December 1/09 Johns Canyon Trail

Headed into Mexican Hat, Utah today for gas. Stopped beside Mexican Hat Rock and as you can see by the pics it looks like an upside down sombrero. Did a bit of shopping at the Trading Post in town and then headed to the trailhead for the Johns Canyon Trail.

Johns Canyon used to be called Douglas Canyon after a prospector in the 1900s. Jim Douglas found gold in the area but before he was able to work the claim, the area was flooded and remained underwater for 20 years. Jim became depressed and eventually threw himself off a bridge in Mexican Hat into the San Juan River.

The name Johns Canyon came from John Oliver who ran cattle in the canyon along with his brother Bill. The competition for the canyon was a fellow by the name of Jimmy Palmer who was reputed to be a horse rustler and a murderer!! Palmer killed John and was eventually captured where he died in a Texas prison.

The trail itself held a few surprises. Along the way we were greeted by two sets of petroglyphs. We took some pics and marvelled at the number of years that they have been on the rocks.

There were plenty of areas where huge boulders had sheared themselves from the cliffs and had crashed down landing where momentum had ceased. The Bureau of Land Management keeps these trails open by grading them but some of these boulders were right beside the trail. We did do a bit of shelf trail but these area were fairly short distances and the trail was reasonably wide - so, not too much panic

We meandered our way around the tall sandstone cliffs and eventually entered Johns Canyon. There was a little water in some of the pools and the trails were mostly sand. We came to an old dugout which was quite interesting. It was dug into the ground, had been shored up with lumber and had dirt piled on top of it. There was a small entrance and so I must assume that who ever used it was of rather small stature. It would have been interesting to see the inside of it but I was not about to crawl inside. Hogan entered and came out unimpressed so that was good enough for me.

We took a few extra pics along the way, one being the pic just before the petroglyphs of a rock formation that looked like a lizard crawling up the side of a bigger rock, one of John with his new cowboy hat beside a huge cottonwood tree, one of Hogan playing in the water and of course a few of the truck. The pic with the moon beside the cliff turned out fairly well also.

We collected dead wood on the way back and had a small fire before having supper and heading to bed.