Rough Canyon

Today we went for a hike at Rough Canyon, which is right next door to the Mica Mine trail we hiked a couple weeks ago. True to its name, this was the roughest hike by far that we've been on since we moved here. The trail started off - like many canyon hikes do - following along the side of a dry creek bed. Often it was simpler to just hike in the creek bed. Then we got to a point where the creek bed narrowed to a chute with several big dropoffs, and here the trail headed up on to the rocky wall of the canyon. I'll admit that it did make me a bit nervous, walking along this narrow bit of trail.

Soon we descended again to the canyon floor - in some places, rocky steps had been carefully placed to make the descent easy. In others, we had to clamber from one boulder to the next. Sometimes Utah was a bit hesitant about the boulder-hopping, but if we went first, he could always find his way down.



Progress was pretty slow, what with all the route-finding, and the big rocks, and being very careful of Cailan on my back. He seemed to enjoy it, actually, and learned to tuck his head in close to my back when I said "duck!" as we went under a tree branch or through a rock tunnel. I had Chris monitoring from the front or behind, to make sure I ducked far enough to clear Cailan's head as well as my own. According to our Garmin, we had only hiked for 1.1 miles when we stopped for a snack break. This was right before the canyon really opened up into a big view.


Cailan had four snacks, which he enumerated to us several times: goldfish crackers, a piece of a chocolate Clif Bar, a strawberry cereal bar, and more goldfish crackers. After our snack, we decided to head back up the canyon. We switched Cailan to Chris's back for the return trip, since one carrier with a 30-pound kid is lighter than one backpack holding water and snacks. We found some nooks in the canyon walls to make echos. Cailan learned that Daddy's voice is better at making echos than mommy's voice.


In the picture above, Chris and Cailan are getting ready to make the traverse across the canyon wall; it's the same spot that Cailan and I are in the second picture but seen from the other side. Below, Chris and Cailan have climbed down into one of the narrow chutes we passed near the beginning of the hike.