About eight miles west of Bluff, UT, US-163 cuts through a stunning monocline called Comb Ridge. This fold in the earth’s crust, developing 65 million years ago, is similar to folds we’ve seen and especially the Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef National Park. How do these rock folds develop? It is all about tectonic plates. What kind of plates? Let’s go . . .
Let’s go for a hike to a little known canyon in the Irish Canyon area along UT-95 in Utah. No, I’m not kidding. Leprechaun Canyon is part of the Irish Canyon area 28 miles south of Hanksville. You must carefully count the miles because there are no signs and the unpaved parking area is easy to miss. Ooops, have to back up, I just missed it. Luckily there are no cars on UT-95 as far as the eye can see in either direction. Ahh, wilderness.
Although this area is known for full-geared climbing and rappelling, only walking and a tiny bit of scrambling is needed to explore Leprechaun Canyon. Just my kind of “challenge”, so let’s go!
About 20 miles southeast of Bryce Canyon National Park is a 40-mile road that will take your breath away: Cottonwood Canyon Road. It is in the southwest part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a rugged, remote 1.87 million acre wilderness and a Utah jewel. The landscape has unique geologic formations of red, white, pink, blue, green, yellow, and more. Coming up out of the sagebrush valley, we are south of Kodachrome Basin State Park. Our “kodachrome” colors will only get better! The first six miles of Cottonwood Canyon Road is paved, but then we adventure on a graded dirt and clay surface with warnings to never travel when raining. Well, it is a beautiful day with no rain forecast so off we go!
Near the western entrance of Valley of Fire State Park we find dark red Aztec sandstone. In the red rock nooks and crannies campsites are available and at this outcropping’s northern end is Atlatl Rock. Home to petroglyphs about 4,000 years old carved by unknown ancient tribes. Yes, these peoples lived sometime around 2,000 B.C. and we can only imagine their thoughts through their art. Let’s go!
