September 15, 2007

September 15, 2007

In the morning we drive into Capitol Reef National Park. We go straight to the campground where there are several spots available. We take the first one we see. We are not taking any chances. While we are setting up camp, a couple hikers walk by and let us know a trailhead is right across the street from our site. It looks like a longer route than we are used to but it seems very convenient. After donning our boots and fixing a trail lunch we head up the Cohab Canyon trail. It winds its way up a hill and into a small canyon with a floor of red sand and rock walls so full of holes they look like Swiss cheese.

The canyon walls are topped with white mounds of slickrock. These white dome shapes gave rise to the “Capitol” part of the park’s name. The “Reef” part alluded to the barrier to travel that the 100-mile-long cliffs meant to early pioneers. This long barrier is supposed to be a bulge in the earth’s crust caused by the Pacific plate running into the Continental plate.

Climbing out of the canyon we switch to the Frying Pan trail that takes us across a rock wilderness very sparsely vegetated with stunted junipers and pinon pines. After much up and down travel we eventually come to another slickrock area adjacent to a huge chasm that slices thru the middle of this ridge. There we take a short trail that takes us to Cassidy Arch on the canyon edge. At the edge we think we lost the trail until we notice we are standing atop the arch. Aimee steps back from the hole. I coax her back to take my photo with the arch. We make the long journey back to camp. Although convenient, this nine-mile hike turned out to be a couple miles too long for our aging bodies.