Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Hell's Canyon Trail in Ivins near St George Utah

This is a dead end hike into a canyon. Back and forth it is about 4 miles, depending how far you go into the two narrow canyons at the end. It is no Trailhead, only a sign saying that this is private property, but you are welcome to walk the trail. It is very limited parking around. The satellite map shown below shows two red circles where you can park a couple of cars. The GPS location where I parked is W 37°11'37.417 N113°41'48.234
You will see the wash. The marker for the trail is down in the wash, but you dont have to walk down in the wash, there is a trail on the rim of the left side of the wash, and eventually you will end up walking on the rim of the wash. The trail starts at the most northern red circle I have marked.
This is the trail marker in the wash just down from the road. It is the only marker I saw on my hike. The trail is not always easy to follow, but anyhow head for where the canyon starts.



 
 Here you will see that the canyon has two arms, one to te right and one to the left.


 I walked a little bit into the one canyon to the left, but It looks pretty rugged to continue all the way to the top.

 This is into the right canyon where you walk at the bottom of the wash. The right side of the canyon is a vertical tall wall. And I dont think you can walk very far into this one either, but that could be anyone's choice.


 This is looking back out of the canyon, heading back.
 And now and then you see stone piles guiding you. This was kind of decoratively placed.

 At the bottom of the wash it is pretty green, at this time of the year its pretty dry, and it is 50 days since the last rainfall.
Here I am back to my car. Even at 100 F I was ok with drinking one bottle of water. The hike took 2 hours

 Above is where I walked, and the elevation of the trail. The canyon is more or less in the Kayenta Village, and there are roads ending much closer to the canyon, but I expect that people living there would not appreciate parking outside their homes to make the hike shorter from there!
This is a map of part of Ivins, and the trail is marked with yellow on top of the map. It is about 20 minutes drive from St George city center.

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Ovens Trail St George Utah

The Ovens trail is a short 3 mile roundtrip hike. It goes from top of Main St, on top of the cliffs north-west of St George. It is a nice trail, mostly on rocks and easy to walk. The scenery from there is pretty good, you will see most of St George and the surrounding areas.

The trail starts at the north dead end of Main St. There is a parking space on the right of the road there. It is a park there called Brooks Nature Park.  Go in between this park and the big water tank and you will find the trail, which from then on is well marked.


At the lower part of the trail there are several trees and a lot of birds, stop and look at them.
As soon as you get up on the cliff, you will have a good look over most of St George. And as you walk you will get further and further west, so you will have different views of St. George.















It was very few creatures out today, it was 102 F (39 Celsius). So it was me, a grashopper, a lizard  and a few birds. Actually it was a "cool" breeze, so the heat was not bad at all.



In the north, you can see Signal peak and now there is large forest fire as can be seen from the smoke off to the right. That mountain is high, so look at how high the smoke cloud is above the top of the mountain!


At the end of the trail you are close to the intersection of Bluff St and Sunset Blvd below you. There is a small 9 hole golf course below.
 The street going west is Sunset Blvd.





The picture above shows the old airport od St George, it is on top of a mesa mountain, but the runway is not very long, and at the end it is straight down, no wonder they moved the airport? On the way back I took a few more pictures. The Mormon Temple, kind of a landmark in St George, a huge flag, and a bird eating an insect.




 The bird has just caught an insect.



Ouch, there is the insects head eaten.

And here is the trail and elevation graph of the trail.






Ovens Trail in St George Utah

Friday, June 29, 2018

Keyhole Canyon in Zion NP

Keyhole Canyon is on route 9 west east of Zion. Coming from west drive past the entrance road to the park and continue up hill, through one long tunnel and a short one. A little further up is a parking spot for about 4-5 cars. That is as close as you can get to the Keyhole Canyon, it is on the north side of the road. Coming from east on route 9 drive trough the park entrance. The location of the place to park is 37°13'28.488"N -  112°54'9.264"W, if you have a GPS.

Below is a picture of the parking space, a map of the location and a satellite map of the location.



The Keyhole Canyon starts like 100 yards from the road, see the red mark on the satellite map. 
You should walk into the canyon on the right side and when you see a tree stuck down in the canyon, step down and walk at the bottom of the canyon.



From here on you will have a spectacular walk as far as you feel comfortable going, the walls are in places leaning over you. Below are pictures I took from my walk in the canyon.