Utah Vacation - Dry Fork

Today we drove down Hole In The Rock Road to the Dry Fork trailhead.  Hole In The Rock had been scraped after the recent rains and the first few miles as far as the Devil's Garden turn-off were quite good and the rest passible.  My notes from last time said the side road to the trailhead required 4-wheel drive, but that hardly describes it.  I was driving and came to a point where I could not imagine a car, 4-wheel drive or not, could make it over the shelf of rock in the road.  While I was deciding what to do, another car came along and after a couple of attempts managed to get through.  So W took the wheel and we made it.  Coming back after the hike was even more challenging.  Not sure we will ever be driving that road again.

The hike itself was a fun explore.  Six years ago we investigated Peek-A-Boo slot canyon, went through Spooky slot canyon, and walked a little way into Dry Fork but didn't have time to go far.  So this time, we wanted to explore Dry Fork.  We did not remember how much effort it takes to get down into the canyon that contains these hikes.  It is hard to get a good perspective from photos, but it is a long way down from the top on the right of this photo to ground level in the middle of the picture.


I found the route most people were taking to be too difficult; over very steep and slippery rocks.  But we found another route that worked very well and we got to the mouth of Dry Fork.

This year, probably due to the recent rains, it was not dry but other hikers had made paths through the mud so it was not a problem.  We hiked in about 1/2 mile until it got too narrow to go around the mud, then we came back out.




Then we had to go back up the trail.


and up


and up.