closing the loop

Grandstaff Canyon is a huge canyon.  Even though we finally connected the loop, so much of the canyon remains unseen; there's still an awful lot to explore.  When we didn't get too far into the main fork of the canyon back in January, we knew we wanted to go back and go further; and when we went in from the head of the canyon, back in April, we thought we might be able to come up that far from the mouth of the canyon. 

 The sun just reaching the bottom of the canyon

Thursday morning was our best chance.  The trail to Morning Glory Arch is one of the more popular outside-the-national-parks trails in Moab and trying to go on a weekend would be madness.  We got an early-ish start and there were already around five other cars in the parking lot when we got there.  At 8:30 a.m., the sun had not yet come over the canyon walls, making for a cool start to the hike. 

The boys admiring the view

There was still a good amount of water flowing in the creek so even though I carried water for Milton, he didn't need any of it, able to get a drink while walking through the water whenever he wanted.  He was definitely enjoying himself, racing up and down the trail, circling around to come up behind us, splashing through the creek and rustling around in the brush.

Pretty and also ouch

We only saw one trail runner on our way in and, once we turned off the Morning Glory Arch trail to follow the main fork of the canyon, we saw no one at all.  There was an easily-followed trail - not heavily-trodden but clear that we weren't the first people exploring this fork.

Up on the first level

We made it up to - and past - where we had hiked down to from the Sand Flats, pausing at some flat lunch rocks to admire the tadpoles/polliwogs, minnows and tiny crawdads in some quiet pools of the creek.  We even found an access point to climb up onto the lower rim of the canyon, a broad expanse of ledges and vegetation that looked like it had been professionally landscaped, and a pretty pour-off.

Fairly evident where the water goes

When we got back to the intersection with the Morning Glory Arch trail, we started to see lots of people, and there were more folks at the trailhead than we've seen in months.  We figured this would happen, that more people would start showing up the closer it got to the holiday weekend.  We were just glad to have once again escaped the crowds.

Super-pretty pour-over

Hike stats:  7.29 miles (Milton probably did around 10); moving time 2:54/2.5 m.p.h; overall 3:36/2.0 m.p.h.; 1,180' of elevation (although it didn't seem like it)

Where it widens up