Maple Canyon June 2007

Alene and I knew we needed to get away for at least two of the 5 weekends this month of June (5 weekends??), so we had our sights set on somewhere in the Uintas (Clyde Lake trail), but we got a ton of rain in the valley last week, which meant two things: We found a leak in our new roof, and Clyde Lake will likely have a lot of snow and be cold.

We opted for Maple Canyon. We brought my nephew Brady along who is always funny and fun to be with. When we first got there, we pulled off the side of the road at the first Box canyon. The hike to the back was much shorter than I remember when I first did it. In fact, it's funny how you do a hike the first time and it seems somewhat long, but the second time it seems much shorter. I think it's the same way with driving too.

All the campsites were full so we kept driving up the road until it turned into this really bumpy/rocky dirt road. The subaru did a great job driving up that thing. We went over the ridge to the back and then down into a beautiful, heavily forrested area. We found the perfect campsite (well, actually April and Bill found it a few weeks before us, but we didn't know we were camping in the same spot). We did some hiking around the area later that day (after getting set up).

The next day we drove to the top of Maple Canyon and hiked down to a large Cave that you have to climb up a rope to get into it. I was proud of Caiden because he was able to get up there, despite being really scared (it's about a 15' wall you have to climb up). We hiked back up to the top, stopping off to climb some other rocks to get a good view of the canyon as well as the rest of San Pete Valley. Alene hiked down the rest of the trail (backside) and we drove down to meet her. We ended up doing a bit of some exploring (well, I did at least; Caiden and Brady started a caterpillar collection and they just played with them while I drove). I found some cool trails and a few AWESOME campsites back there. One campsite had enough room for a LARGE group of people if you wanted, very flat, but up really high on the mountain.

We got back down the mountain in about 40 minutes and found Alene already back down and had started hiking up the dirt road to meet us. She was amazing. She must have flown down the backside.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Scrambling up into a side cave in Box Canyon



We found this cool dude hanging out on the trail



Alene had to give him a little kiss



The boys pretending to climb up the waterfall at the end of the box canyon




Our campsite



View from the top of Maple Canyon



Up inside the cave along the loop trail





Getting ready to climb out



Hanging out with the boys



Me and Alene



We're going to be pretty busy for the next couple of months. We have plans to go somewhere in the Swell with Bill and April next week, the following week I'm playing some paintball, then we'll be leaving for WA to visit Alene's brother and his family. After that we have a family reunion at Joes Valley. Should be a lot of fun.