Nature, filling your soul with hope, or...the other way around.

August 18, 2017 7:47 PM

Zero Gravity Canyon, San Rafael Swell, all kinds of swell times. The San Rafael Reef, or San Rafael Swell, is an easy drive from Salt Lake City, and holds many adventures. The Narrows of Little Wild Horse Canyon is a perennial favorite of families who take their kids into the slot canyons for the coolness of them. I had never heard of Zero Gravity Canyon until today, when I read this tale.

I have gone to the San Rafael many times to see the pictographs there, some of the most moody and evocative pictographs ever, are there, for instance "A Shaman and His Dog" in Black Dragon Canyon, this is easily walkable. Here is a little video from Emery County.

posted by Oyéah (10 comments total)

"Rescuers use dish soap to free woman trapped for 12 hours in Utah slot canyon"

NOPE!
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:53 PM on August 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

i could see myself doing it with great happiness.

what a fantastic video
posted by growabrain at 8:02 PM on August 18, 2017

wow that's impressive hippybear
posted by growabrain at 8:40 PM on August 18, 2017

is that is the place where you can ask all kind of questions?
posted by growabrain at 8:41 PM on August 18, 2017

Give me temperate forests any day over a southwest landscape. I just want to roam around the woods finding wild berries and mushrooms and interacting with a form of nature that seems mildly hospitable to human life.
posted by Ferreous at 8:44 PM on August 18, 2017

There are just as many things that can kill you in a "temperate forest".
posted by dilaudid at 9:18 PM on August 18, 2017

Well clearly hippybear is Edward Abbey's younger brother and we all want to hear about Jeep keep tricks off the cliff. (That's fantastic to learn about those canyons you have trekked and I'm just pulling your leg like rain in Montana through a crevasse in Utah will do.)
posted by notyou at 9:58 PM on August 18, 2017

A long while back, I took my kids to the narrows of Little Wild Horse Canyon, we had a great time. March, April are good times to hike in slot canyons or in the late fall. The broader canyons offer more escape routes, waterfalls, edible herbs to go in morning omelettes, places to build big fires, and wider cracks to see the stars through. I hiked the Narrows of the Paria River, a 33 miler, that ends at Lees Ferry in Marble I canyon. We even hiked back up into Buckskin Wash on that trip, doubtlessly adding some miles. I watched a Youtube video of some young people who barely escaped a washout in Buckskin, I have been in that one place where you can survive it, where they survived it. But Coyote Wash in the Grand Staircase National Monument is my all time favorite, with waterfalls, secret places, deep round waterfall basins where the frogs sing, seeps that ruffle the maidenhair ferns, Coyote is a treasure.
posted by Oyéah at 7:50 AM on August 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

The best slot canyons I've experienced aren't named. We'll boat in Lake Powell and pull up to some tiny canyon that's part flooded. Have to swim into it until it rises out of the lake, and you just sort of boulder your way up and out of it. Reach the top and you see fissures all around and the houseboat is a speck off in the distance. Always take a big group of friends so you don't get lost or stuck too bad.
posted by msbutah at 3:49 PM on August 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

this story is a bit evocative of 127 Hours, no?
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:12 PM on August 22, 2017