Saturday found David and I hiking in the southwest end of Capitol Reef National Park, and just outside of the park boundary.
We were hiking into Laurel and Hardy Arches above Maverick Draw, when it began to rain. David and I took temporary shelter in a low alcove just large enough to sit upright in. As I crawled to a comfortable location, I took care to remove rocks large enough to hide scorpions or other unpleasant surprises. After a short but pleasant rainstorm, I prepared to leave when a rather flattened and crumpled scorpion crawls out from my sitting location and proceeds to limp to a safer local. That was good for a minute of belly laughing. Poor creature.
We climbed up a nearby slope to reach the clifftop and a class C arch we called Sheets Draw Arch since it is visible from Sheets Draw just below us to the east.
From Sheets Draw Arch it was about a hundred feet of walking along a stone ‘knife-edge’ shelf in strong winds to the area above Laurel and Hardy Arches. One side of the knife-edge was straight down for 300 feet while the other side would have been a hundred feet of bouncing off the steep rock slope before plunging several hundred feet off another sheer cliff. We then found that we should have brought ropes to descend to the arches since the incline is just steep enough to keep us from climbing down to the arches.
Oh well. We’ll be back.