Thanksgiving 2017

I spent a week in (mostly) southern Nevada for Thanksgiving this year. I had vacation that I needed to burn up, and I was restless to get out of town and to find some warmer weather. I had a great time, hiking with various folks from the WMC, but (except for the first day) not on an official Club trip.

Sunday 11/19: I joined up with the folks at Bruce Christenson's open house in St George on Saturday evening. I mentioned that I wanted to see some petroglyph sites at Gold Butte National Monument before the administration abolishes the monument. That proved to be a popular idea, so I organized a 2-car expedition the next day. We passed the Bundy Ranch on the way into the monument, a reminder of the conflict over the land here.

Gold Butte National Monument is on the east side of the Overton Arm of Lake Mead. It has a mix of basin-and-range and sandstone slickrock scenery, and they're both very impressive. We visited the Falling Man and Kohta Circus rock art sites. They're both spectacular, with some of the best and most prolific petroglyphs I've ever seen.

go to the Gold Butte gallery

Monday 11/20: Bob Myers had hiked to Hepworth Canyon from Gifford Canyon on the east side of Zion National Park a few years ago with some Club members from St George, and he wanted to retrace that hike. Gifford Canyon starts right at the top of the tunnel — the parking situation was pretty obnoxious. We got to the first pour-off and scrambled around it, then we went hunting for the route up to the rim from a big slickrock bowl just downstream from the pour-off. Without any cairns or GPS coordinates, I wasn't able to see the correct route; Bob's vague memory was actually correct (I checked online when I got back home), but I foolishly made us turn around because I was concerned that we'd get cliffed out. I tried an alternate route and it petered out in some fourth-class friction slabs. Oh well!

We kept going up the main canyon, with the idea that we could at least go up the side canyon that Bob had descended on the previous trip. That did work out, although the routefinding was a bit of a challenge at the bottom of the side canyon. We headed west up a gorgeous slickrock bowl and were treated to fantastic views at the ridgeline down into Stevens and Hepworth Canyons, and over to the Towers of the Virgin. We were even able to get a little peek into Parunuweap, far, far below to the south.

go to the Gifford Canyon gallery

Tuesday 11/21: After spending the night at a hotel in Mesquite, Bob and I went north to Davidson Peak, the high point of the East Mormon Mountains. I had my eye on this peak because it looks really cool on Google Maps, with a gnarly gorge that leads up to a summit that overlooks a thousand-foot drop.

This hike turned out to be a lot more work than I'd expected, which is a bad habit of mine. On the other hand, it was really pretty amazing. The gorge didn't look like it would go, but it twisted and turned and eventually opened out on a steep upper bowl. The bushwhacking was fairly obnoxious, and although the temperature was in the 70s, I had to put on my wind pants to keep from getting shredded by the thorns and the twigs. We found a decent-sized arch on the way up to the ridge, and the view on top was awesome. The cliff on the north side of Moapa Peak really stands out from this angle, and for that matter, the cliff on the west side of Davidson Peak is pretty good too. We came down the ridge on the south side of the gorge, which was very steep but had good footing on the extremely sharp limestone.

go to the Davidson Peak gallery

Wednesday 11/22: After Bob drove home early in the morning, I left Mesquite and drove up Kane Springs Wash to Meadow Valley Wash, and I found a campsite at Kershaw-Ryan State Park. I went for a short hike up the canyon and got a fine view from the rim. Bob Grant and Marilyn Smith met me at the campground in the afternoon — we were the only visitors there for Thanksgiving. It was nice and quiet, except for the occasional distant train horn on the Union Pacific line, and there were hot showers for just $0.25 for 4 minutes!

go to the Kershaw-Ryan State Park gallery

Thursday 11/23: Bob and Marilyn and I checked out the sights along Meadow Valley Wash in Rainbow Canyon. Our first stop was the pictograph site at Etna, a settlement along the railroad that is now long gone except for a bizarre tunnel that was drilled through the mountainside to divert the flow of a side canyon away from the railroad bed. The pictographs are in that side canyon, and the stroll through the tunnel is fun (but watch your head).

Next we stopped at a side canyon that had caught my attention on Google Maps' satellite view. A hike up to it confirmed that it's a big, bizarrely sculpted amphitheater made from cream-colored tuff. The towers and walls were very attractive, but the brush in the wash bottom was a serious problem. I bagged it after reaching a pour-off — I think I might have been able to pass the pour-off on ledges, but thrashing through the brush to get there just didn't look like fun.

We visited pretty little Hummingbird Spring next. It's in a very cliffy canyon, and the running water supports lots of grapevines as well as some cottonwood trees in fall colors. There are pictographs on the north wall of the canyon, but the area appears to have been vandalized — too bad.

After a stop at the Elgin Schoolhouse (now a state park), we checked out the glorious fall colors of the cottonwoods along Meadow Valley Wash below the end of the paved road. We caught the colors at exactly the right time — I remember telling Bob that no one would believe that the brilliant yellows in our photos were natural, that we had to have goosed the saturation in Photoshop.

go to the Meadow Valley Wash gallery

Friday 11/24: I had been to Cathedral Gorge State Park once before, 27 years ago in fact. I had a great time there then and I thought that it was worth a repeat visit, plus Bob and Marilyn had never been there.

On my first visit, I had found a long canyon with a ‘natural tunnel’ that ran for many yards, much longer than a natural bridge. I didn't find it on this trip, but I found something even better — a chamber that really deserves the title of ‘cathedral’. I managed to persuade both Bob and Marilyn to check it out too; we were all just blown away. It appears that there are underground drainage channels all over the park, and some of those channels have produced cave-like formations in the mud that are not just big enough to walk through, but up to 60 feet tall. I'm thinking that I'll plan a Club trip back to Cathedral Gorge so that I can show off this crazy landscape.

go to the Cathedral Gorge gallery

Saturday 11/25: We left Saturday to avoid the Thanksgiving Sunday traffic, but on our way out, I took us to an area that I (once again) found using Google Maps' satellite view. It sits just a few miles north of NV 319 on the Panaca Kilns road, in an area of extensive pinyon-juniper forest. I've been calling it the Panaca Kilns Tuff Wonderland, which probably oversells it a little bit, but it's really quite pretty. It's similar to the Elephant's Back near Indian Peak — a large area of exposed and eroded tuff that forms slickrock landscapes studded with pinyon and (in this case) ponderosa pines. Some of the charm has been lost after a large fire burned on the western margin of the tuff, but it's still very handsome. We hiked up to the high point at the southern end of the area, and we could see that the rock formations continue north for another mile or two.

go to the Panaca Kilns Tuff Wonderland gallery