Crack Canyon 2011

I'm in Korea now teaching and in my spare time I'm trying to catch up on my blogging.

This last April and May I made two trips to Crack Canyon in the San Rafael Reef.  The first was on April 14th with my family: Yeongmi, Alan, Joan and Joan's friend, Sophie.  The second trip was with the ventures in our ward on May 6th and 7th.

Both times we went down from the Behind-the-Reef road.  You can drive a four wheel drive a mile or so down the canyon from the turnoff until it starts to narrow and you need to park.  From that point on it's short walk past a easily bypassed pouroff to the short subway section of the canyon.  When I went with the ventures we spent the morning rappelling off of the rocks on the righthand side of the canyon just before the first pouroff.

The subway section is located at  38°37'22.7"N 110°44'10.6"W

The subway part is very picturesque, but also quite short.   Aftter that its a half mile or so to the next pair of pouroffs.  These are pretty easy to get down and also not too bad to get back up, even for a heavy guy like myself.  Below those two pouroffs another quarter mile or less you run into a series of two or three pouroffs that can be a bit tricky.  On the first trip with the family, we turned around after the 2nd one because the 3rd pouroff looked too far down.  You can bypass this section by looking carefully for some cairns on the left-hand side of the canyon where it makes a turn at 38° 37' 26" N 110° 44' 09" W.  You need to climb up though a fairly wide crack over some boulders, but after that it’s an easy trail on ledges around the difficult spots.  The ventures came back through the canyon bottom just fine, but older out-of-shape people should take the detour both ways.

 The 2nd of 3  tricky spots that can be avoided by a detour
This downclimb is at roughly  38°37'22.4"N 110°44'10.1"W

Finally, about a quarter mile below the bypass or last rough pouroff, you enter the narrows of Crack Canyon.  This section is about a tenth of a mile long, but it’s the best part of the hike.  The walls are straight and very high and it’s well-worth the hike.  You can continue on after this, but the canyon opens up and you end up hiking across terrain that is not nearly impressive as the part you’ve already been through.  Most people turn around and head back at the end of the narrows.

The narrows start at  38°37'10.7"N 110°43'59.7"W

(photo taken by Kyle Wheelhouse)

All-in-all it’s a really fun hike that should take only a couple of hours even if you go rather slowly, as I do.  When you're done you can say, "I had fun doing Crack!"