We woke up the next morning after a much cooler nights’ rest, and immediately headed towards our first hike of the day, which happened to be about 30 minutes further down the bumpy Hole-in-the-Road dirt road. We were hiking to Dry Fork Narrows, Peekaboo, and Spooky Slot Canyons – a hike that features awesome, seamlessly endless slot canyons that require squeezing through all their cracks and crevices. The parking lot at the trailhead had a few other cars, but it wasn’t too busy yet given it was only 7:45am.
It was a super neat experience and the trail started getting crowded as we hiked out – making us glad that we got an earlier start. We spent about 2 hours and 45 minutes exploring the area, covering just over 5 miles and only 550 feet of elevation gain. This was a hike like none other we had experienced before, and one I would recommend to almost everyone – just maybe not to claustrophobics!
We still had another slot canyon to explore that was further back up the road, not far from our campsite. Zebra Canyon – named for its supposed red “zebra stripes” – is about 2.5 miles from the trailhead and requires some scrambling and shimmying up tight spots in the canyon. By now the parking lot was packed, so we found a spot and slathered on some more sunscreen before making our way towards the canyon.
When we reached the entrance to the slot canyon, hikers ahead of us had decided to form a line, only allowing individual groups in at a time since it was a very narrow in and out canyon. Feeling like we were waiting in line for a ride at an amusement park did not bode well with Jordan. Or the hikers who were immediately before and after us. So, instead of waiting in the scorching desert heat for who knows how long (it was an older couple who everyone was waiting on), the group of us decided to make a mutiny and we walked past the 10 or so people waiting ahead of us. I was SO not comfortable with this plan and felt my anxiety rise with every person we passed, but felt better that we were in a bigger group, so I decided to join – mainly because Jordan and I still had other places to get to.
The group of us entered the canyon, and I think our large presence made the older couple nervous, because as soon as we were close to them, they chose to bail, heading back out to safety. I only made it a little way into the water filled canyon before my nerves took over at an extremely tight spot that would have required stemming – something I was definitely not up for. So, I told Jordan to go on ahead as I didn’t want to hold him back from experiencing seeing the zebra stripes, and I waited with another girl from our mutiny who was also struggling to get over the mental barrier. He eventually came back after going as far into the canyon as he could, and we made our way back to the trailhead, spending about 1 hour and 45 minutes on the trail and gaining 410 feet of elevation.
Since it was only about 2:30pm by the time we were finished, we pushed on to our next location – Capitol Reef National Park. As we entered the town of Torrey just outside of the park, we stopped at their visitor center, where a lady told us about some free dispersed camping close to the park and recommended some short hikes we could do since there was plenty of daylight left. We drove over to the camping area, found a place, and within 10 minutes we had everything set up (by now we had the routine down – Jordan would set up the tent while I blew up the air mattress and made the bed). We then drove into the park and took the scenic drive, which ends at a trailhead for a quick 2-mile hike through a large canyon.
We spent about an hour there, hiking past the Pioneer Register and ending at The Tanks. It was after 7:00pm when we finished, so we figured we’d squeeze in one more hike before the sun went down. We ended our day with Goosenecks and Sunset Point, another quick 2-mile hike, where we watched the sun go down.
*Quick side note – we weren’t really 100% prepared for this trip, so we may have forgotten a few main things, one being the car plug adapter to charge our camera batteries (other forgotten items included our GoPro charger and my Camelbak day pack). At this point in our trip, the camera batteries were finally starting to die, so we needed to find a plug ASAP. When we were at the visitor center earlier, we noticed they had a plug outside, so after our hikes we made our way back there to take advantage of it. We started charging up, while scrounging together a dinner of all our food that probably should have been thrown out a few days earlier – lunch meat, smoked salmon, hummus, prosciutto, goat cheese, and brie. We stayed there until about 10:00pm, then drove back to our campsite and prayed that we wouldn’t get food poisoning before laying our heads down for the night.*
Must-sees: If you only have time for one hike in this area (and aren’t afraid of tight spaces), I would recommend Peekaboo slot canyon. It is a bit of a long drive down a dirt road to get to the trailhead, and I would try to get there as early as possible to avoid the crowds, but it was definitely worth it and was our favorite hike that we did in Grand Staircase-Escalante.
On Reflection: There were a couple hikes that we chose to skip that I would love to check out if we ever go back to this area. The first one being Devils Garden, which is more of an open area to explore rather than a set trail, where you are free to wander around the unique hoodoos and rock formations. Another spot was Upper and Lower Calf Creek Falls, two separate waterfall trails, with the hike to the lower falls being easier and more accessible, therefore making it much more popular.
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