Moonshine Wash

[Aldaron]

I need to get caught up on a couple of trip reports...

The weekend of 2 Nov 12, my wife and I took a trip down to southern Utah. We first headed down to Muddy Creek on Saturday, with our first stop at the Hidden Splendor Mine. The road out to here wasn't bad at all, and it was really nice. Somehow we had never driven all the way out here, so it was nice seeing somewhere new. We hiked along Muddy Creek for a mile or so, but the water level was pretty high up, so we ended up turning around.








From there, we headed up to Tomsich Butte to see the other end of the Chute of Muddy Creek. This area had more obvious mining ruins, which was cool, and it was just generally prettier than the Hidden Splendor area. We walked around here for awhile, and just generally relaxed.








nick, neiloro, and audraiam were camping that night near Horseshoe Canyon, so I thought it would be cool to try to meet up with them. So we made the long drive through the Swell and then the long drive out into the San Rafael Desert. Some parts of the road had some surprisingly deep sand, especially just past the turn over to Horseshoe Canyon. We've driven this road before, and the sand wasn't nearly as deep. I'm not sure I could have done a couple of stretches without high clearance and four-wheel drive. We found the campsite near Keg Knoll overlooking Horseshoe Canyon at a place we had actually explored before, and spent the night meeting new friends.

We got up on Sunday and headed to Moonshine Wash. nick said it was a nice canyon, so we decided to check it out since it was nearby and on the way home. The canyon really was nice. It wasn't technical but it had several challenging downclimbs that made it interesting. We also saw a rattlesnake, so that was cool. We tried to find an exit out of the canyon to hike back to the truck, but we ended up hiking about a mile past the slot and couldn't be sure about the exit that neiloro had told us about, so we just backtracked back up the canyon without any problems. In fact, I kind of enjoyed the challenges of negotiating the climbs back up canyon, so I'm glad we did it that way. We did see one possible way to climb out of the canyon just past the slot, but it seemed riskier than just backtracking, so we backtracked.








It was great meeting the guys and gal, and I look forward to hanging out with more people from the group in the future.

Featured image for slideshow:

 

[Howells Outdoors]

Nice TR!

 

[Nick]

It's like that snake never even moved! Poor little guy...

 

[Aldaron]

Yeah, based on your description, I think he was in exactly the same spot as the day before. But he was gone when we came back through an hour or so later.

 

[Nick]

He probably just slid up under the boulder. I sat and watched him tuck up in there while Audra made her way down the other side of the boulder. You can see some of the exact same debris in your photo as there was in mine:

 

[Aldaron]

Man, that's the exact same spot! He was actually up under the rock when we came up to the drop, but he fell down a few inches to the bottom of the canyon floor while we were standing there, and then we didn't see him when we came back through. I also figured he had just crawled further up under the rock where we couldn't see him.

Based on where he was when we came to the rock, there's little doubt in my mind that I would have literally stepped on him if you hadn't told me where he was. I came up to the rock and looked over the side and barely saw his head sticking out from under the rock on the very ledge I would have climbed down to if he hadn't been there. He was about six inches above where his head is in your picture. As it was, I ended up just jumping over him to get down.

So you may have either saved his life or mine!

 

[Howells Outdoors]

That's a big o' snake to step on!

 

[Aldaron]

That's the funny thing...it just LOOKS big! It was a pygmy rattler...I don't know why it looks so big in our pictures, because it was tiny!

 

[Aldaron]

I actually had to switch my camera to macro in order to get it to focus!

 

[Nick]

Haha, yeah. I had my ultrawide lens on and I had to hold it way down close (but not too close) to get the shot. That thing was tiny, my memory is bad but I'm sure it wasn't more than 16-24", if not smaller, and it was only about as thick as a marker. Love that scale...

 

[Howells Outdoors]

hahaha thats funny! I went down a rappel near kanab and landed with one of them pygmys between my feet. It started rattlin and i jumped right back up the rope...it was great!

 

[Aldaron]

Yeah, my recollection was that it was no bigger around than my thumb, if not closer to the size of my little finger. And I have these little hobbit hands.

 

[pixie1339]

Nice shots of the snake. I wonder if the poor guy was just too cold to move around much. It can get cold in slots, even if it isn't too cold up above.

 

[Aldaron]

That's kinda what I figured, too. It was pretty cold at night.

 

[Philippe]

Moonshine Wash. We did see one possible way to climb out of the canyon just past the slot, but it seemed riskier than just backtracking, so we backtracked.]

Thanks Keith for your trip report.

In June 2011 I was quite on a hurry the day I was visiting Moonshine Wash, so I took the climb out of the canyon that you can find on the right just past the slot. The beginning of the climb is easy but the last part is risky and exposed during about 10 feet. As a former cliff climber I could manage it with concentration but that is not for everybody and I don't advise this climb out.

Here are some pictures that I took in early morning at Moonshine wash :















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[Aldaron]

Good job! I saw that exit, but I thought it looked steep at the top. The exit I was looking for was further down on the left, but it didn't look much better to me. I'm probably a wimp!