Utah Vacation-Cold Front Arrives

Today the big cold front was expected to arrive. Last week, a typhoon in the Pacific caused a change in the jet stream that caused it to pull cold air from Canada down into the states. The forecast called for a dramatic drop in temperatures. Our plan was to do things that are normally too hot to do while the temperatures are cool.

Susan was still recuperating from Cedar Breaks and wanted to stay home, so Andrew and I headed out on our own. Our first stop was near a place called Hidden Lake. We drove along a dirt and sand road until we reached a steep, climbing turn with deep ruts caused by erosion. I slowed to determine the best path, but I slowed too much. The Mazda started to lose traction and we started sliding backward. I hit the brakes and stopped the slide, then slowly backed back down the hill. I ended up parking in a small pull out. It was on foot from here on out.

We could see a place labeled Hidden Lake on the map; now we just had to find it. Maps can be very helpful when it comes to finding places. I’m pretty sure that is why they were invented in the first place. Maps work very well in places like Florida - not so much in places like Utah. From the map, we could tell the direction to the lake, but from where we were standing, we weren’t sure which way to go. We were half way out of the valley. Should we continue up, or go back down? Google Maps provides a terrain layer, which could have come in very handy, had we had Internet access at the time. Given the name, I assumed that the lake was hidden, up on the plateau, so up we went.

We walked up the hill that had just defeated our SUV. We continued along until we reached the summit, then continued along until the map showed the lake off to our right. We found what we agreed might be interpreted as a trail and started following it. In reality, I think we were in a cow pasture. I just hoped that there wasn’t a territorial bull in the pasture with us.

We followed the path into a dry wash, then followed that downhill. If there was a lake up there, surely this wash would lead to it. As we walked, the wash got steeper and eventually ended with a steep drop. We were standing at the top of a dry, 30 foot tall waterfall. While we admired the rocks and the view, I heard voices coming from below. Then I saw four ATVs drive away. So, there was clearly a road to here, and we just spent the last 20 minutes hiking through a desert cow pasture. Well, maybe the road was only for ATVs.

Working my way down the dry waterfall

We climbed down the waterfall and walked over to where the ATVs were parked. In the parking lot, there it was – a sign for Hidden Lake. We found it! We followed a very short path to what appeared to be a largish, arched cave entrance. When I say “largish” I mean it was maybe 20 feet wide and 10 feet tall. In Utah terms, the entrance was actually small, when compared to other entrances. Anyways, we walked inside into complete darkness, so it seemed. I removed my sunglasses, but still couldn’t see anything, except for a few rocks on the cave floor. Where was the lake? Andrew turned on his phone light, but it didn’t reveal anything. Clearly there was light in the cave, but our eyes were not adjusted yet. It was then that Andrew realized that there was water just beyond the rocks on the cave floor!

Andrew standing at the entrance to the Hidden Lake

After our eyes adjusted, we could finally see the walls of the cave meeting the water line. The lake extended into the cave as far as we could see. Andrew used his Google Night Sight camera feature to capture a few shots.

The Hidden Lake, taken with Google Night Sight

After getting our pictures, we returned to the car. Before we left, a group of women showed up. We wondered how they got there. We could see from their footprints that they walked up the road that the ATVs had came on. So, we did too. We followed the road for about 10 minutes. The road was like any other dirt road. It was easily passable and did not require an ATV. Turns out it lead us right back to where we parked. If I had turned right and followed the low road, we would have went straight to the lake. Oh well, then we would have missed the pasture, dry wash, and waterfall.

Next up on Andrew’s list was the Kanab Creek Dam. We found a dirt road upstream of the dam and followed it to a trailhead. We crossed an ATV-only bridge over Kanab Creek and followed the trail for about a half mile. We then came to a split in the trail and followed the low road. We could see the lake in the distance and followed the trail to it. There was a small dam at the end, but no water was getting past it. We climbed over the dam and followed the downstream channel for a short distance until it dropped away sharply. We found another dry waterfall. This time, there was water at the base of the falls. How was it getting there? Andrew needed an answer. We followed the channel back to the dam, then back to the split in the trail. We continued on the other trail for a while, but could not find any path for the water to get from the lake to below the dry waterfall. We decided to leave the mystery unsolved. We returned to the car and returned to the condo for lunch.

The dam on Kanab Creek and the channel below

After lunch, Susan felt rejuvenated, so we decided to go see the Toadstools. The Toadstools entrance is less than an hour East of Kanab, right off the main highway - no long drive along a dirt and sand road through the desert to get to this one. At the trailhead, we followed the path along a dry wash into a valley. Eventually, we left the dry wash and started climbing up to the hoodoos and toadstools. The hillsides were either dark red or glaring white. We noticed that most of the toadstools had a dark rock on top. Where did the dark rock come from? We didn’t bother to find out. I’ll leave that as a task for the reader.

A toadstool hoodoo at the Toadstools

After walking past many hoodoos and toadstools, we reached the white cliff walls. The cliffs were cut from numerous waterfalls and abrasion from the wind. The wind today was periodically gusting strongly. In some cases, I was too scared to walk along the high, narrow path while the wind was gusting. I didn’t like the idea of tumbling to the bottom and having to limp all the way back up to the top. We stayed and explored for over an hour before heading back down the trail to the car.

All week, we’ve talked about capturing a time lapse of the sun setting on the big K over Kanab. While cooking dinner tonight, we set up my camera on the tripod with the auto shutter set to shoot an image every two seconds. We let this run until after sunset, then edited the images together to make a time lapse video.

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