John Guilford's Hikes

Date: 2002-05-21

Location: Red Cave, Utah

People: (including myself): Joe Tarantino

		Time	Real Miles (we walked more due to errors)
Start:		12:08	0 
Fake Junction:	12:45
Real Junction:	 2:00	1.2
Red Cave Canyon: 2:15	1.8
End of canyon:	 3:00	2.0
Out of canyon:	 4:00	2.2
Back to car:	 4:55	4

To get there, go east out of Zion.  At Mt. Carmel Junction, turn north on Rt 89.  In just under 2 miles you reach Mount Carmel.  In the middle of "town" on the west side of the road is a historic school/church.  Park here.  Go north on Rt 89 about a quarter of a mile until you get to a (dirt) road on the east side of Rt 89 that leads down to a crossing of the East Fork of the Virgin River.  If you find the way blocked by a field and a fence, you've gone down the wrong road (DAMHIK), in this case, go one more road further north.  Immediately after fording the river (which was quite low and easy to cross in our hiking boots with dry feet) the road turns left and runs north-east about a eighth of a mile where it turns right running south-east.  The road rises a bit passing a battery-powered truck scale on the right.  A bit further the road leads to an active gravel pit.  Turn left and pass through the pit where the road continues.  Following the pit, the road turns right and climbs up on top of the plateau. 

So far, we didn't have trouble following our guide book.  Here, however, we went astray.  The correct directions should say to follow the main road (after taking a left at the fork just after the road gets to the top of the plateau) almost three-quarters of a mile (in a generally ESE direction).  Here the trail branches and an obvious jeep road descends into Sand Wash (which is aptly named as the bottom is made of fine sand).  That's the correct directions.  We misread the book's description and thought that the fork in the road and the descent into Sand Wash was much closer to where the road tops out on the plateau.  We took the initial fork thinking it was the fork mentioned in the guide book.  The only problem was that the trail didn't immediately descend into the wash as the guide book said.  We followed the right fork around a bit to where it paralleled the edge of a wash.  We climbed down into the wash and explored up stream, but the wash quickly petered out.  We explored down stream and came to the back side of the gravel pit.  Obviously this wasn't Sand Wash.  We returned to the top of the plateau and continued along the road which met up with the left fork of the road.  We didn't find anything promising and it seemed we went much further than we should.  Figuring we must have missed a fork on the main road, we turned around and went back to the spot where the road first hit the plateau top.  There were several different roads up on the plateau, but nothing that seemed to match the book.  We took the right fork (yet again) and followed it around, again confirming there was no obvious road off to the right.  This time we continued further down the road and eventually hit the fork the book spoke of and descended into Sand Wash. 

After reaching the wash, take a left and go up canyon only about a quarter mile.  There the canyon seems to end in a vertical wall.  Closer inspection shows a cleft in the wall which goes in about ten feet and then turns sharply right.  The zig-zag sort of hides the canyon making it non-obvious.  Red Cave is a truly fantastic slot canyon with windy narrow passages.  As we progressed up the slot, we came to our first obstacle.  The canyon floor changed level, and the new floor was about five feet higher.  Fortunately the canyon walls were spaced to make it relatively easy to stem the walls and ascend onto the next level.  The canyon was dry with the floor either sand or rock bowls.  If it were wetter, there would have been pools to water to cross, but we didn't have to worry about that.  We soon came across another blockage requiring some climbing.  People who are uncomfortable with a bit of climbing would not be able to get very far up the canyon.  I got a bit concerned about a couple of the climbs, fearing that the down climb would be worse than the up climb, but it turns out coming down wasn't a problem.  All in all, I think we had to climb eight or ten times before the canyon petered out into the plateau top.  Joe and I developed a routine of dropping packs, one of use would climb up, the other would pass the packs and cameras, and then the other would climb. 

After scoping out the terrain above the canyon a bit we returned down through Red Cave before exiting out into Sand Wash.  We had no difficulty following the route back out to the car.  For a longer trip, one could combine this with a hike to Sugar Knoll near the Elkheart Cliffs. 

The weather was a bit cool.  We started the hike wearing fleece jackets, though we stripped down to short sleeve shirts along the way after we warmed up. 

Entrance to Red Cave (with Joe). 

Joe in Red Cave. 

Joe stemming up over an obstruction.