7 Hiking to Cottonwood

[This is a small, low-res, work in progress. We plan to do some narration and more editing after that. The finished product will be saved to DVD for finer viewing. If you wish to receive a copy when it's ready, let me know.]

We weren't sure what to do next, so as usual, we scouted around. We didn't see a good road from there. The most obvious one was straight up and had this large crack to straddle. It looked like a good place to get a wheel stuck. While the scouting party was out, Ed drove the Jeep up it. The suction cups had no trouble with the crack.

We were all out scouting and pretty far away from the vehicles. We decided we must be close enough that we could just hike out to the top of Cottonwood Canyon. We weren't sure, but we thought we could make it to Little Hole in the Rock in the time we had. We decided we would hike as far as we could in half the daylight left and then turn around and come back. We had 2 water bottles, some trail mix, JoAnn's goodies and various coats and sweatshirts. Not exactly prepared, but we thought it was okay for a few hours of hiking.

The road was great on the other side of the big steep hill with the major crack in it. We could've driven all the way to Cheese Camp if we had known. We found the easier road around the big steep hill on the way back.

Well, it was further than we thought, but we made it all the way down to the bottom of Sand Hill. We peered down at the road at the bottom of Cottonwood Canyon. It was spectacular to see the whole canyon with the Hole in the Rock in the background. I was thrilled to see that this canyon was similar to the large canyon I had been longing to look at, Iceberg. The red rock walls were huge and they had all kinds of beautiful formations and side canyons. We saw the most beautiful amphitheater up high in one side canyon; it had a spring in it! That was where the Native Americans would have started a village.

The Little Hole in the Rock was unimaginable for the wagons, but it was the cut at the top of Sand Hill that was most amazing to me. Sheer rock with a sheer drop off on one side. The pioneers had built all these cuts for the road. We knew from family history that people had had accidents there, and had lived to tell about it. I still couldn't imagine.

It was a major push getting back before dark. I taried too much taking pictures. My camera battery was almost gone, so I was being very discerning. But then it was just hurry, hurry, hurry, as it was getting dark and threatening to storm. My feet were starting to go numb. They felt like beef jerky.

By the time we arrived at the vehicles, it was starting to rain and the wind had increased. It was getting dark and someone suggested we just sleep in the trucks. I wasn't going to sleep in the truck without a fight. We decided to make the best of where we were since it was too dark to drive the vehicles anywhere. The wind was so fierce that Ana and I had to have help from Joy in putting up our little tent. (Joy and Kent's tarp on the back of their truck was much better in this situation. Kent managed it on his own while Joy was helping us.) We finally got our tent in a tent shape, with the wind twisting it this way and that and pelting us with huge drops of rain. I made Ana get in the tent to keep it from blowing over the hills because we were set up on slick rock and there was nothing to stake to. Still the wind was threatening to take them both from me, so Joy got a cooler full of food, while I put the rain fly on. I got in with the cooler and we didn't get out until morning. We snuggled in our warm sleeping bags, listened to the wind whistle and the rain smack, snacked from our cooler and told each other stories.

This was the most exciting part of our whole trip. There is no photo documentation because it all happened in the dark. The next morning we heard from the other half of our party. They had managed to get the larger of their two tents up and had staked it down creatively with a truck, a Jeep, a hi-lift jack, a hammer and other heavy items. I knew those things would come in handy but I didn't imagine for that use. They had also had a snacky dinner and gone straight to bed.