Southern Utah 2012 – Day 3 – Sand Mountain

Southern Utah – Day 1 – Zion National Park
Southern Utah – Day 2 – Tri-State Corner
The third and final day of our Southern Utah trip was the most fun for me. We slept in (past 7:00, even!) and ate breakfast while waiting for Chris and Karin to arrive. Once the group was together, Traci and I piled into the Jeep with Eric and Sherie while Chris and Karin followed in the Element. Chris surprised us again by taking his car where we only saw lifted 4x4s and ATVs driving. We drove up the west rim of Sand Mountain, and when some tall sandstone ledges kept Chris from going any further in his car, everyone piled into the Jeep while Chris and I stood on the side rails. We arrived at an area filled with sandstone fins which we’d scoped out in Google Maps the previous evening, and we started hiking and scrambling around looking for a place to rappel and place a difficult-to-reach geocache.

Jeep driving up west rim of Sand Mountain

We found a fin with a nice vertical face on one side and an easily-climbable spot on the other side. There was nowhere to anchor the rope on top, so Eric and I found a boulder on the bottom of one side and tied his rope to it. I climbed up top and threw a rope down to tie his rope bag to, then hauled it up. After Eric threw his rope down the other side of the fin, we had a nice rappelling setup. We took several turns rappelling down the cliff, and placed a geocache in a hole in the vertical face. We got buzzed by two airplanes, one at a very low altitude (like, 50 feet) and another several hundred feet above–I wish I’d had my camera out for the first plane. We all got our fill of rappelling, then packed up our gear and drove back to Hurricane. After lunch at Eric and Sherie’s house, Traci and I said our goodbyes and reluctantly started the drive home.