|
| | | |
| |
|
| Hiking | 3.00 Miles |
300 AEG |
| | Hiking | 3.00 Miles | 4 Hrs | | 0.75 mph |
| 300 ft AEG | | | | |
|
|
| |
| Linked |
|
none
[ show ]
| no linked trail guides |
| Partners |
|
none
[ show ]
| no partners | | After my visit this Spring, I thought Mrs. big_load would enjoy this one. A few months made a lot of difference, though. There were a couple inches of snow on frozen Cigarette Springs road, which added some uncertainty to the ride out the TH. Would we get stuck on one of the hills? How much worse would it be after the sun worked on it for a few hours?
We reached the trailhead and headed down under a clear blue sky and quickly got into the main canyon. That's when it got interesting. The trail was now punctuated with more than a dozen large, frozen waterfalls. The going was very slow as we found our away around each slippery spot, sometimes by squeezing through the brush. It was a great relief to get down to the bottom and over to the slick rock again.
As we scrambled up to the shelf, I unfortunately discovered that Mrs. big_load was too uncomfortable with the exposure to continue. I found a better way for her to get up, but she balked at the last 20 feet up to the ruin, and while she could view it well from below, she was unable to continue on to the other ruins farther along the shelf. I didn't feel too bad, since she still enjoyed the hike. Besides, it was really warming up and I was worried about the road. We scampered up about as fast as we could and quickly reached the car. Conditions on the last few hundred yards of trail were not encouraging.
I had expected the fluffy snow and nice, hard road to become a couple inches of slush and an inch of liquid mud lubricating a thicker layer of frozen mud below. That is about what happened. Fortunately, the mud wasn't too liquid. There was enough grip to get up the hills and the really mushy spots were in places we could coast through.
We cheered upon finally reaching the register box and the big road.
On our way out, we came upon a truck broken down in the middle of the highway. It had been towing a trailer laden with newly-gathered wood when the transmission failed. Some of the family stayed with it while we gave the driver a ride down to Halchita to get a Jeep. We had a nice talk on along the way, and discovered that we had been within a hundred feet of each other when a truck overturned by the bridge earlier in the year. They planned to disconnect the trailer, tow the truck to the top of the Dugway, coast it down to the bottom, and tow it back to town. I'm sure it was a long and trying day for them.
We finished the day with beef stew and frybread at the Olde Bridge Grill. |
| _____________________
| | |
|
|
|
Route Editor
Route Scout
