Goblin Valley Trip - Days 3 & 4

Friday morning we split into two groups. One group went to hike Little Wild Horse Canyon, while four of us headed out just slightly further to try the more difficult Ding and Dang Canyons. Nate and I went to Ding and Dang Canyon while Austin stayed with others to do Little Wild Horse Canyon.

Here we are at the start of Ding Canyon right before it narrows

Basically, the trail took us up a wash to a split. We stayed right to go up Ding Canyon first. It had rained in the area a couple days before, so we went expecting water. There was some in Ding Canyon, but nothing too major. Ding Canyon was particularly beautiful, and there was nothing too difficult to get through.

We did have to wade through some pools of water, but they weren't more than about knee deep.

As we neared the end of Ding Canyon and as its walls opened up, the rocks around us were covered with interesting patterns of holes formed with the wind.

Soon after that we caught sight of the uniquely shaped Ding Dang Dome.

Ding Dang Dome

We continued along a trail at the back of the canyons before heading down aptly named Dang Canyon.

This canyon is where we hit all the technical spots. The first major obstacles we can to were some tall dryfalls. A hand line had been left at one of these to assist hikers descending, and we got down without too much trouble.

However, as the canyon narrowed we came across many chokestones that we found more challenging to navigate. There were drops of about 10 feet that we slowly worked our way down. More experienced canyoneers would have found this canyon easy, but for us these were a bit challenging. We were grateful we brought some ropes with us. We kept thinking we had gone down all of these drops only to come to another one.

Near the bottom of many of these drops were deep pools of water. The deepest went up to our chests. Nate was very gentlemanly and let me ride on his shoulders across the deeper pools. If we had been good at bridging, we might have been able to avoid the chest deep parts. We weren't though, so we had to go through the rank muddy water.

The canyon continued to narrow as we went.

 

But eventually it did open up. Our roughly 6.3 mile hike ended up taking us a lot longer than we had expected...about 6 hours. Obviously we are not very good or fast at negotiating basic canyoneering obstacles, but we had fun in any case.

Saturday morning we didn't have a lot of time to do much before we had to drive home. Austin and Nate went swimming at the hotel while everyone else took a bumpy drive out to Fossil Point. This area is covered with dinosaur bones that visitors can hunt out (but not keep). We had fun perusing the rocks and seeing how many such fossils we could find.

After figuring out what we were looking for looked like, we started to see signs of these prehistoric creatures everywhere around us.

After spending awhile there, we turned back to the hotel, gathered our things, and headed back home.