Casto Canyon 2017

The pink hoodoos and arches of Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks also show up in other areas in southern Utah. One of the best places to see them is the area around Red Canyon, which would be a national monument of its own if it appeared in any other state than Utah. Red Canyon and the two major drainages to the north, Losee Canyon and Casto Canyon, are (mostly) undiscovered and (entirely) amazing.

Another remarkable fact about this trip was that we had 15 hikers for the main adventure. That's the largest group that I've had on a trip in quite a while. The high turnout may have been due to the fact that we stayed at the Red Canyon National Forest campground, right next to the hot showers. You read that right: hot showers!

On Friday, after staking out some nice campsites on the A loop, some of us went for a hike on the Golden Wall / Castle Bridge / Buckhorn trail loop. This is a fairly easy hike of 3.7 mi with shuttle, 5 mi without a shuttle, and it shows off some of the best scenery in Red Canyon.

The Saturday hike was an ambitious exploratory circuit starting in Casto Canyon and finishing in Butler Wash, the next drainage to the north. I didn't have much information on Butler Wash other than the topo map and Google Satellite View, but it looked quite enticing. We parked shuttle cars at a convenient spot on a spur road just south of Butler Wash, then headed up Casto Canyon. I had hiked the length of Casto Canyon back in 1995, and I had remembered it as being spectacular. It's still spectacular, with glorious red hoodoos and arches. We took the Barney Cove trail north to Forest Road 697, where we had lunch in a ponderosa pine forest littered with shards of chalcedony. We then went west and north on the road, which gave us some lovely views into Limekiln Gulch, the next drainage to the north. We broke off onto a now-closed and obscure road that still shows up as FR619 on the map; that road led gently downhill into the upper reaches of Butler Wash.

Butler Wash is much cozier than Casto Canyon, with steep walls that get close together in several places. The walls often have the color and texture of crunchy Cheetos, with conifer trees squeezed into unlikely crevices. We conquered some class-3 downclimbs, with everyone collaborating to help. Everything seemed to be going well as we approached the final section of narrows, and then we found the reason why Butler Wash isn't better known: there is a 30-foot pour-off at the top of the lower narrows. After much debate, we decided to scramble up a precariously loose and steep slope on the south side of the canyon just above the pour-off. This slope turned out to be substantially more difficult than it appeared from below, and I heard lots of comments about how no one wanted to go back down that way, so it's a good thing that all of us managed to get up to the top. It looked pretty tough to get back down to Butler Wash below the narrows, so instead we worked our way up to the plateau and explored, hunting for a route to the shuttle cars on the west. We lucked out — there was a white ridge with pretty landscaping that took us down from the plateau and into the draw that led to the cars. The loop took us approximately 7 hours over 11.6 miles.

There wasn't much enthusiasm on Sunday for another long shuttle hike, so instead we did an out-and-back hike up Losee Canyon. I had previously hiked the Arches Loop trail at the bottom of Losee, and it proved to be a hit with the group, who couldn't get enough of the arches. The rest of Losee was new to me and I was impressed at the seemingly never-ending parade of hoodoos and arches and fins. Next time I visit, I want to do the full Cassidy - Losee loop that I had originally planned, which I think will be mighty fine too.

go to the Casto Canyon gallery