Little Wild Horse Canyon

For the majority of our honeymoon Jessica and I explored the canyonlands of southern Utah for a couple of weeks.  We had beautiful weather for the majority of the trip and did 16 hikes that added up to a total distance of 64 miles.  We wanted to stay away from the large crowds that often plague national parks of the southwest, so we focused primarily on exploring and hiking within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.  This monument is administered not by the NPS (National Park Service) but by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management).  The monument consists mostly of dirt backroads leading to trailheads with trails that have little to no maintenance but lead to some incredible canyons.  Most, but not all, of our hikes were within this monument. 

Our first canyon hike was in Little Wild Horse Canyon, not far from Goblin Valley State Park.  We left our motel in Green River early in the morning hoping to be the first ones at the trailhead.  Our plan worked as we were the only vehicle in sight when we arrived at the start of the trail.  The trail was beautiful right from the beginning as it headed up the wash.  Before long we were in the canyon, but it was quite wide at that point.  Not long after hiking up and around a dry fall, we were in the canyon narrows.  This is where it got really interesting.  The canyon had several nice sections of narrows and in the narrowest section we had to turn sideways in order to make it through.  Eventually we came to a few boulders wedged in the canyon that put a stop to our forward progress.  At this point we turned around and returned to the trailhead via the same route we came in on.  It was a wonderful start to our canyon adventure!