We had been expecting mountains. No mountain here! This canyon was going to be a hike down into a wash, rather than a hike into a mountain like most of the canyon hikes we had done. In the photo below though you can see a little bit of the canyons and wash that we are about to hike into:
Hiking down ...
At the bottom of the wash, you hike along this rock wall for a little ways, and then start looking for canyons.
Found one! We weren't even sure which one it was (Dry Fork, as it turned out), but let's go in!
In we go ... starts out fairly wide ...
My photographer follows behind ... (Ed took a lot of these photos - the good ones, basically!)
Gradually getting narrower ...
Narrower still, and the walls have interesting shapes from the erosion when water fills the canyon after a storm.
In places the footing gets a bit rough and rock-covered, but nothing too difficult.
After a while the canyon gets shallower and seems to be ending ...
It actually got deeper and shaded again though (thank goodness, as it was so hot). After a little ways further, here's where we turned around - this would be around halfway along the canyon. Physically, we could have climbed over this stone and gone further, but it was really hot out, in the mid-90's, and we were afraid of running out of water (and energy!) if we did too much, and we had one more canyon we wanted to do.
As we were turning around, I looked down and look who I saw at our feet - our very first tarantula sighting in the wild!
Here are some photos as we hiked the other direction on the way out ...
I love these patterns in the eroded rock:
In some places, the trail itself is very skinny, one foot in front of the other ...
And we are out!
Next up ... Spooky canyon! That's really its name, and if you thought this one was skinny, wait until you see Spooky ...
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