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This summer we did two great backpacks in Utah and Arizona. They both were challenging and a lot of fun. We did both of these hikes with another couple, Dave and Meghan. I think they enjoy hiking even more than we do.
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Hackberry Canyon, Utah
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| Hackberry Canyon is a slot canyon and starts as a crack in the earth. You wedge yourself into the crack and work your way down about 20 feet to the bottom. Then the walls slowly open up and you can walk along the sandy bottom. The "Narrows", where you can touch both walls for most of the ways is about 2 miles long. After that the canyon opens up into a much wider canyon with slick rock and raised areas for camping. |
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No telling how deep any of the pools are without stepping in! The water is muddy and darn cold. About 50° as we discovered when we had to wade into a few pools that were impassable any other way than swimming. The walls are so steep that sunlight barely gets down here so it is a little cool when you get wet. I couldn't touch bottom on the deepest pool we had to cross.
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| The walls have been carved by years of flash floods. We passed some areas where tree trunks were wedged into the rocks over our heads. The color of the sandstone also varied as we hiked through the canyon. |
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Wet Beaver Creek, Sedona, Arizona
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| You start the Wet Beaver Creek hike by first climbing down the Waldroup Canyon. There are seven waterfalls along this trail and all of the rock is basalt. This section was a good test of every ones climbing skills. |
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| Dave, Karin, Meghan and Scott pause to enjoy the view before working their way down to Wet Beaver Creek. It is at the base of the mountains you see in the background. This is an incredible area and it is soon obvious that this area is rarely hiked by others. There is no evidence of man except for a campsite at the base of the falls. |
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| Wet Beaver Creek is a series of deep clear cold pools at the bottom of a canyon. There is no real trail, just follow the creek downstream until you hit Bell Trail, a popular swimming spot and where we left the second car. The variety of rock colors and textures is amazing. |
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| There are 9 pools along the trail (oh wait, that wrong, there are over a dozen pools in the next 9 miles - just a little off in our reading of the directions). We take off our packs, wrap them in bags and then sit on inner tubes to float the packs to the next shoreline. As you can see by the walls there is no walk around. |
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| The going was slow since most of the trail is over boulders and stepping stones both in and out of the water. But we had a great time and we all came out looking much better than our inner tubes did at the end of the hike! |
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