a exit off of Interstate 15. It is a set of finger canyons meaning that there a set high points jutting out of the mesa that look like fingers from above, creating a set of canyons.

Today we hiked the Taylor Creek Trail. It is about a 9 km round trip with only a small elevation change.

You do however cross the creek a lot of times. According to some blogs I read that said they counted, there are anywhere from 25 to 40 crossing each way. I think it was closer to the 25. It took us about 4 hours with a lunch break.

From the parking lot we had to climb down a long set of stairs. They were really tiring going back up at the end.

Of course as soon as you got to the bottom you had to back up a bit to get to the side of the creek.

I saw this interesting little stump. At first I thought someone had dropped something.

One of the many crossings. The creek is very shallow and there were always strategically placed stones.

Our first view of one of the sides of the finger canyon.

Then both sides.

Finally inside the canyon.

The creek meandered up the canyon but the trail went fairly straight which means we climbed up and down the bank a lot.

Sometimes we were just on the creek bed.

We passed by a couple of “historical cabins”.

We saw a lot of the green plant in the picture above. Up close it almost looked like miniature bamboo.

The destination of the hike is the Double Arch Alcove. It is a huge undercut that is almost a cave with a large arch on the rock face above it.

In the picture above, you can see the arch at the top and in the middle is the huge ledge that forms the roof of the alcove.

It was hard to get far enough away to fit it all in.

There were lots of interesting colours on the walls.

We sat on a rock and had lunch.

For a so called less busy section of the park we had a lot of company. We also saw a lot of very young kids. At least 3 under six months and one very pregnant lady.

The alcove amplified everyone’s voice so you had to be careful what you said.The lady in yellow said something in a fairly quiet voice about the couple in the back carrying the baby in his arms and they answered that they had a carrier with them.

The two kids seemed to really like the sound of their own voices and its echo. The parents did nothing so we left after a while.

A very eroded rock.

After we got back to the car we continued up the 5 mile scenic drive and stopped at a lot of the viewpoints.

There is another trail that goes down the canyon past this other huge alcove to the Kolob Arch, “one of the largest free standing arches in North America”, but at a 20 km round trip it was out of our league.

Heading back down to the Interstate.

I have never seen a speed limit like this before. It works out to about 130 kph.