Enthusiast III
So the wife and I decided we would take a trip up to Utah and maybe take in Toquerville Falls on President's day weekend. I called @Montazuma and asked what they were doing. He mentioned that Toquerville is nice but he was looking at a run down to the Grand Canyon on Sunday. We talked and despite the winter advisory, we decided we'd go down to Whitmore Canyon, someplace neither of us have been, and see the sunset, camp out, watch the sunrise and boogie home Sunday morning.
We left St. George Utah on Rt 5 at 1:00pm and headed south. Road was nice and dry for the first 15 miles or so but turned to mud when we got to 5000'. The next 50 miles were unending mud but we managed decent time. The final drop towards the canyon had a snow covered hill that was a in the shade and rather slippery.
It was 4:30 and snowing when we reached the Bar 10 ranch and talked with the locals about conditions at the canyon. We were told visibility up the trail was low, weather was moving in heavily and it'd take us another hour to make the last 10 miles and wouldn't be able to see any sunset or sunrise.
We decided to abandon the last 10 miles and get back up sketchy hill before it became impassable and camp up top. Temps dropped to 24 and we got 4 inches of snow in the night. Was a nice shakeout of equipment. The ride back was much more pleasant with the mud mostly solid from the temps and snow up to a foot deep covering it.
The map shows the route we took and how close we got to the goal. The weather report is the updated report after the storm we were in. We're happy we got out before all that snow turned the road to unpassable mud.
We are sad we didn't get to see sunset and sunrise in the canyon but we'd do it all again. We got experience on tuning our rigs to handle the more extreme weather. And experience is what ya get when you don't get what you want :)
We left St. George Utah on Rt 5 at 1:00pm and headed south. Road was nice and dry for the first 15 miles or so but turned to mud when we got to 5000'. The next 50 miles were unending mud but we managed decent time. The final drop towards the canyon had a snow covered hill that was a in the shade and rather slippery.
It was 4:30 and snowing when we reached the Bar 10 ranch and talked with the locals about conditions at the canyon. We were told visibility up the trail was low, weather was moving in heavily and it'd take us another hour to make the last 10 miles and wouldn't be able to see any sunset or sunrise.
We decided to abandon the last 10 miles and get back up sketchy hill before it became impassable and camp up top. Temps dropped to 24 and we got 4 inches of snow in the night. Was a nice shakeout of equipment. The ride back was much more pleasant with the mud mostly solid from the temps and snow up to a foot deep covering it.
The map shows the route we took and how close we got to the goal. The weather report is the updated report after the storm we were in. We're happy we got out before all that snow turned the road to unpassable mud.
We are sad we didn't get to see sunset and sunrise in the canyon but we'd do it all again. We got experience on tuning our rigs to handle the more extreme weather. And experience is what ya get when you don't get what you want :)
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