Another day of crappy gray and cloudy weather but luckily no rain.

Mountains Surrounding Our Campsite

On our fifth day we planned to hike Hidden Canyon which is a slot canyon near Weeping Rock and where we returned from the East Rim trail.  Hidden Canyon was discovered in 1927 while rescuing a climber who fell off of the Great White Throne.

The hike is a strenuous 1.1 mile, 1,000 foot gain to the entrance of the canyon.  The hike is once again lined with chains, but after Angel’s Landing they didn’t seem necessary.

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String of Pearls, Notice the Waterfall in the Background- Nice Shot Katharine!

A string of pearls, or a series of pools, were at the entrance to the slot canyon.  Beyond this point the trail isn’t maintained and it’s up to each hiker to determine how far they hike/ climb.  During our visit, since there was so much water, there were more obstacles than usual (unless you were willing to wade! We thought it was too cold for that.)

What Isn’t Pictured is a Pool of Water Below Katharine

We climbed rocks and used fallen branches as bridges making out way into the canyon to find the free standing arch.  After almost a half mile of boulder hoping and climbing we reached this small arch, almost hidden against the steep canyon walls.

We did have someone else take this photo of us

Surprisingly only 2 photos on the entire trip were taken by someone besides us.  We continued quite a ways further until we were faced by a high wall of boulders and debris.  We also started feeling rain drops but weren’t sure if it was from the moist canyon walls or the clouds above.  We took some final photos of the canyon and headed back.

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The orange sandstone walls were impressive as usual.  It was hard to capture how massive they were when we were trapped in the canyon.

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The walls also make for a good background for portraits.

After we returned to the trail head the wind was picking up and it was drizzling on and off.  We didn’t have much more planned for the day considering the weather threw us off our original plan to backpack Kolob Canyon and our trip was threatened to be cut short by a federal government shutdown.  So we walked to Weeping Rock and stood under the waterfall as the wind blew mist into our face. In the summer, this rock is always dripping with water that seeps through the rock even when the canyon is over 100 degrees and very dry. But at this time of year, the Weeping Rock was somewhat overshadowed by the huge waterfall pouring off the cliff.

We then decided to hike a short ways to Emerald Pools.  The wind was picking up and we could see the trail passing around the backside of the waterfall but with the wind it was like an unmanned fire hose.  You could hear the screams of kids getting soaked echoing through the canyon.  We videotaped a couple groups getting soaked like they were on a amusement park ride- it was quite entertaining!  We then made a run for it ourselves and managed to get through getting to wet.  We hiked to all three pools then headed back to the shuttle.

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Because of the uncertainty with the weather and the park possibly closing we didn’t know what to expect, so we just headed to bed early.

Trip Stats (Running Total, 5 days): 37.3 miles, 8,276 feet of elevation, 652 photos

As you can imagine, we took a lot more photos than we can fit in the posts, so check out more photos from the trip!