Leslie and David's Wanderings: 16 April 2021 Potholes and Slickrock

Saturday, April 17, 2021

16 April 2021 Potholes and Slickrock

David worked long hours the last four days and worked on our federal income taxes in the evenings, so we slept in a little before heading back to Canyonlands NP. We have of list of trails that we want to hike in the park during our stay in the area and two of them were fairly short. The weather was cool but sunny, perfect for hiking. Our first stop in the park was Pothole Point Loop trail (0.8 Miles, 30ft of elevation gain, 600 Calories Burned). The trail takes you across a stretch of slickrock with lots of potholes, some filled with water, that have formed in the rock. It makes the trail a bit rugged since you have to make sure you don’t trip on a low rock ridge. But the views on this trail are INCREDIBLE. You can see all the way to the horizon with beautiful buttes, mesas, and rug canyons. We also had fantastic views of the Needles formation. We took our time and wandered around to take in the views before heading back to the Behemoth.

Our next trail was Slickrock Foot Trail (3.5 miles, 292ft of elevation gain, 1709 calories burned) near the end of the road in the Needles district. The trail runs along the edge of Big Spring Canyon, and like Pothole Point Loop, offers incredible views of the canyons and buttes. Between the two trails, we got our muscles warmed up and our hearts filled with the beauty of canyon country. Slickrock had a few interesting scrambles but was a fairly easy trail to walk. The hard part was keeping track of the cairns when moving across the large stretches of slickrock so we could stay on the trail. There were several times we had to stop and backtrack to the last one we saw and then look around for the next one. We really enjoyed both these trails and it gave us an idea of what to expect for the longer hike we had planned for the weekend.