October 20th is my birthday and that is good enough of a reason to go natural arch hunting. David and I loaded up my Explorer and headed south into the San Rafael Swell area of central Utah.
From Moore Utah we drove south until we crossed the I-70 Interstate. We continued south on the dirt roads to an area referred to as Moroni Slopes and then east to the overlook into Seager Hole. The Muddy River is east of Seager Hole and a side canyon called Chimney Canyon runs westward from the river. We first tried hiking down the steep causeway into Seager Hole and then explored the cliffs to the north. We were not able to locate any natural arches that way.
At the bottom of the causeway was an old empty stock watering trough. In the trough, we found a kangaroo rat trapped at one end and a small yellow runner snake trapped at the other. We set up a board to act as a ramp should they decide they needed to leave the trough.
(I wonder how long they had been in there together.)
We then hiked along the top rim of a minor side canyon to Chimney Canyon until we were able to locate a class “C” sized natural arch below us. This was Chimney Canyon Arch that we were looking for.
While this turned out to be a rather small and unimpressive natural arch, the surrounding country is anything but small or unimpressive.
A perfect birthday drive and hike!