Little Wildhorse Canyon - Part 1

We are going to try and see if we can fit in all of the places in Utah that we've always wanted to see before we go out East, leaving Zion and true wilderness to enter the land of rolling hills that you can't backpack in unless you want to end up camping next to a hundred other people, mountains that barely meet the definition, and scarcely a square mile of land not broken up by roads, civilization, and traffic. Just check out this link and compare Utah to Pennsylvania.

The lack of green shading and the convergance of masses of yellow lines are symbols of prison bars: the crisscrossing metal of a cage and a small room without as much as a potted flower.

Gosh, I hope it's not that bad; we'll have to see.

On that note, we set out to go and hike Little Wildhorse Canyon in the San Rafael Swell. San Rafael is a "protected" land in the way that it's protected, Republican land where you get to go to sleep at night to the sound of guns being fired at small animals and beautiful red rock formations that took millions of years to form and an instant to be forever marked by lead, the whine of two stroke motors driven by people that enjoy nature in the way that an arsonist enjoys good architecture, and "a good place to put your tent" means that there are fewer than three fresh cowpies in a square yard. Aside from that, though, it's a huge area of central Utah big enough to sometimes find a piece of peace and quiet adventure. We found a nice little place to camp where the sound of gunfire was distant, the cowpies dry, and we had only one atv drive within 50 feet of camp.

Wow, this post has turned negative enough that I don't think it's possible to recover and describe how wonderful our hike was the next day in this beautiful slot canyon. So, I'm going to have to write a second post.

-Justin