Capitol Reef: Cohab Canyon

For Memorial Day weekend / my birthday / Hal being home again we decided to head down to Capitol Reef National Park for a long weekend with some friends to find some cool sites and slot canyons to hike.

Hal headed out early to get a us a camping spot. We headed out really late, and ended up driving on a very bumpy dirt road right around midnight. We finally made it to the campsite, and settled in for the brightest night sleep I've ever had. The moon was amazingly bright and beautiful.

The next morning we headed out to the visitor center, almost an hour away from our primitive campsite to get directions for the slot canyons we wanted to hike. You need the right directions because they'll tell you things like, ignore the canyon that appears from the north, about 1.5 miles from the road and continue along the wash. I highly recommend going to get the fliers with directions if you're going hiking in Capitol Reef. A lot of times you're just walking in a wash, not a clearly marked trail.

Since we had to stop by the visitor center, we didn't have time to make it back and still hike one of the better slot canyons, so we chose to do Cohab Canyon, which isn't too far from the visitor center. The canyon itself isn't a very long hike, but it's full of small side canyons. Some of them were very cool.

 When we were walking along towards the end of the canyon, I looked down and someone had scratched LOOK -> into the rock. I looked and the below picture of this amazing arch is what I found.

Towards the end of the canyon you could choose to hike out to the highway, or to a lookout point. We chose the lookout point, and it did not disappoint.

On our way back to the campsite we stopped and looked at some petroglyphs that are right off the road. They were very cool to see. The anthropologist in me was amazed by them, but it was so sad to see that people had graffitied the rock, and attempted their own drawings. The picture below was taken through the big binoculars they have to look at the petroglyphs.

                            

I definitely recommend Cohab Canyon if you want a taste of slot canyons, but don't want the intense hikes of the bigger slot canyons in Capitol Reef. After the initial set of switch backs to make it to the mouth of the canyon, the hike was really mild. Make sure to bring lots of water though, it can get really hot out there during the day.

I'm linking up with YOLO Mondays at Lost In Travels.