Utah: Day 2 - Syncline Trail

On Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early for our day. This was partly due to our excitement to get our hike started, but also because our tents got so HOT inside them by 7am, that we couldn't sleep anymore! It was well enough, since it was smarter to start early and finish early before the peak heat of the day (between 3pm and 6pm). We filled our water containers and drove out to the Island in the Sky region of Canyonlands National Park. We stopped briefly at a viewpoint lookout and took some pictures of these plateaus, called Monitor and Merrimac.Continuing on, we arrived at Upheaval Dome to do the hike called 'Syncline Trail', also tagged by us as 'Crater Hike'. See the map below:It's a crater! However, it's a bit of an unusual crater, because they don't really know how it was formed. It has red cliffs, and in the center there's some distinct green-blue rock that might have been formed by a meteorite. The other odd part is the large cliff in the middle of the crater, which doesn't seem right since it is a crater and to me, should be lower in the middle than the rest of it. In any case, we started the hike around 9am with the intention of finishing the 8.3 mile hike in a reasonable amount of time. Silly us.

The hike started out with an intense descent into the bottom of the crater. The temperature was still cool, and of course, it's easy to go down, so we had no problems and quite enjoyed the view.You can see the middle cliffs of the crater on the right side of this picture, as well as the green rocks down in the bottom of the crater.Once we reached the bottom of the crater, we followed a dry creek bed for awhile, walking between cliffs in the heat of the sun. We learned quickly how well the red rocks radiate heat during the day. Down, in between the cliffs, the temperature sored as we walked along the sandy creek bed. As temperatures increased, availability of shade decreased. We stopped beneath a shady rock to have a snack before continuing on.During our hike along the creek bed, we spotted something! Check this out:Black Widow Spider. Not really dangerous, but something to keep an eye out for. She's only interesting because she was the only 'dangerous' creature we saw on our trip, aside from the heat!
Cool picture:Garrett under an overhang:Kim and Joelle sitting in a curved rock:Some of the cliffs we walked below:For lunch, we were surprised to find a really cool and shady place. It looked like a dried up waterfall - in fact, during spring melt it probably is a waterfall - which is cut out under the rock a ways, providing an escape from the sun. By noon, the heat was really mounting up and dragging on us, so we were happy to get out of the yellow demon.After lunch, we started climbing back out of the crater. This is when our hike started getting 'less fun'. Not only did the temperature continue climbing up (to a high of 40 degrees Celsius, eventually), but we had to start climbing up as well! Add to that a washed out area where we had to do some boulder climbing, and you end up with several hot, partially sun-stroked individuals who resorted to clinging to the side of the cliff in order to get what little shade they could. Here is a picture of the trail behind us:Doesn't look that steep, but it's a heck of a climb in the heat. We traveled slowly.
Once we started ascending, we stopped taking as many pictures, so I don't have too much to put here. Suffice it to say, the rest of the hike really really sucked and we weren't having that much fun. We all felt ill and just wanted to get out of there! We did take a picture of a bunny we ran into. He wasn't really scared of us.We also took a picture of Garrett and I looking tired and ill on our hike out.In the end, it took us NINE HOURS to complete our hike - far longer than we expected. As well, we each drank at least 3 litres, and probably closer to 4 during our hike, without PEEING once!! Think about that, if you will.

That night, we were all bagged and decided doing any overnight backpack trip was not feasible. For three days, we'd each have to carry 12 litres of water!! And that's just for drinking, let alone cooking any dinner! So, our plans adapted and what we did, you will see in further entries.