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| Hiking | 2.30 Miles |
203 AEG |
| | Hiking | 2.30 Miles | 1 Hour 29 Mns | | 1.70 mph |
| 203 ft AEG | 8 Mns Break | 15 LBS Pack | | |
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| partners | | After cutting our hike short at Whiskers Draw and the resultant high water mis-adventure on Cottonwood Road it was time to come up with a reasonable fall-back option. Approaching the junction with Poseys Trail Road and Cottonwood Road a mile short of returning to UT 95 brought to mind a few possibilities. Noticing Poseys Trail was paved, I thought we might as well give it a shot.
While part of the road had been paved years ago, the deterioration had reduced the pavement to barely a few hundred yards before devolving into a pink-gravel road, and almost immediately we were faced with a 50' section of greasy mud. The moment we hit the mud I was barely able to keep going somewhat straight. Now if this is what we can expect by continuing, nope, we're having none of that and decided to turn around. With a very narrow spot, turning around included more than a little back-and-forth, followed by traversing the muddy section back out.
Ok, now it's time for another assessment of options. Unfortunately almost any hike in the near vicinity would entail traveling on gravel roads with likely very similar conditions, so Butler Wash Road and Comb Wash Road, whether North or South of UT 95 were out-of-the-question. So at the time we simply drove West aloong UT 95 while trying to come up with something doable.
And just up the hill we come to the road to Mule Canyon/House on Fire. While we had visited the House on Fire a full 12.5 years ago, back then we had flawless conditions for true House on Fire photos, but now with threatening skies and intermittent sprinkles I almost thought what was the point? Well, with half a day left to hike, it's this or nothing. And if conditions get bad we can bail out early and we definitely don't need to do the full ~8 mile round-trip hike like 12+ years ago, visiting ruin sites farther up Mule Canyon, the House will be far enough.
Rather than parking at the lot just off UT 95 (which was pretty muddy) we parked at a wide spot within a hundred feet of the actual Mule Canyon TH. Immediately we noticed hikers scaling the steep slope right next to us and wondered why they weren't using the actual trail. It turned out a few hundred feet out the actual trail was blocked by a wide channel of water, thus the impromptu detour. Ok, so reluctantly we did the same thing. Due to enough water in the canyon bottom we would cross it at least a half-dozen times.
On the hike out to the House a group of two adults, three(?) teens and a well-behaved dog appeared not to have the best information, and went off to one side at the first cave/alcove, seemingly thinking it was part of the House on Fire. Due to their detour we were able to reach the House and get whatever photos we wanted before they eventually showed up.
With no plan to continue we went just far enough up Mule Canyon to an appealing picnic spot. After our lunch break we noticed a narrow slot between boulders and decided to check it out. Weirdly enough, for whatever reason, in 2013 we never noticed it. Anyway, on this occasion we went in and after squeezing through into an alcove we see out the other side is back to the House.
By this time the other group had already headed back out, so again we were following them. Maybe 1/4-mile from the House it began to rain. After taking a moment to don our outer rain gear we continued on in haste. It appeared the group had no rain gear as we passed them while they were huddled together under a large rock overhang.
On the return trip, weirdly enough, where it was too wide to jump across earlier, the actual trail was now able to be followed so we did just that back up to the road.
With a bit of a breeze the temps were 53-57°.
Enough adventures for one day, we headed back to the Air BnB with full knowledge I have work to do to come up with accessible hike options for the rest of the week. In short, due to prior rain and more in the forecast almost all our prior plans have gone by the wayside. |
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