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

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.

Hike to Kvitenosi (mountain) in Norway - Close to Voss

I have been many times to this mountain, lived for some years in Voss, a small city close to Bergen in Norway. One reason to visit this mountain is to see a German warplane from WWII that crash landed near the peak. Two out of 6 survived the crash. One might still find pieces of the plane, but most of it has been sent to Germany where they have tried to reconstruct it.

The easiest way to hike to Kvitenosi is to drive from Voss to Evanger on E 16. Turn off to the right and you will find Teigedalsvegen. Follow this road until the junction with FV 313 (Brekkhu), dont go there but turn right. The road will eventually turn into a dirt road and climb up into the mountain. It ends just below a dam at Volavatnet.

Here is the road from Evanger approximated with a blue line.

The trail is not easy to spot. Cross over to the other side. There you should turn down to the left to find the trail. There are no signs, but sometimes there are round circles painted on stones. On the plotted trail below you will see the Vola lake at the bottom and the blue flag is the peak of the mountain. The plane is somewhere on the flat part before the blue flag.

From the map you can see that it is an easy hike, half way you have to cross a creek, you might have to take off your shoes to get to the other side. This trip was in August, and there is still a lot of snow in this area and altitude (on the map it is shown in meters). If you bring a GPS or a good topo map you can return by going around the mountain back to the dam. On that side there is an unmanned tourist cabin where it is possible to stay overnight. 

This is the dam and you see the bridge to cross the flow of water running from the dam.

This is how the trail looks like, and you should head up to the left of the mountain in the picture.

And just get used to it, walking on snow.

After the first climbing, it flattens out towards the creek you have to cross.

Here is a steep part up to the top plateau, see the round circles on the stones and rocks.

Here is part of the plane.

And of top of the mountain you have this big pile of stones.

If you chose to walk back on the other side, this is how it looks, a lot of snow.

Be careful where you see water like her, you dont see how deep it is, could be part of a creek or a lake.

Here is the cabin that is for the public to use. If you intend to stay you need to get a key at a tourist office before you go, the cabin can be locked.

On this side of the mountain there are several trail so other parts of this mountain range, and there is trout in the lakes.

Here you see the dam where you started.

Here you can see the elevation along the trail. This graph is if you return the way you came.

Voss is a great location for hiking, biking and watersport. Also many places where you can do base jumping from mountain cliffs. Many trails starts from the city, but driving less than an hour and you will have many more. The most famous event might be the Extreme Sport Week in summer.