the elusive hunter canyon rim trail

Sunday didn't go quite as planned but we did manage to enjoy it all the same.  My plan was for us to do a long loop (which, to be honest, in hindsight was perhaps a little ambitious) of the Hunter Canyon Rim trail to Pritchett Canyon, knocking off a couple of arches and putting about twelve miles on our legs.  That was the plan, anyway.

Heading down the Cliffhanger (that's not us)

We headed out Kane Creek Boulevard until it turned to dirt, parking in the large staging lot there.  This is a popular road for MTBers heading to the Amasa Back trail system and for off-roaders heading out Kane Creek to parts further afield.  We started walking down the Kane Creek dirt road, past the rapidly-filling Amasa Back trailhead.  Before we got too far, we stopped to watch MTBers - much, much more skilled than I - heading out and jeeps picking their way down the Cliffhanger trail.

And that's why it's called the Birthing Panel

As the road climbed, we stopped again at the Birthing Panel, a roadside boulder covered with pictographs.  Despite the increasing jeep traffic, it was a nice walk on that dirt road, scenic with switchbacks and beaver-felled cottonwoods as we made our way down past a natural spring.  We did notice a trail heading up a side canyon there but since I hadn't yet found that gjhikes.com trail link up there in the first paragraph (not until after the fact), we kept going to the Hunter Canyon campground (which had lovely sites but the busy Kane Creek road running right through the middle), at the mouth of pretty Hunter Canyon.  Once there we rechecked our map - oops! - and retraced our steps back to the trail by the spring.  It wasn't too far, luckily.

Looking across Kane Creek to the MTB trails

The trail went up Gatherer Canyon and for the first little bit, we were able to follow it.  Gatherer Canyon is a small box canyon that ends in a pour-off, ledges and cliffs.  We made our way up several levels of ledges and then we just lost the trail.  We spent a fair amount of time working our way back and forth but just could not figure out where to go: we got stuck on a ledge that we weren't sure we could get up and, once up, we definitely weren't sure we could get back down.  So we cut our losses and went out.  At first we thought that maybe we were still in the wrong canyon but then we found MTB tracks - although we had no idea how they got in there.

Switchbacks down to creek level

A little frustrated, we headed back on the dirt road, stopping to go up a side canyon across from the Amasa Back trailhead, and pausing to watch rock climbers scaling the 1,000 foot red rock walls.  At the trailhead, we once again checked the map: we had been in the right canyon, we just couldn't figure out the route.  Hike stats:  8.03 miles.

Water just gushing out of this spring

We made a quick stop back at the room for supplies, swung by Twisted Jeep Rentals to arrange for a jeep for Monday (quoted $245 for an all-day rental), and then drove out Mineral Bottom Road for beers under some delightfully twisted juniper trees.  We had passed some cows on the way in but other than a couple of jeeps passing by on the main road, we had the place to ourselves.  We used the time to look over the probable jeep route for the next day, as well as quite a bit of bird watching.

Snack break

That evening, after getting cleaned up, dinner was a veggie pizza at the Zax bar.  The day hadn't gone as planned but we managed decent mileage and spent most of the daylight hours outside in the southern Utah desert, which is pretty ideal even if you can't find the trail you want.

Dude.  I would never.