Fisher Creek and Onion Creek 2018

So at the end of my July 4th trip this year, I drove out to the Bull Canyon Overlook at the top of Castle Valley, and then on a lark I followed signs for Fisher Valley, thinking that it might be a shortcut to the Fisher Towers.

As it turns out, the Fisher Towers are in Onion Valley, not Fisher Valley, and my little drive turned into a much more substantial adventure. I followed a bladed and graded road from the Fisher Valley rim near Beaver Creek all the way down to the bottom of Onion Creek, where it comes out at SR 128. The scenery was amazing, but I didn't stop to take photos because I didn't want to delay getting back home. I promised myself that I'd get back here and take my time.

That's how Jerry H and I ended up spending two days to drive 25 mi through this amazing country. After stopping to see the dinosaur footprints at the Bull Canyon Overlook, we drove to the Fisher Valley turn-off and headed down the hill. The road drives right down the narrow ridge between Fisher Valley and Beaver Creek, at one point crossing a one-lane bridge over a notch in the ridgeline. We discovered that upper Beaver Creek has been diverted so that its flow now goes through the notch and down into Fisher Valley — very surprising.

The road then crosses forested North Beaver Mesa to a band of Navajo Sandstone cliffs. An intersection here has a sign for Fisher Valley to the north / left, along with a much-decorated sign for the Kokopelli Trail. We turned and followed this road below the Navajo cliffs. After a while, the road descends at a switchback to the top of the big Wingate cliffs above Hideout Canyon. The road at one point runs just a few yards from the edge, where there's a drop of several hundred feet. You can see the Fisher Towers in the (very) far distance.

The road then crosses the ridge to the east and contours above Thompson Canyon. We took a little hike down a tributary of Thompson Canyon, so that I could see what the gorge looked like — it's deeper than I expected, with Wingate walls and fir trees in crannies on the west-facing slopes. That whetted my appetite for more, so after we came down a steep hill, I decided to take a minor dirt road that runs out in the direction of the confluence of Fisher Creek and Thompson Creek.

This minor road has some fairly serious rocks and ledges, and after banging my skid plate a couple of times, I parked and Jerry and I walked the rest of the way. The view at the end of the road is very cool — both Fisher Creek and Thompson Creek run in deep Wingate-walled gorges with many pinnacles and buttresses. Thompson Creek doesn't appear to slot up, but it's very deep and has gnarly crags, including one bizarre knob that juts up in the middle of the canyon.

We camped at a BLM campground in Hideout Canyon. We actually didn't camp at one of the sites; instead, we found a very pretty and green spot along Hideout Creek below some cottonwoods. The dirt road into the campground is badly washed out, and I'm skeptical that it gets much visitation at this point. It doesn't help that the signage is minimal: just a carsonite strip with a graphic of a tent and an arrow pointing up the road.

The next day, we drove out of Hideout Canyon over a little summit and down into broad Fisher Valley. There are a few clumps of poplars and cottonwoods in the valley that make it look like there might be farmhouses, but we didn't see any actual houses and I've got to wonder how anyone could live in such a remote location.

The drainage divide with Onion Creek is a bit of a surprise. The level basin of Fisher Valley just ends, dropping off into a tangled gorge of red and white rock. The road runs down the spine of a ridge, then switchbacks into the canyon bottom where Onion Creek is still flowing in mid-September. The road fords the creek dozens of times. We stopped in the white narrows (Paradox Formation) to investigate a side canyon with tall, contorted walls. We followed a narrow tributary that twists back on itself and eventually comes out into an upper basin with views of Moenkopi buttresses and the Wingate wall of Sevenmile Mesa.

The upper white narrows fades out and the road then enters an incredible red narrows (Cutler Formation). We stopped at the top of the narrows and hiked a canyon on the north side that I decided to call Titan Canyon because it runs up to the southernmost part of the Fisher Towers, the Titan and the Titan Tower. This canyon is just awesome — narrow, red, full of holes and arches, massively decorated with hoodoos and pinnacles. Just when you think the scenery can't get any better, you turn a corner and there are the Towers.

The road has to climb a bit at the top of the narrows because the canyon bottom gets quite narrow — not quite a slot but very impressive. The road follows ledges along the south side of this gorge, then crosses a one-lane bridge to the north side. The road drops back into the canyon bottom where it widens out, and the fords resume. There are monster pinnacles that loom over the canyon on the south side, with names like the Totem Pole.

As we drove down the canyon, the walls gradually lowered, but they remained tall enough to block the view over to the Towers. We knew that we were back to civilization when we hit the Onion Creek BLM campground. We were running a bit late at this point, but we were happy to have had so much fun.

When we got to Green River, we learned that US 6 was closed over Soldier Summit due to the Pole Canyon fire. Yikes. We drove home on US 70 to US 50 to I-15, and we could see the smoke coming up over Mt Nebo. It looked like there was a smoke-generated thunderstorm cloud east of Nebo...

go to the Fisher Creek / Onion Creek gallery