San Rafael 2023

For my first camping trip of 2023, I decided to go back to the section of the San Rafael Reef north of the San Rafael River. On a previous trip, I had hiked up the slanted slab that forms the north wall of Archtower Canyon, and had visited Cottonwood Canyon. On this trip, I was thinking that it would be fun to do Archtower Canyon itself and see the arch, which is invisible from above.

On Friday, the group met at a campsite in Tidwell Draw just north of the Smith Cabin. Our trip happened to coincide with a convention of the Rocky Mountain Mule Association. The first indication was a sign for the RMMA on the road to the cabin. Paula stopped and gave a ride to one mule rider who was waiting for his companion and his mule to show up. There were several horse trailers with mules and horses taking up the campsites in the immediate vicinity of the cabin. We drove a few hundred yards north on the Tidwell Draw road and camped next to a little stream flowing from a spring further up, within view of the RMMA sites.

One mule was especially picturesque on the skyline from our camp. Also photogenic was a fingernail crescent moon with earthshine, accompanied by Venus, setting over the San Rafael Reef. We were serenaded by frogs all night, procreating in the stream next to us.

go to the Tidwell Draw photo gallery

The Archtower loop hike was a bit harder than I had expected given the description in the Steve Allen guidebook, but our group was up to the effort.

We drove south on a fairly bad section of the Tidwell Draw road and parked at a camping pull-out before the road reached the sandy bottom of the draw. The weather was windy and chilly, with alternating sun and clouds. We hiked south, taking note of the return route via Archtower Canyon, and turned west up Sheep Cave Canyon.

The potholes in the lower section of Sheep Cave Canyon were very cool, and full of water from our wet spring this year. Soon after passing the Sheep Cave (a deep alcove high on the north wall of the canyon), we hit our first significant obstacle. We were able to work around the first drop in a multi-level pour-off by traversing up the north slope, but the only way to pass the top level pour-off is to climb it. The pour-off isn't very high (maybe 5 feet?) but the handholds are terrible and the lip is undercut, with no good footholds either. The best way to attack it was to mantle up the crack on the left, get a boot up on the right lip (braced by the next climber), then get a knee down and crawl. Kevin, the tallest member of the group, was willing to go last so that everyone else could get a boost.

It took us a minute to figure out that we needed to drop into the canyon to the left — it was not super obvious that we'd just climbed up the right side of a double pour-off. Once we were on the right track, it was a pretty stroll over occasional rockfall and some very fun tilted slickrock floors. There's a spot where it looks like you might want to go up and left to follow the canyon, but the canyon actually digs a trench and curves sharply right.

It seemed to take a long time to get to Ednah Natural Bridge, but it was pleasant going, and the bridge really is a nice spot to stop. The bridge is strikingly flat, like a road bridge; at least a couple folks walked across it. The shade was welcome, until the clouds got thicker and began spitting raindrops.

The threatening weather never got any worse, fortunately. We traipsed over hill and dale to a low spot on the rim above the San Rafael River. The view is just as staggering as I remembered it from my previous visit. For some reason, I always think that Mexican Mountain is smaller than it really is, but the view from the saddle showed its actual bulk. The river was a tiny thread of gray-green far below. I tried to make out landmarks along the Black Box, but I didn't find any that I recognized.

After this break, it was more hill and dale across the tilted plateau to reach Archtower Canyon. Because the north wall of the canyon is so big, it was hard for me to appreciate the size of the Archtower until we were underneath it. The immense arch revealed itself slowly; the best view is from a little ways downstream.

The next section of canyon had several rockfalls. These were pretty slow to navigate, with many twists and turns through car-size boulders. Eventually the going became a bit smoother, and the canyon grew narrower, until...

The canyon made a sudden 10-foot drop into a deep, wall-to-wall pothole, shaded by a bus-sized boulder wedged just above it. Stupidly, I failed to take a picture! I'll have to use someone else's photo for the WMC Rambler write-up. Kevin explored the south rim and Paula and Stanley scrambled up on the north rim. The situation didn't look good — I was getting worried that we were going to have to swim the frigid pothole. Stanley was getting ready to come back down, but at the last moment he decided to go higher and see whether it might work out. Amazingly, he spotted a steep class 3 route down from the ledge to the canyon bottom below the pothole. We gathered the group and followed. The rock was a bit rotten and sandy, but everyone made it down without complaint. I was rather surprised that this obstacle didn't rate a mention in the trip description in Allen's book; maybe the pothole was dry when Allen went through?

Soon we emerged at the northern Reef's fault zone and found a charming series of potholes running down a tilted slab. The last pothole was pretty big, and we worked around it on the south side. After crossing the fault, the canyon goes over an enormous vertical pour-off. The guidebook description said that you could descend a class-4 drop to the right of center, or go up and over to the left. I decided to scout the route to the left and ended up climbing a steep class-3 chute that left me stranded on a promontory above the pour-off. By the time that I got there, the others had descended the pour-off — it turns out that there's a shelf that runs under the right side of the pour-off, and dropping down to it isn't actually that hard. Happily, it all ended well.

That evening, the wind at the campsite made it difficult to start and run stoves. We moved vehicles and tables around so that we could cook in a wind break. It was amusing to me to see all of the camp chairs lined up in the lee of my 4Runner and Rick's big van.

go to the Archtower photo gallery

It took us 7 and a half hours on Saturday to do the ~8-mile Archtower loop. I reconsidered my original plan to visit Grotto Canyon; our pace would have made that loop as long as Saturday's loop, or longer.

Instead we walked over to the Smith Cabin and hiked up south fork of the draw that goes up from the cabin. This route was very pretty and it had some fun routefinding challenges. At the fault zone, the draw was very park-like, with hoodoos and towers surrounding a basin with grass and junipers. We went north and west into a random canyon and had lunch among the domes.

When we got back to the bottom (following a mule trail down the south side of the canyon), we ran into a couple who were just getting ready to load their mules into their trailer and head out. It turns out that the wife was a descendant of the Smith family that built the cabin and owned the grazing allotment. Although the spring stopped flowing in the 1940s and the buildings have mostly collapsed, these folks still come out regularly from Green River to visit the property, and this year they had hosted the RMMA. It was fun to meet them.

go to the Smith Cabin Canyon photo gallery