Pigeon Creek 2016

On the Little Black Mountain hike, Steve Duncan and I had talked about how lovely Maple Canyon is in the San Pitch Range, with its great fall colors and conglomerate cliffs. I realized on the way home that I had never checked out the conglomerate cliffs on the opposite (west) side of the range, in Pigeon Creek. I asked Jerry Hatch if he was interested in coming along to check it out with me, and he was up for it.

So on Saturday morning, we set off down the freeway to Nephi. We got off at the south Nephi exit and drove down SR 28 to Levan. From the intersection with SR 78, we went two blocks south and turned east on 100 South. We followed this road until the pavement ran out at a T intersection at the foot of the mountains, then turned north and east to get into Pigeon Creek. The maintained dirt road in Pigeon Creek is in fine shape. It runs up the canyon several miles to an informal campsite at a loop, where we parked below an imposing cliff band.

The good news is that the canyon is gorgeous. We hiked through glorious fall colors up through a narrows, passing by travertine pools and below red and buff conglomerate cliffs. We went a mile and a quarter up the main canyon, then veered off to the south to check out Mill Hollow. This brought us into a valley bounded on both sides by even more spectacular cliffs, with thick forest of white fir, aspen and rocky mountain maple. We ran out of time and turned around, taking lots of photos on the way back as well.

The bad news is that Pigeon Creek is an epic bushwhack. It took us 6 1/2 hours to go less than 5 miles round trip. While both the Forest Service map and the Garmin GPS map show a trail in Pigeon Creek, it hasn't been maintained in many decades, from what we could tell. We could make out the remains of a road on the south side of the creek, but it has been washed out in several places, perhaps due to overgrazing. We followed cow trails and game trails through the thick brush, sometimes climbing high above the stream to avoid big holes full of loose dirt and gravel. When we found the road, we made much better progress, but the forest is retaking the road and it takes vigilance (and imagination) to stay near it.

At the bottom of the narrows, we took a precarious route around the south side of a series of pools, alternating between crumbling slopes and patches of stinging nettle. After this section, we picked up the last vestige of the road just before the real narrows start. The water in the creek stopped here too, which was fortunate. In the narrows, we had to scramble over a number of big mossy boulders, but those were less of a problem than the mess in the following section, where we struggled with the deadfall and the thickets of cottonwood, dogwood and willow, with maple and mountain-mahogany thrown in for good measure. There are plenty of white firs too, but they were only a problem when they fell across the stream.

Above the narrows, there is a section where we were able to walk on a fairly pleasant bench on the north side, passing the bottom of Dry Canyon. This soon petered out and we ended up in a massive brush thrash leavened with big piles of cottonwood deadfall. After a while, this subsided a bit and we made reasonable time to the Mill Hollow fork.

The bottom of Mill Hollow was pretty, with conglomerate bedrock and lovely fall colors, but it rapidly degenerated into a steep thrash through dogwood, slippery boulders and deadfall. At one point we escaped east onto the slopes and bashed through maple brush for variety, before being forced back down into the dogwood. I discovered at one point that my sunglasses had been ripped off my head, and I spent a disappointing 20 minutes hunting for them in the leaf litter and mud.

Eventually the valley leveled out somewhat and we could follow a trickle of water up the stream, with digressions for big piles of deadfall. I wanted to get some good shots of the cliffs that walled in the valley, but the forest was so thick that it was hard to get a complete picture. When we stopped to get some last photos and drink water, I pulled off my pack and my sunglasses fell out. Lucky me!

The trip down was only a little less laborious than the trip up, and the only thing that kept my morale up was the fantastic fall color display. I was really grateful to see the car parked at the end of the road (and with no bullet holes in it).

go to the Pigeon Creek gallery