If You Could Hie to Kolob

On the afternoon of Saturday the 4th Leslie and I went four-wheeling with our buddies Robert and Palma, up into the hills overlooking Kolob canyon (yes, I had to sing a chorus of “If You Could Hie to Kolob”.) We drove up the highway to just north of Kannaraville where we parked the pickup, off-loaded the four wheelers, and then headed off on a dirt road that went up into the hills. We went a long way up the dusty trail to where we had a nice view of the backside of the Kolob canyons – they were very pretty, as always. Our view was somewhat dimmed by the dust and smoke (from all the wildfires around Zion this summer) in the air, as witnessed by the attached photo. We could overlook the Kolob Arch to which we’d hiked in the past; Kolob Arch is the second largest arch in the world, missing the record by a mere three feet (see: http://www.naturalarches.org/big9-2.htm for a very nice write-up on the top ten natural arches in the world.) The road we took crosses through private ground and has been closed to the general public because the public abused the property, littering and such. Fortunately for us Robert knows everyone in town and got permission and a key to the gate from the owner. There were a couple of places where the trail was very steep, maybe about 60 degrees, and we worried that the four wheelers could tip over backwards. On the first one of those places Leslie and Palma got off and walked up the hill, but they got so tired on that long steep climb that they decided not to do that again. So, on the second very steep hill we came to we all just leaned as far forward as we could and we made it up fine, without even tipping over backwards. All together we drove about 35 miles on the four wheelers. I took some photos, but they didn’t even come close to showing anything as spectacular as it was. Isn’t that always the way.