The Sculptured Earth: End of Trails in The Maze

Lost in The Maze III | Friday – Monday, March 31 – April 3, 2023

After spending the past couple years working to hike all of the trails in Canyonlands National Park and completing the ones in The Needles and Island in the Sky districts in 2018 and 2019, I turned my attention to my remaining trails in The Maze, but it’s taken me a bit longer to hike them all since it’s not quite as easy to get over there for a quick weekend trip. Last spring I had hiked most of the remaining trails from the Land of Standing Rocks with my friends Dave and Jared, but we did not have the time to make it down into lower Horse Canyon on that trip, which was now my only trail left on this official map that I’ve been using to keep track, and also my final trail left in all of Canyonlands! After that trip I made it my goal to hike into lower Horse Canyon this spring, so I booked a backpacking permit back in November and invited my friend Jackson to come along. Although Jackson had never been into The Maze before, he was very interested in checking out Horse Canyon since we had floated past its mouth on the Green River in Stillwater Canyon last September.

On Friday afternoon Jackson and I left from work and made our way over to Hanksville, where I topped off my gas tank before continuing on down North Wash towards Hite. Since the Flint Trail switchbacks were still covered with snow and I had already picked up our permit the previous weekend, we had no reason to stop by the Hans Flat Ranger Station and headed straight to the bottom of the Flint Trail Road to started driving into Under The Ledge country.

The scenery was looking good as we drove the long winding road around the forks of Rock Canyon on our way toward Andy Miller Flats.

The Sewing Machine

Below The Point

A quick view into The Cove as we drove by.

Tar Cliff

Here’s a view of my Friday night campsite at sunrise on Saturday morning after a great night of sleep.

Gunsight Butte Sunrise

We got an early start on Saturday morning and made it over to the Horse Canyon Trailhead later in the morning after a brief stop at the Maze Overlook. I figured since Jackson had not been to The Maze before, he should at least see the overlook while we were nearby.

We followed the trail along the edge of the White Rim and ‘Yellow Rim’ to a break in the cliff where it is able to switchback down into the canyon.

This often ignored canyon in The Maze is actually a very beautiful hike.

The Narrows

Tafoni is all over the place!

This was a strange pinnacle that we passed underneath. It seemed to change shape depending which direction you were facing…

Ekker Butte towers above the canyon.

Jackson hiking through another section of narrows while I stayed above.

Once we started to find some water we went looking for a good campsite for the next two nights. We knew the weather forecast was calling for a lot of wind, so we tried to find a spot that was protected and not around too much soft sand. It took us longer than I would have liked to find a good site, but we did eventually find one. Once our tents were setup we wandered the canyons some more until just before sunset.

We found two nice arches during our evening walk.

We returned to camp shortly before sunset, ate dinner and then I climbed up above camp to take a couple more photos during the golden hour.

Horse Canyon Campsite

Once the sun was down we went to bed early since it had been a long day, and we had another long day planned for Sunday. Thankfully, we did not get the strong winds overnight that had been predicted and I slept well again.

We woke up with sunrise, ate a little breakfast and then started hiking down the canyon. It was a beautiful morning and the reflected light was nice.

Jackson hikes ahead of me as we travelled down this very curvy canyon. Although we were only about 2.5 miles away from the large pourover when we started, the hike to get there would be over 6 miles in length.

Once the small stream we were following started flowing into a shallow carved slot, I knew we were getting close to the end…

When we first reached the large pourover we followed the bench around as far as we could go for a look down into the lower end of Horse Canyon.

Then we climbed down into the narrow slot to see if we could follow the stream to the pourover. It entered an amazing chamber and the light was spectacular!

Jackson on his way down the chute.

Did I mention that the light was amazing in here?

There was a large green pool down below the large pourover. The next time we float through Stillwater Canyon we are going to have to visit it from the bottom.

We rested and ate lunch in the large chamber before starting our hike back up the canyon.

We stopped to explore a couple different alcoves on the way back.

I was feeling pretty tired when we made it back to camp, so I pretty much just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

I did find a couple inscriptions from the 1920’s near our campsite.

On Sunday night the wind did start to pick up, but thankfully we had selected a pretty well-protected site and the wind didn’t cause us any problems over night and it was actually pretty calm when we were taking down our tents before sunrise on Monday morning. We had got up about an hour before sunrise so we could pack up camp and start hiking out early. About halfway through our hike back the wind finally started to pick up significantly and began blowing sand and dust around.

Watching the sun come up and strike the canyon walls as we hiked back up canyon.

Panorama Point over White Rim

Here’s a different view of that unusual pinnacle we saw on the way in, this time bathed in early morning light.

Walking along sculpted walls in Horse Canyon.

Hiking back though the narrows and not too far from my Jeep at the trailhead.

Once we climbed out of the canyon we found that the wind was pretty brutal and and we hadn’t been getting the full brunt of it down in the canyon. Luckily, it was a only a short walk back to the Jeep so we didn’t have to hike through it for very long. It did make the drive home quite a bit interested with frequent dust storms along the way. Hanksville was pretty engulfed in blowing dust when we arrived to get a quick lunch and get some gas. I’ve never seen dust storms this bad in Utah before, which made visibility pretty bad in a couple of areas. On the plus side, it was mostly a tail wind and I got great gas mileage on the way home! Oh yeah, I’ve also now hiked every ‘official trail’ in Canyonlands National Park, so I’m pretty happy about that, too!

 

While we were wandering the canyons of The Maze, we found a couple rock art sites and revisited another. Here are some photos of the petroglyphs and pictographs that we saw along the way.

This was the largest panel we stumbled upon. There were a couple pretty large bighorn sheep petroglyphs, plus many other smaller figures.

This is certainly an interesting figure…

These two bighorn sheep were my favorite with one in profile and the other looking right at you.

Ready for Battle

A couple of the smaller figures near the bottom of the panel.

Faint Petroglyph Panel

Two Little Petroglyphs. The lower figure appears to be running?

Three little white pictographs that we almost missed.

Four Fingers

We had a little extra time to revisit the Shield Site, which is one of my favorites in The Maze.

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