Coming out this way, we’d read many recommendations to visit Antelope Canyon or any number of less visited, but still stunning Slot Canyons. These canyons are created from fast rushing water running through the sandstone rocks — during periods of potential rain (not a remote sign of at the moment) these canyons can be extremely dangerous and prone to flash flooding. Many of these are located on Navajo Nation lands and are currently closed to the public, but we read about a comparably beautiful one on a stretch of hike from Wirepass trail to Buckskin Gulch.

We drove into Utah, about an hour from where we’re staying, and took a very rough road (should have gotten that 4WD on the Tahoe) ~10 miles to the Wirepass trailhead. We walked along a currently dry stream bed to the Wirepass slot canyons — which lead to the Buckskin Gulch slot canyons. During the first mile or so of the hike, the boys were really NOT into our activity of the day. Rawlings leg was hurting him and ~30 minutes into the hike we sat down so that I could massage some medicine into his leg (sage, moisturizing balm) which miraculously improved his status (please don’t read this, Rawls!). When we arrived to the start of the Slot Canyons, we were all entranced — the hike felt otherworldly from there on.

We’d read about one challenging spot, with a 10 foot drop into the canyon, but since the last hiker reviewed this path, a very kind person stood up a ladder to easily cover this drop. I’m not sure if we did the beauty of this spot justice, but I’ll let the photos try to represent.

Some favorite things to check out below:

• Rawls teardrop shaped rock finding
• The helpful ladder into the canyon
• Secret hideaway spots for the boys – they kept describing how we’d use each of the canyon hideways for different purposes (“reading nook”, “slide”, “family room”)

and then they crashed – around mile 6, fortunately not far from the parking lot — really both of them, but Rawls is still small enough to be carried for a short while!