Canyonlands and Arches National Parks

This national park offers some of the best hiking I have ever done. If you are okay without bagging a 14er or whatever your peaks of choice are and take some time to enjoy a beautiful hike through a unique world this is definitely a place to checkout.

We started this trip the second I got out of Denver airport on my way back from Christmas break. After stuffing ourselves into the car we headed west and arrived at Arches National Park around 11:00pm. We setup our site and went to bed, we didn't really pay attention to the fact that we watched our eyelids instead of a bright ball falling or fireworks or whatever you believe is the "typical" new years celebration.

The next morning we got up had a hot breakfast to get the blood flowing to our extremities and did a short hike to delicate arch. The arch was cool, but this national park is setup to do a short hike, drive, short hike, etc., which we didn't want to do. So!, we drove on to Canyonlands, NP. A little after noon we arrived at Squaw Flat Campground in the Needles district, setup our site, and started of on a trail to check out Lost Canyon. We ended up doing a 8 mile loop and finished our hike by star light, and an occasional head lamp. The stars were incredible out here! After a warm dinner, sleeping, and a warm breakfast we hit the trail again. I should slow down a little, because we didn't all hit the trail at the same time, Russel got some nasty blisters the previous night and wasn't in the mood for a 18mi hike that Kathleen and I put together. So we split up.

Kathleen and I went down Squaw Canyon which had a few challenging sections due to snow on the shady sides. We enjoyed identifying rock formations as animals, faces, volcanoes, etc. A highlight came when we found the Joint Canyon which is this very narrow and deep crack that you walk though for maybe 1/4 mile. After Joint Canyon, we entered the expansive Chesler Park. Depending on who you ask, Chesler Park has either really big mushrooms or large drums made out of rocks.

From here we started our treck back on a well traveled path. I should have mentioned before that going to the Canyonlands in the winter gives you a chance to 1) see the canyons with outlines of white snow that makes cool effects, 2) do some challenging climbing over ridges when the snow makes the rocks slippery, we offen had to use each other as ladders or anchors to get up short steep slopes), 3) be in this beautiful country without any crowds, I don't think we saw anyone on our 18mi loop.