Capitol Reef 2025

For Labor Day, I planned a trip to Capitol Reef to explore Deep Creek and Paradise Flats, two remote areas at the far western end of the park. The hikes were contingent on being able to camp just outside the park near Mud Spring on the Great Western Trail. I saw what appeared to be a salt lick on the Google satellite view, so I was confident that the road was good enough to handle stock trailers.

A big storm rolled through the area on Friday morning, and the road was muddy when Hong and I arrived in the early afternoon. I started driving up the GWT in my stock Toyota 4Runner. After a couple of miles, the road crosses Holt Draw, and by that point, the road was too rocky for my vehicle. Clearly no stock trailers have been up that road in a while, probably in decades. Rats.

That was my second failure in Capitol Reef this year; not a good record. We ran into Dennis and Matt in Dennis's pickup as we came down the GWT, and they told us that they'd found a good camping spot, so we went there and set up camp in the mud. With Dennis's help, I contacted the other participants on the trip to let them know about the situation. Some folks dropped out — we ended up with a group of 8.

It was time to improvise. I checked with the participants, and I realized that almost none of them had done my favorite hike in the park, lower Spring Canyon. It's a fairly long day hike through a canyon that cuts deep into the Navajo sandstone. It was at lower elevation, so more of the mud would have dried out than at high elevation. We piled into a few vehicles, left a shuttle vehicle at the Chimney Rock trailhead, and headed downstream along the Fremont River.

The hike starts with a ford of the Fremont River. Fortunately the rain on Friday hadn't raised the water level significantly, and we crossed without trouble. Almost immediately after starting up the canyon, we encountered a desert bighorn, which seemed promising.

The canyon was just as deep and scenic as I remembered. I had also correctly remembered the big tower that rises above the narrowest section. The colors, the staining and the massive walls are fantastic. The day was a bit warm — it probably reached the low 80s, and I went through all of my water. We took advantage of the shade from alcoves and cottonwoods. There was a little water in the middle of the canyon; the water level had clearly been higher on Friday, and we had no difficulty staying dry.

My tent had dried out when we got back to camp. Good times.

go to the Lower Spring Canyon photo gallery

On Sunday, we tackled the Ant Hill, a cone-shaped summit that we could see from camp. Dennis and Matt had found a route that comes up from the Velvet Ridge road to the south; Richie had checked out the trail above Red Canyon to the west. We decided to link up the routes, starting from the south and coming out on the west.

The trail on the south is marked on the map, but it's a bit sketchy on the ground. We actually did pretty well staying on it, contouring up the west side of a prominence, working through various layers. We stopped at a big rock with numerous cowboyglyphs. The trail eventually reached a plateau and petered out.

We decided to cross the plateau and angle up the west side of the Ant Hill. We became intimately acquainted with the prolific “jumping cactus” that was everywhere on the plateau. The cactus breaks off and attaches to your shoe, then climbs your legs by jumping between them as you stride, until it stabs your flesh. We scrambled up through a sandstone layer, then slogged up to the summit on a loose slope covered with volcanic rocks.

The top has great views, but we had to search for them through the trees. Hells Hole on Thousand Lake Mountain looks pretty interesting; we could see a road that appeared to go straight up the hillside through the cliffs. We could see many prominences in Capitol Reef to the east.

We went down the north slope. That was much easier going than the west slope, since it was covered with forest and floored with pine duff. At the bottom of the slope we reached the trail in the East Fork of Red Canyon. This trail was much easier to follow than the trail that we'd followed going up the Ant Hill. The ponderosa pine forest and hoodoos were gorgeous.

It was still a long way down to the cars. The trail hooked through several draws above Red Canyon, staying above the gorge. Richie had heard from Matt about the Curry Pizza location in Bicknell, and although Matt said that they were closed on Sundays, Richie never gave up hope that they might be open on Labor Day weekend. Richie's dream came true — when we got to the parking lot at 5:30, Richie called and found that Curry Pizza was open until 6. We zoomed into Bicknell and ordered 4 pizzas to go.

The pizza was great and it was fun to eat it at the campsite above Torrey. Thanks, Richie!

go to the Ant Hill photo gallery

Hong and I made a quick visit to Fish Cove on Monday morning. Fish Cove is a rock art site in Teasdale with many impressive pictographs. I had been warned that they had been extensively vandalized, but it was still pretty depressing to see the damage. Still, it's a very pleasant site, with pretty ponderosas against sandstone cliffs.

Hong and I got back home without incident. I still want to visit Deep Creek and Paradise Flats!

Many thanks to the group for putting up with the change in plans and being so much fun: Jake Anderson, Hong Duong, John Gould, Dennis Goreham, Matt Goreham, Jim Kucera and Richie Schwarz.

go to the Fish Cove photo gallery