2005-07-02 Dam Tour 2005-07-03 Cedar Breaks and Bryce Canyon 2005-07-04 Red Canyon and Grand Canyon 2005-07-05 North Kaibab Trail 2005-07-06 Virgin River Narrows 2005-07-07 Zion Canyon and Gooseberry Mesa 2005-07-08 Water Canyon 2005-07-09 Red Rock Canyon

Day 2 (Sunday, 7/3/2005)

We rendezvoused with Chuck and Mark early on Sunday morning at the Crystal Inn, loaded our gear into the traditional unmarked white van, and plowed up I-15 toward Cedar City, passing recent fire damage along the way.  Turning off the interstate, we wound our way eastward and upward through the Dixie National Forest, an area so named because it was near the center of the afore-mentioned cotton production in Brigham Young's Utah.  Our first stop was at Cedar Breaks National Monument, a "guide surprise" that wasn't on the itinerary.  Cedar Breaks, or as the Native Americans more aptly named it, the "Circle of Painted Cliffs", is a half-mile-deep natural amphitheatre carved out of the same Pink Cliffs in which Bryce Canyon resides.  But while the two features exist in the same rock strata, the Markagunt Plateau surrounding Cedar Breaks was uplifted millions of years ago and now sits at 10,300 feet ASL, a good 2000 feet higher than the rim of Bryce.

Around 10 AM, we emerged into crisp alpine air and were surprised to see snow all around us.  They had had a late winter this year, and the snow was just now starting to melt.  Meltwater from Cedar Breaks and the surrounding environs is one of the major sources of continuous flow for the Virgin River, which runs through Zion Canyon.  And we would get to experience the other side of that equation later in the week.  But at the moment, the snow had unfortunately closed all of the trails in the park, so we were resigned to admiring the canyon from the rim.  After a suitable period of admiration came another ritual of van loading followed by a trek up the highway northeast toward Bryce.  On the way into Bryce, we passed through Red Canyon, which we would explore in more detail tomorrow.

After a brief visit to the Visitor's Center, we found ourselves at the Fairyland Loop trailhead, located at the northern end of the park.  I had been to Bryce once before in September 1998, but it was completely enshrouded in fog and rain during that brief trip.  This was the first time I had ever really "seen" the canyon in all its glory, and brother, that's a lot of glory.  Alien obelisks of unearthly red and golden stone rose out of the ponderosa forest like temples to a long-forgotten god (one of the more phallic gods, to be sure), and we struggled to take it all in as the guides dutifully prepared our gourmet lunch.  Man, it just doesn't get any better than this.  And then the Swedish Bikini Team showed up, and ...

Following a brief period to, as Douglas Adams once put it, "practice the twin arts of digestion and contemplation", we began our descent into the canyon.  Chuck accompanied us, while Mark drove the van around to Sunrise Point to pick us up, saving us a 3-mile rim hike back to Fairyland Point.  The five-mile Fairyland Loop Trail between Fairyland Point and Sunrise Point descends into Fairyland Canyon and follows that drainage for a couple of miles before looping around Boat Mesa, crossing over the drainage divide into Campbell Canyon, and passing Tower Bridge and the Chinese Wall on the way up to the (higher) rim near the lodge.  We descended about 600 feet and ascended nearly 900 feet over the five trail miles, but that was merely a warm-up for the week ahead.

One of the unique aspects of this trip, and one of the major selling points for me, was that the outfitter had booked us into several of the historic national park lodges, some of which have waiting lists of 2-3 years.  On Sunday night, we stayed in the Bryce Canyon Lodge, built in the 1920's and located near "Sunset Point" along the rim of the canyon.  Sunset Point is something of a misnomer.  The Bryce Canyon system is a series of canyons that run roughly parallel to each other and, for the most part, open to the southeast.  "Sunset Point" is so named because it affords one a good unobstructed view to the northeast, toward formations like Boat Mesa and the Sinking Ship which, in the last rays of the setting sun, appear to be illuminated from within.  We watched the towers of amber light glow, fade, and then vanish into the grey as the sun crawled beneath the rim, and so ended our first day in the canyons.