Trail and Leprechaun Canyons

The weekend of 28 Mar 08, Tracy and I headed down to Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell to do some kayaking.  Now, we could have rented two sea kayaks at REI in Salt Lake, but I figured it would be easier to rent them at the marina so we wouldn’t have to drive 6 hours with them on top of the truck.  Remember that: six hour drive from Salt Lake to Bullfrog.  Well, we called the marina and asked if they had two sea kayaks.  They said yes.  We asked if they had two hatches in them for gear to ensure they were actually sea kayaks.  They assured us they did.  Then we said, “Now, they’re not sit-on-tops, are they?”   They assured us they were not sit-on-tops.  So we were happy and we rented two kayaks for the weekend.  Then we drove the 6 hours down there and went to get the kayaks.  The lady showed us two nice sit-on-tops.  She said that was all she had, and they would have never told us they had sea kayaks.  Well, you can’t take overnight gear on 35 degree nights in a sit-on-top on Lake Powell, so our kayaking plans were busted.  No big deal…I’ve decided this area around Robber’s Roost needs more exploration, so we headed out.

We drove around some and then we hiked Trail Canyon down to Trachyte Creek, and then up to Maidenwater Canyon.  We turned around at Maidenwater, but the hike was really nice.  We’ve done two canyons (Swett and Trail) off of Hwy 276, though, and they were both really rocky, and tough to hike on.  They were pretty, though, and we didn’t see anyone at either canyon…that was nice.  I was starting to get a bad sore throat, so we checked into a hotel in Ticaboo that turned out to be pretty nice.  We then drove up the Burr Trail Road towards Capitol Reef.  We found some outstanding views of the Waterpocket Fold at the Halls Creek Trail.  We definitely want to come hike back here…it was very remote and pretty.

The next day we headed up to Hwy 95 to check out some canyons we had seen heading out of the North Wash Canyon.  We went to Leprechaun Canyon, and had a great time.  This was one of my favorite canyons I have found up to this point.  It wasn’t very long, which was its only drawback, but it had some tall, narrow sections with a very skinny slot that was only a few inches wide at the top, but wide enough to walk through at the bottom…very cool.  It felt like a cave in a few places.  There were several other canyons heading out of North Wash Canyon, and with all of the slickrock around this area, we definitely want to check it out some more.  So we found two areas we want to hike more…we’ll never hike everything in this state!  But despite the bust on kayaking, we had a great trip.  I did develop a cold, but no big deal.

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Trail Canyon

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Halls Creek: 37.717740, -110.930200
Leprechaun Canyon: 38.019330, -110.537300
Trail Canyon: 37.888230, -110.567910

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