Red Mountain by Night

This past weekend my bro-in-law Josh and I took off for a two day, overnight hike slash camp on the world-famous Red Mountain in Ivins. We left town a little after 4:00 and got to the trail head near Upper Sand Cove Reservoir around 5:00.

After hopping a fence or two we were kindly greeted by the friendly rattle of one of the locals. Josh jumped about 10 feet, and we looked into a bush on the side of the dusty dirt road at the rattlesnake coiled up into perfect striking position. Needless to say, for the rest of the hike, we were a little leary of sagebrush and sticks that looked like dealdy poisonous snakes.

We followed an old dirt road, a sandy wash or two, wound our way through a maze of sagebrush, scrambled up a steep boulder-strewn hillside only to realize we needed to go back down, and found ourselves at the bottom of a mossy sixty foot cliff with a small pool of black water at the bottom. The small pool held a plethora of loud, croaking toads, each one trying their best to out croak the rest. Upon our arrival each small silver-dollar sized toad hopped into the murky blackness and out of sight.

We scaled our way up the side of the cliff, past a giant of a tree long past it's prime and up a few smaller cliffs, each one with their own pool of black water and bellowing toads. After a small stretch of rolling white sandstone we made our way back into a forest of juniper trees and rocky slopes.

After traversing a few steep, rocky hillsides we found ourselves at the edge of a sheer cliff, peering down into the dark abyss of Hellhole Canyon. I have often hiked into the narrow slot of Hellhole from it's lower end, but had never once seen where the canyon began. I now stood on top, looking straight down as walls on all three sides formed a gash in the mountain that seemed to have been struck from the swift blow of a giant's axe. In the darkening twilight, it was nearly impossible to make out the bottom of the canyon. In order to get on the other side, and continue on in the direction we needed to go, we had to backtrack a bit and cross over a small steep hill.

Once we made it to the other side of the canyon, we found ourselves making our way across more slickrock broken up by small sections of sand, trees, and sagebrush. At one point, Josh was walking in front of me when he suddenly stopped and jumped back. About five feet in front of us lay another rattlesnake. The sun had gone down by now, and we were hiking along in the remaining light of dusk. The snake's body temperature had obviously dropped as it hardly made a move and didn't even offer us a warning from it's rattle tipped tail.

Cautiously moving around it, we continued on our way, stopping after a few minutes to pull out our headlamps in order to see our way in the rapidly darkening day. About 30 or 40 minutes later, Josh said, "I bet we can make it down the mountain tonight if we keep going." I agreed with him, as I had actually been thinking the same thing. A brisk wind had risen and after a few more minutes of hiking we found a small, nearly windless section of slickrock at the base of a sandstone hillside where we both enjoyed a tasty dinner of instant oatmeal.

When we set off again, it was completely dark. It was now about 10:30 and our headlamps were our only source of light. We kind-of half-heartedly agreed to hike until midnight and see where we were at by that time. We could then decide if we wanted to continue down the mountain or stop and camp for the night.

After crossing over rocky slope after rocky slope, scrambling over rocky hill after rocky hill, we found ourselves at the top of Gunsite Pass, marking the final descent down the mountain. We were only thirty minutes past our self-imposed "camp or hike out" deadline. We paused for a few minutes to soak in the lights of St. George glimmering below us in the darkness. By now both of us were having issues with our knees, and each step became a little more painful than the last.

We decided to push on and dropped over the edge of the mountainside. Slowly picking our path through the extremely steep rocky slope. After just a few minutes, Josh gashed his ankle on the side of a rock, adding more pain to that already coming from his knees. In the inky blackness of night it was difficult to pick out a trail, and the large loose rocks littering the hillside forced us to take turns as we descended, so as not to inadvertently knock any rocks down onto the other.

After about an hour and a half of this, we finally made it to the bottom of the mountain, and after another thirty minute walk, this time on sublimely flat terrain, we came to the car we had parked and left hours earlier. It was now almost 2:30 in the morning, about nine hours after we began.

It was a great hike, and I now have a new found respect for night hiking. It was a bit self-satisfying to complete the entire 13 mile hike in one shot, without having to stop in the middle and camp. And, as far as I know, we can lay claim to being the first to climb down the Red Mountain in the middle of the night!

Rattlesnake #1

This is Josh, hiking up the first of many hillsides.

Here I am making my way up the side of a cliff.

If you look closely, you can see me at the top, and the toad infested pool at the bottom.

The man, the myth, the Josh.

This is the white side of the Red Mountain.

And this is the red side.

Rattlesnake #2. During the hike we kept joking that it was going to turn into some sort of horror movie, where a giant desert-dwelling squid slithered up through the sand to attack us. Luckily, these two snakes were the closest we got to that sort of thing!