Apr 8 – Hidden Canyon Trail

Yesterday was a shopping day.

Today we did another trail rated “strenuous”. The Hidden Canyon Trail was about a 5 km round trip and around 800 foot vertical. It was also the scariest trail we have ever done.

You start out on the East Rim Trail which eventually climbs 2100 feet to the rim. Part way up you branch off towards Hidden Canyon.

The East rim trail climbs through the notch center left and continues on up..

Hidden canyon is in the notch above, center right.

Off we go up the steep switchbacks from the valley floor. The first section was actually the steepest but nice and wide.

Once we branched off we had to climb up a saddle on the steep short switchbacks.

This puts us at the arrow, above. This is the spot we came back to to have lunch later.

From now on the trail gets “interesting”.

Hang on to the chains.

Some places there were no chains but the trail sort of sloped inwards. It was a long way down.

The view below is from our lunch spot. We are climbing up that slash on the far wall.

You go around the end and down a bit into the canyon entrance.

The entrance looked a bit rough. We thought we would be climbing over trees and boulders.

But it changed into a nice flat, very narrow and tall slot canyon.

Some interesting swirls on the wall far above.

There were a few rocks to climb over. They were all covered in fine sand so they were quite slippery.

Lots of great erosion to stare at.

We continued until we came to this small arch.

Just after the arch it got very tangled so we turned back.

The sun was shining right down into the canyon so we went back until we found some shade in a place Jennie felt comfortable sitting. First we had to back down the chains.

Our lunch spot, from above in the slash.

We found this nice cool spot with some flat rocks. Jennie people watched.

This was one brave couple. Each one had a baby on their back and holding the hand of another young one.

I took some picture across the valley from our viewpoint.

Some landmarks from our climb the other day.

I just sat on a rock and stared out in the valley for a long time. I was tough to tear myself away.

Down we go.

Once we were down, we again were tired but not completely worn out. A good but very scary day for Jennie.