Three Ponds Trail, Snow Canyon State Park, Utah
We drove west today to Snow Canyon State Park. We spent a great day hiking through the beautiful red sandstone canyons. First we stopped at a short trail into Jenny’s Canyon, a very narrow slot canyon. We then drove on just a couple of kilometres to the trail head for the Three Ponds Trail. This was quite a bit longer and harder. At least half of the distance of the trail is though soft sand which made the trail quite tough walking. At one point near the start of the trail it goes over bare rock and wasn’t well marked there, though it was everywhere else, and we had to spend a few minutes trying to find the trail (along with two women, one carrying her six month old daughter in a snuggly, who had also lost the main trail). We reached the second pond just about noon, so stopped to eat our lunch there, then walked just a few hundred metres farther to the third pond. The ponds are very small, the largest being the first, and it was only about 5 metres wide. The third was only a metre across, but they were ponds, so there is water in the desert sometimes.
Petrified sand dunes, Snow Canyon State Park, Utah
On the way back I walked to the top of the Petrified Sand Dunes. These are very interesting sandstone rocks, very bare, but with the waves of sand clearly visible in the eroded surface. It was a fairly steep climb, most noticeably so on the way down. While I was doing that Enid stayed at the bottom and talked with several of the other hikers that passed by. We then hiked to the top of the Hidden Pinion overlook. Here there are some large deposits of black sandstone, and great views down the valley both to the north and south.
When we got back to our Tahoe we were shocked to see that the tailgate was open. At first we thought someone had broken in to it, but we soon realized that we had left it open when we started our hike in the morning. Fortunately everyone who saw it was honest, and everything was still there.
On the way back we stopped and bought a step-stool ladder. I used it to wash the trailer, which was pretty dusty from our travels here. We also bought an electric heater. Since we have power at our campsite, and it’s cool in the evening it will save on running our propane furnace in the trailer. We’ll see how warm it keeps it tonight.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and clear, no wind, and with the temperature about 22 C. It’s hard to beat that kind of weather.