Crazy Day in Bryce
If I were to pick the single most event filled day I had during my recent trip to Utah, it'd have to be the day my friends and I hiked the Peek-A-Boo + Navajo Loop trail in Bryce Canyon.
It was a day that involved heavy rain, hail, black ice, tornadoes, and owls that look like big rocks in the middle of dark roads at night. My poor car which I've babied for 3 years now has character with all the dents it received from the hail.
DISTANCE 5.5 miles
ELEVATION GAIN 1660 ft
TIME 3.5 hours
Hiking in Bryce was the plan B to the Narrows hike in Zion National Park, which was delayed due to a sudden rain storm (and potential flash flood).
The weather was chilly. In contrast to Zion's 90s+ weather just a day ago, Bryce was in the low 60's, with intermittent rain. Our group split into 2 -- one group decided to have a chill day on milder hikes, and my group decided to do the Peek-A-Boo + Navajo Loop trail.
The Peek-A-Boo trail takes hikers through a plethora of different views and landscapes. Starting from Sunset Point, hikers descent down into the hoodoos via one of two sets of switchbacks on the Navajo Loop. Wall Street was closed the day we went (due to rain, probably) and then onto the Peek-A-Boo trail.
The weather was less than ideal to begin with -- the fog had rolled in and blanketed most of the hoodoos as we made our descent.
Throughout the hike the weather switched back multiple times between light sun and light rain. The trail, though well maintained, is a dirt trail and had more of a orange clay-like consistency from the precipitation. Not sure how all the other hikers managed to hike through it in their tennis shoes, because it was muddddddy. Oh, did I mention that one of my friends was on crutches? He broke his leg from a bad climbing fall a couple weeks prior to the trip but couldn't bring himself to pass on the Utah trip. Dude did the whole hike in a moonboot. Straight up hardcore.
Overall, the views on the hike were great and the elevation change was pleasantly gradual. The only thing slowing us down was having to stop every half an hour to put on or take off our rain shell. About a mile and a half in, the sound of thunder roared across the canyon. A couple minutes later, it sounded even closer.
"Hey, wouldn't it suck if it just started POURING right about now?" I joked.
As if it was some sort of cosmic karma, not even a minute after I spoke those words the torrential rain started coming down on us. 2 minutes later, hail. Ha. Unpredictable Utah weather. Thank goodness for rain jackets and waterproof shoes. We took shelter in tunnels and managed to finish our hike just in time to catch the very last shuttle bus back out to where our cars were parked.
The light after the rain was extremely beautiful though. We caught a few pretty glorious rainbows but I didn't have my camera out at the time:
Enjoying the view of the Amphitheater. Still cold even with the sun back out.
Back up the switchbacks through The Two Bridges after finishing the loop, ending at Sunset Point:
After we completed our hike, we met up with the rest of our group outside of the park at the parking lot. While we talked dinner plans, we could see a lightning storm across the plains making its way around.
We were famished at this point. Originally debating on getting into the buffet at Ruby's Inn, the long wait filled with tourists deterred us, and we opted to go to a restaurant a mile away. Lightning and thunder seemed to follow us closely at this point, and about 100 ft from the turn into the restaurant parking lot, it suddenly starts hailing HARD.
I'm talking, this-will-probably-leave-dents-in-the-car type of hard. I'm talking let's-not-get-out-of-the-car-until-it-lets-up sort of hard. My friend tried to record the lightning, but to no avail.
An hour (and much deserved dinner) later, my group set off on a long 3, 4 hour drive from Bryce Canyon to our next AirBnb in Moab. The day wasn't quite over yet. The sideways rain from the storm was relentlessness and reminded me of the old Windows 95 Flying Through Space screensaver.
During this drive, a series of events occurred:
We stopped by a state park to take some night shots. During the drive, both my friend and I had put our faces against the window, looking up at the Utah night sky -- and we were just blown away by the amount of stars we could see from the free way. The sky was littered with so many bright stars that we decided to stop to take photos in a nearby State Park. The cold weather was worth it. We also almost ran over what looked like a big rock/owl on the way out. We were all too freaked to take a closer look after swerving out of the way.
Saw a debilitated house that had just been struck by a tornado maybe an hour prior. Had at least 2 fire trucks, 2 ambulances, and 3 police cars on the street.
Drove through sideways rain and hail and saw an overturned truck that lost control on black ice. We stopped to help them out.
And after all that...
We finally made it to our Airbnb at around 1 or 2 in the morning. Another full day of hiking and exploration at Arches National Park the next day, which I wrote about here.
What a day.
