Pleasant Creek Trail

We are so enjoying Capitol Reef National Park! Everywhere one walks or drives there is beautiful scenery. Today we drove to the end of the Scenic Drive then continued on the South Draw gravel road to the Pleasant Creek Trailhead.

This hike was much different than most hikes we take as there was no established or maintained trail. We followed the footpaths left by other hikers, game trails left by deer and created our own path the rest of the time. We stayed close to the creek going out but took a lot of shortcuts across open ground and over hills on the way back. As the fast moving water cut into the sides of the canyon, we would have to cross over to the other side and we did this quite often. Most of the time we found rocks to hop across on as in most places the creek was too wide to just jump across, other times we walked down a sand bar in the middle and on the way back, when I’m tired of all the searching for a good crossing, I just walked in the water!

The hike was about 6.5 miles round trip (18,000 steps on our pedometers) and took about 5 1/2 hours including a stop for lunch. The canyon was wide at the beginning and got narrower the further we walked then it opened up again near where we turned around to come back. Because of the wind, it was a good day for a hot hike.

Instead of returning to camp the way we came, we took the unmaintained Jeep trail. It followed a wash along the canyon bottom then started to climb. We had to use 4-wheel drive and shifted into low to get up the hill sides. It was fairly technical in places but once we reached to top of the canyon, it was just rocky. We saw more of the ‘Reef’, deep canyons, open fields and dense forests. It was a pretty drive. When we hit the maintained gravel road we thought we should be done but the road just went on and on, and there were no signs indicating we were going in the right direction, and we had no idea if we had missed a turn, and there was zero cell service so we couldn’t locate ourselves on our phones! In another mile we would have gone into full panic mode but just then we hit the highway! Whew! Close call! We drove over 30 miles to get back to the RV over a 9,000+ foot pass where the temperature was already in the 40s. Since it was so late in the day we “had” to stop in Torrey for dinner.

It was a very long day but one we enjoyed immensely!