Day 7 of 2020 Utah Trip, Capitol Reef National Park

by admin

Seventh day of my Utah trip. I would be visiting Capitol Reef National Park today, hiking Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash and Hickman Bridge trails.

Cassidy Arch

Compared with the other two national parks I visited a few days back, Arches and Canyonlands, Capitol Reef wasn’t as popular a destination. It had a few arches, not as dense and stunning as Arches; it had a few canyons, but lacking magnificent overlooks as the ones in Canyonlands. Its Scenic Drive was also shorter off UT24, than the park roads off US191. Fremont River flowed through Torrey, which was an inconspicuous creek compared to the mighty Colorado River near Moab.
So I didn’t put too much effort in planning my visit to Capitol Reef: I went to AllTrails and found out its three most popular trails, which happened to be not too long, and decided to hike them today. (I would hike the fourth most popular tomorrow morning). With Cassidy Arch and Grand Wash trails sharing a common trailhead, I headed there first.

Hill

The thin band of yellow-gray rock was an ancient river-deposited sandstone containing trace amounts of uranium. Lured first by the promise of health and then nuclear energy, uranium was mined in the area in the first half of 20th century, leaving behind many old and dangerous mine sites.

Grand Wash Road
The last 2km from Scenic Drive to trailhead was on an unpaved road like this.

Cliff
Looking from parking lot (left) and hiking trail (right). It looked like a new arch was forming from erosion.

Cassidy Arch Trail

Cassidy Arch Trailhead was located 2km from Scenic Drive through an unpaved road. It’s said that somewhere along the road, there’s a place where one could view Cassidy Arch from below, which I didn’t manage to find on my way here.

Interestingly, the pit toilet next to the trailhead didn’t provide hand sanitizer “due to increased theft”. At the same time, all other parks I’d been to were inundated with them for COVID.

Here’s GPS tracking of both Cassidy Arch and Grand Wash.

Trail
The first 300m of Cassidy Arch Trail followed along Grand Wash, with curly rocks along the way.

Trail
Then it started to gain elevation.

Most elevation gain of the trail took place in the short section after it forked off Grand Wash, while it made its way up “Capitol Reef” from the bottom of the canyon.

Hill

Overlooking Canyon

Rock Towers in Canyons

Trail
This portion went along a rocky cliff.

Once on top of “Capitol Reef”, one was greeted with views of hills across the Grand Wash Canyon, together with landscape decorated with bushes and sinuous rocks nearby.

Hills
Ferns Nipple
Hills
Hills
Rocks
Rocks
Landscape
Landscape

Canyon
These canyons near Cassidy Arch were a favorite among climbers.

Rocks with Erosion

Rocks

Hills

About an hour from parking lot, I was at Cassidy Arch.

Cassidy Arch

Cassidy Arch certainly wasn’t as magnificent as other arches that I visited earlier in this trip. But unlike other natural arches, one was permitted to walk on it.
Despite that the arch was too wide to make walking on it thrilling.

Right next to Cassidy Arch, there was a cliff overlooking the vast fields West of Capitol Reef. In my opinion it’s the best place for one to appreciate the geology nearby, with hills on one side and fields on the other. The contrast between the two was probably the highlight of Capitol Reef National Park.
Unfortunately, it’s also the spot where I experienced the most atrocious of bugs, as their swarms created the constant nuisance whenever I stopped for the briefest moment to either appreciate the scenery or simply taking random photos.

Landscape
Not so rocky west of Scenic Drive / Capitol Reef.

Distant Fields from Cassidy Arch

Distant Mesas to the West
Through an opening of Capitol Reef.

Hills

Mountains from Cassidy Arch

After battling with bugs for half an hour around Cassidy Arch, I conceded after pulling a not-so-satisfying selfie, and went on the return trip.

Rocks

Trail

Rock
A pretty dominating one.

Rocks

Landscape

So about 2 hours since I left my car, I got back to Grand Wash Trail.

Grand Wash Trail

Grand Wash was a gorge that cut across “Capitol Reef”, connecting Utah Route 24 / Fremont River to Capitol Reef’s Scenic Drive. The trail portion was 2-mile each way on what felt like level ground (despite GPS telling me there’s 50m elevation change). There were parking lots on both ends of the trail so in theory this hike could be done as “one-way”. But since I was by myself, I would do this as an out-and-back.

For the first part, Grand Wash was made of rocky hills of various shapes and sizes, with bushes claiming all but the steepest slopes. The canyon bent its way forward, as views of diverse hills were shuffled around.

Grand Wash
Grand Wash
Grand Wash
Grand Wash
Grand Wash
Grand Wash
Grand Wash
Cliff
Cliff
Grand Wash
Grand Wash

Canyon Entrance
Hiking from Cassidy Arch to UT24, the entrance of the canyon was very imposing.

Then the canyon narrowed down, placing visitors directly at the foot of soaring cliffs.

Canyon

Cliff with Erosion

Canyon
A portion of the trail going underneath the rocks.

Canyon
A few narrow canyons can be seen along the trail.

Then the canyon farther narrowed down to only a few meters wide as it made a series of twists and turns, a labyrinth without fear of getting lost.

Canyon
People compared this section to Zion’s “The Narrows”, as both were narrow and winding. It’s just that here the trail’s dry, while “The Narrows” in Zion came with a flowing river.

Grand Wash Canyon

Once out of this narrow canyon, the other end of the trail wasn’t far away.

Grand Wash

Cliff with Erosion

Cliff

It was starting to drizzle, and this cliff provided me some shelter from the rain, but unfortunately not from bugs.

Fremont River and Road
The other end of Grand Wash trail.

After getting off Cassidy Arch Trail, it took me about an hour to cover Grand Wash Trail in one direction as I stopped a lot to take photos. There was another hour ahead as I made my way back to the parking lot.

Grand Wash

It felt to me that the giant rock face was a canvas, and the marks of water erosions left a painting on it, of a winged lynx taking a leap.

Flowers
Didn’t see them often here in the desert.

Cliff with Erosion

Canyon

Grand Wash

So after a little bit over 4 hours, I was back with my car.
Since there weren’t any restaurants in Capitol Reef National Park / Frutia, I drove back to the town of Torrey for lunch. And with my hotel just nearby, I took some relaxing downtime before continuing my tour in the afternoon.

Hotel Pool with View

Hickman Bridge Trail

The most popular trail in Capitol Reef National Park, probably because it’s short (3km roundtrip), accessible (right off Utah Route 24), and it went underneath a natural bridge.

Here’s GPS tracking:

Trail
The first 250 meters of trail was between a steep cliff and Fremont River like this.

Trail
Then it passed some varying terrain.

Rocks

For reasons I don’t quite understand, Hickman Bridge Trail seemed to be featuring lots of black rocks like this that weren’t seen elsewhere in the region.

Hills

Landscape
The latter part of trail to Hickman Bridge was between two sets of mountains.

Hickman Bridge

In my opinion, just like Cassidy Arch, the rocks that made up Hickman Bridge were too thick to be stunning, when compared against Landscape and Delicate Arches a few days back.
But on the good side, not far from Hickman Bridge, there was an overlook with views of various mountains bathed in sunset across the valley of Fremont River.

Hills

Fremont River in Canyon

An hour later, I finished my hike to Hickman Bridge and got back to my car. At this point it’s approaching sunset time, and I found on the map that the park had an overlook called “Sunset Point”, so I decided to pay that area a visit. Nearby, “Panorama Point” and “Goosenecks Overlook” were located on the same spur of UT24.

Panorama Point

Of the three aforementioned locations, Panorama Point was the first one along the road. But after taking the following few photos, I somehow didn’t think the place was much panorama-inviting.

Hills

Moon over Capitol Reef

Landscape

Mummy Cliff

Goosenecks

Road to Goosenecks Overlook
Taken the next day along Chimney Rock Trail.

From Panorama Point it’s a 1.2km unpaved road (I thought the area was pretty popular with people, I couldn’t understand why the road was unpaved) to the parking lot, from which it’s a 600m trail to Sunset Point, and 100m trail to Goosenecks Overlook.

I arrived at the spot 15 minutes before official sunset time. Unfortunately, the field and mountains to the West were much higher in elevation, that at this time the sun was already behind the mountains. So I thought “Sunset Point” probably wouldn’t live up to its name, and decided to visit the closer “Goosenecks Overlook” instead.

Goosenecks

Goosenecks Overlook

The overlook was over a series of tight bends of Sulphur Creek, which would eventually join the famous Colorado River downstream. The creek’s not as magnificent as Colorado or Green River, but on the good side, of the many canyons I visited during the trip, this overlook was the steepest and closest to water.