crowd control

 We've had a sparsely-activitied couple of weekends, I'm afraid, with not much to share with you here.  Last weekend, although the weather was absolutely gorgeous, every canyon on the Wasatch Front saw record amounts of traffic - from Ogden and Weber Canyons, to both Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, to the Alpine loop.  The leaf-peepers were out in force; popular trails saw hundreds of hikers; and Snowbird's Oktoberfest backed up traffic as badly as a big-snow ski day.  It would have been a beautiful day to do a hike but H and I have just gotten so leery of crowds that we couldn't bring ourselves to do it.  Instead, he got two road rides in and Milton and I did our Dimple Dell walks.  There was some beers on the patio time too, just to enjoy the last of the sunny fall weather.

There's the moon

So here we'll flashback to a Hidden Valley hike that Milton and I did when we were in Moab the last time.  Despite it being a very nice Saturday, there were only four other cars in the lot when we started and we only met two people and their dog on the way up.  It was sunny and clear and although I broke a sweat on the climb, the temperatures were mild (i.e., only into the low 80s).  I did make Milton put his t-shirt on, however, because he was doing a LOT of running and I knew there weren't any creeks for him to wade in to cool off.

Approaching the valley

At the saddle, instead of following the southern (?) face of the wall along the petroglyphs, we took the smaller, less used trail to the north face which we had never done before.  Since there isn't any rock art (that I saw, anyway) and it doesn't really go anywhere, the trail is much fainter, although it did get us all the way down to the wash, and there were even sporadic cairns in the wash.  The wash itself was pretty, narrow in spots and both sandy-bottomed as well as fully carved from the sandstone in parts.

Looking out Behind the Rocks-ish

Although I wasn't exactly sure where it would come out, we just kept heading downstream.  Lo and behold! it came out at the intersection of the Moab Rim jeep road and the trail back up to Hidden Valley.  As we turned left, to head back up to the Hidden Valley saddle, Milton took off after something (a rabbit, if I had to guess) and I had to call him several times to get him to come back to me.  When he did come back, he was panting pretty hard so I put him on the leash until his breathing calmed down.

High alert

There were several groups of hikers making their way up the valley as we headed out but the parking lot didn't seem that much fuller than when we started.  Back at the car, as I was changing my shoes (and having a beer), Milton introduced himself to a couple who had just pulled in (the lady had a ziploc bag and he thought there might be treats in it for him) and then stretched out in the sun to bask.  September and October are often crazy-busy in Moab but this little hike, despite being a popular one, allowed us to avoid the crowds for a change.

Peeking around the back