(Posted 251028) We've been to several locations that advertised "slot canyons" in the past year and a half, but our visit to Cathedral Gorge State Park took things to a whole new level.
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The Pony Springs Rest Area was relatively quiet Saturday night into Sunday morning, and the actual early-morning low temperature was 33.8 so we could've gotten away without freeze protocol - but enjoyed having the Truma on for heat all the same. The tank heaters looked like they took a significant amount of energy, though, since the Volta was down to 48%.
During our morning routine we went to turn off the mouse deterrent lights, only to find that they had gone out on their own (again). No amount of jiggling the cord/plug would bring them back to life this time. Plugging the 12v power plug into a cab power port (to eliminate issues with the power port on the side of the coach as being a possible cause) still failed to even get the power switch to light up when switched on, so Tom tried checking the fuse in the plug - but after removing the metal tip from the plug he was unable to get the old fashioned glass cylinder fuse to come out. After trying unsuccessfully with gloves, he resorted to using a pair of pliers to try to pull the fuse free - only to have the fuse snap in half (with small glass shards flying everywhere), so we have no idea whether the fuse was blown or not. With half the fuse still stuck in the holder, Tom had no recourse but to get a screwdriver and disassemble the entire plug, in order to pry the remaining half-fuse out. Once opened, it looked very much like the plastic fuse holder channel had melted/warped around the fuse, which is why the fuse didn't come out normally when the tip was removed. Why did it melt, though?
Our mouse deterrent lights are actually a pair of different LED light strands (both Amazon Vine finds), designed to be used as awning or undercarriage lighting; the old photo below shows a part of the undercarriage where the light strands are. One set is RGB and is somewhat dimmer than the other set (which doesn't come out well in the photo); the power plug we're using came with this set. The other set is a bright white COB set, and is almost twice as bright as the the RGB set - but it didn't come with a power adapter of it's own (designed to be hard-wired into 12v) so we had soldered on a connector that lets us use an off-the-shelf y-splitter off the RGB strand's. While nothing has any power ratings written on it, the Volta app measured a delta power draw of 45-50 watts when both strands were plugged in and the 5A fuse in the power plug implied that it should have been good for up to 60 watts - and if we were pulling "too much power" one would have expected the fuse to blow, not the fuse holder to melt. Very odd.
At any rate, we now had a fuse-less power plug that had quit working - perhaps because of a blown fuse, but perhaps because of some other internal issue. The only town on the way to our next destination (40 miles south) that showed any sorts of businesses was Pioche, so we popped in to see if there were any stores that might sell the old fashioned fuses. The "Miner's Market" ended up being a grocery store with no hardware section. "Tillie's Mini Mart" - in a small gas station - didn't sell fuses, but the lady inside (Tillie?) suggested trying the Sinclair gas station down the road. Sinclair ended up having quite the selection of old glass cylinder fuses (looking like they were from 40 years ago), but none of the hand scritched "type" markings on the side of the little rectangular tins matched the markings on our half-fuse - so in the end, Pinoche ended up being a bust. As we were heading back down the highway, though, it occurred to Tom that our battery operated tire inflator has a backup 12v power plug/cord that likely has the same connector on it.
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We finally pulled into Cathedral Gorge State Park just before noon, and headed into the Visitor Center to see whether we could check in to our camp site early. The center had two rather unique features in it. One we'll call the Tree-o-Antlers (we wonder if they actually put twinkle lights on it in December), and the second was a creative skylight tower.
After confirming we could check in early, we got some trail hiking info from the displays in the lobby, filled all our empty water bottles from The World's Slowest Water Bottle Fill Station, and drove towards the campground - stopping at the dump station along the way. The dump station had one of those unthreaded rinse head nozzles that you "can't" attach a standard hose to (and therefore can't use with your tank flush port), but we came "prepared" for those on this trip. Taking a queue from the dump station at Shenandoah NP where
someone had left a cutoff hose at a similar dump station that we eventually surmised
might have been left there to help people adapt the evil rinse heads to a standard hose thread (it worked reasonably well for us there), we decided to start carrying a cutoff hose remnant (and thumbscrew hose clamp) of our own in case we encountered one of these again. The inner diameter of our hose must be smaller than the one in Shenandoah, though, because it took awhile to force the hose over the end of nozzle. However, we eventually got it on and clamped and it worked like a charm.
Getting into our site was a little bit of an adventure as well. Using the "campground map" from the Visitor Center, we located Site 19 and carefully backed in to it - being careful not to hit the overhang of picnic table shelter with the van, while still getting the front end of the van off the road - an awfully short pad on the site that was supposed to be more than large enough for our RV. Then we found the
post for the site we were in, and realize that the person who put the numbers on the map swapped the locations of 19 and 20, and we were actually supposed to be across the street. We fit much better in the
real Site 19.
That, unfortunately, wasn't the last of the campground inconveniences. The campground bathroom - presumably the one that all the reviews had indicated had the free showers - was surrounded by construction fencing, with a few construction vehicles inside for good measure. The remaining bathroom across the road had pay showers in it it - so it looked like we'd be having Travato showers for awhile.
We hooked up to shore power and blasted the coach air conditioner during lunch, since the weather had turned quite warm. Tom tested our spare tire inflator power cord (from an inflator that had died on the EotRT) on the mouse deterrent lights, and found that it had a blown fuse 🤦; our "current" one had an intact 8A fuse, though, and worked just fine with the lights.
Still only being around 3 pm, we decided to do some hiking. We set off on the short Nature Trail that connects the campground and slot canyon area, passing by the old Civilian Conservation Corp Water Tower along the way. Built in the 1930's as part of the park's original water system, the source well was eventually capped and the water system abandoned due to high alkali content in the water.
Then it was time to try to find the slot canyons - a task which was more complicated than it should have been because a) the signage at at Cathedral Gorge leaves something to be desired, and b) their maps are none too clear either. Case in point: for reasons unknown, the map available on the park's website has the three main feature areas named as "caves" (Cathedral Caves, Canyon Caves, and Moon Caves) while all of the printed maps in/from the Visitor Center has them named as "slots" (Cathedral Slots, Canyon Slots, and Moon Slots). Photos online definitely showed slot canyons, though, so we were definitely leaning toward believing the printed maps over the online one. Regardless: both agreed that Cathedral X would be to the left of the Water Tower and Canyon X and Moon X would be on the right, so we headed to the right with the intent of finding Moon and working our way back.
We followed the path southward until the path opened up into a much wider crescent shaped area, with two paths that led back into the canyon area. We assumed that the left path led to the Canyon Slots and the right led to the Moon Slots, and headed up the right-hand path.
From a distance, the formation looked like they were made of rock - but the park literature described them as "narrow canyons cut deep into the old muds that millions of years ago were at the bottom of the lake" and on closer inspection you could see that it did, in fact, look like dried mud. The fact that it was "
just dried mud" was made a bit disconcerting by the fact that all over there were channels where water had carved tunnels through the mud - sometimes through the walls, and sometimes through the floor. At first we were hesitant to use the columns as handholds when going up some of the steeper inclines, but after touching a couple we realized they were pretty sturdy. We still tried to give the holes / crevices in the floor a wide berth, though, because we had no idea how big the unseen channels were nor what the true load bearing capacity of the thin layer of mud above them might be.
Here's a view of what the canyon looked like from what we estimated was about the middle.
From our mid-canyon vantage point we spied what looked like 2 or 3 cave mouths (maybe why the online map marks these areas as "caves" instead of "slots"?) in different areas. We decided to try making our way to the nearest one, to the north.
When we got up there we found things a little bit different than we had been expecting. What we had seen
was the opening to a cave - but it was the just tip of the proverbial iceberg. By our estimates, the cave was about 6 stories tall, and we were standing at the
top of the opening - with no visible way to safely get directly down to "the ground floor" from where we were that we could see. We traced a different route from the entrance of the canyon that might get us there, though, and planned to try it later. For now, we took a couple of selfies from our new vantage point.
From there we made our way back to the center, and then over to the cave we had seen to the south. The scrabble over went fairly easily until the very end where there was a very narrow, steep passageway leading down to the cave opening that we weren't sure we'd be able to easily get back up again. We decided to explore one at a time in case one needed help getting back up the incline, with Tom going down first. As before, the cave wasn't quite what we were expecting - very shallow, and where the floor should have been two deep wells-of-indeterminate-depth existed instead.
Then it was time to trade positions, so Christine could have a look into the abyss. Once at the bottom of the path, she agreed that the slope "wasn't that bad after all" and Tom came back down to join her.
From there we made our way to what had looked like an eastern cave, but ended up just being a crevice with a strong shadow - not even particularly picture-worthy. We wound our way down out of the canyon, passing through a tumbleweed graveyard.
Near the entrance to the canyon we were able to find the alternate path we had scouted from above, and made our way to the true entrance of the north cave. Had we not known what we were looking for ahead of time we could easily have missed it, since the 6 story cave mouth is somewhat hidden behind a short narrow crevice of a doorway opening.
However, although we had found the "entrance" to the cave we still couldn't actually enter and explore it because just past the entrance was a ledge with a high vertical drop down to the actual cave floor, which no one would have been able to climb back out of without ropes (and
we probably wouldn't have been able to climb back out of even
with ropes).
Exiting the canyon, we decided to walk around the outcropping of rock to the south to make absolutely sure that there was nothing else on the other side of it. We're glad we did, because we found an even larger crescent shaped area with a path leading back into a canyon - with a parking area and a sign that clearly marked it as being the Moon Slots; so apparently the area we had previously been exploring had actually been the Canyon Slots. 🤦
Shortly after entering the Moon Slots canyon, the path forked. We took the left fork first, which led to the slot-tiest slot canyons we've encountered in all our travels to date. Unlike most of the paths through the Canyon Slots we had explored earlier - which went uphill so the mounds of dried clay were always about our height or less as we walked by them - the path in this section of the Moon Slots was fairly level but the walls heights still shot up multiple stories high into the sky. And the passageways got narrower the deeper you went into them, to the point of being less than shoulder-width in several places. The first video below is a time-lapse covering most of the internal path, while the second is a normal-speed video covering just the exit arm.
The path in the right fork was considerably wider, and led past a collapsed mud column . . .
. . . as well as a few tributary paths that terminated in stories-high semi-circular shafts with washed out, undercut sections at the bottom.
We decided to finish exploring the Canyon Slots area before returning to camp. The evening sun illuminated this cute little grouping of clay mounds that we decided to name "The Sermon on the Mount".
The left-hand path in the Canyon Slots led to an area that was very similar to the last area we explored in Moon Slots with many tributaries terminating in the stories-high, smooth walled, almost circular alcoves. Some of these alcoves actually had partial "ceilings" (presumably also of dried clay) on them high above.
We also finally got a good look at the pigeons we had been hearing in various parts of the canyons.
As we returned on the Nature Trail back to camp, we noticed that our arms, legs, and backpacks had a fine coating of clay powder on them - no doubt scraped off the walls of the Moon Slots. Apple tracking clocked our explorations at 1.8 miles total with 190 ft of elevation gain - but the map was more interesting than usual, showing what happens when GPS signals are blocked and it has to "guess" how you got from point to point.
Dinner that night was grilled shrimp and Brussels sprouts, with IP brown rice. After dishes, we had showers in the Travato and updated our journals until bedtime around 10:45. We decided to light up only the white COB mouse deterrent lights instead of both sets, using the "new" power adapter.
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Temperatures dropped down to 37 degrees outside in the wee hours of Monday morning, although the coach interior never dropped below 55. Mouse deterrent lights were still on as expected when we got up around 9:30.
We headed back out on the Nature Trail around 11 am, turning left at the Water Tower this time to head to the Cathedral Slots which, like the Moon Slots, were clearly marked with a metal sign (we're still not sure why the Canyon Slots had no sign whatsoever).
Cathedral Slots basically had a little sampling of everything we had seen the previous day (with the exception of a cave), although this next item was unique so far - and we weren't sure what the point was. It didn't seem like a single 2x4 wedged in between two mounds like that would have had any benefit had rains caused the mounds to actually start shifting - and it was too high off the ground to be some ranger's pull-up bar. It was a real puzzler...
Then it was time for a
real hike. The park normally has several hiking options, but the Miller Point Trail was closed - making the Eagle Point Trail inaccessible - so our only option was to hike the 3 mile Juniper Draw Loop trail. For a while it looked like the mostly flat trail (marked heavily with "Please Stay On Trail" signs) wasn't going to be worth it, since the views were pretty much the same as we had been able to see from the campground. But as we rounded the corner into the back valley, things got a bit more interesting - starting with this clay outcropping way up high that looked to us almost like an ancient domed Greek temple.
Along the way we could see many gaps between the clay mounds, that looked very much like the ones in Cathedral / Canyon / Moon Slots that had led to all the exploration goodness. The canyon here looked particularly inviting - and it looked like several unofficial paths had been cut back to it by past hikers. But we were good little hikers, and stayed on the main path like the signs said to.
The clay "towers" at the top of this hill had uneroded horizontal sections that looked like the remnants of old catwalks (or, from the ground, diving boards).
On the other side of the valley we spotted a huge, prehistoric looking guardian creature. Thankfully it appeared to be sleeping, and we were able to pass by safely.
As we continued our journey we noted that the mud mounds were beginning to resemble the landscape you'd expect to see around a spaceport in some science fiction show/movie.
And then we came to this interesting little fork in the path. Despite having just passed another of the ubiquitous "Please Stay On Path" signs, 1) there was yet another little spur trail going off to the side (that looked pretty much like all the other spur trails we had avoided going off on all day) and 2)
someone had constructed a bench at the end of the spur trail. This was as clear a case of entrapment as any we've ever seen in our lives. We decided to take the bait anyway.
Hmmm . . . the trail appeared to continue past the bench and into a canyon. And if it was okay to go as far as the
bench, surely no one would mind if we went into the
canyon too 😁 . . .
We decided to leave our gear on the bench - partly because it would make maneuvering easier, and partly because it would serve as an indicator to a passing ranger that
someone was back there if we fell through a thin clay crust layer into an underground clay cavern we couldn't get out of and had to wait for rescue.
Scrambling over the boulder seen above was the first obstacle. The second was getting to the far side of this dried out pool. Our main concern was that the water had seriously undercut the surface layer of clay (the photo doesn't do justice to exactly how thin the resulting layer of clay was, nor how far back the undercut went), and even after a day of walking around on it we still had no idea exactly how structurally strong all this dried clay really was. Also not evident from the photo are the cobwebs criss-crossing the pool (and associated resident spiders), that made us none too thrilled with the idea of either dropping into the pool to try to walk across it, or falling through the clay ledge into the pool.
We sent our guinea pig first and he made it safely through, so Christine followed afterwards.
The path didn't extend too far beyond that point. First it passed by a cozy little alcove that was just large enough for us to both squeeze comfortably into.
And then it turned a couple of corners, finally coming to a dead end below the tower.
Having survived our little off-trail adventure, we returned to the main loop trail to resume our hike.
Apple clocked our total hiking for the day at 3.79 miles total, with some more confused teleportation happening while in the canyons.
We arrived back at camp around 1:40 pm. Since we were planning on showering again in the evening we wanted to top off our fresh water tank, but didn't feel like driving all the way back to the dump station to do it if it wasn't necessary; we ended up pulling forward and filling from the shared threaded spigot a few sites down and then backing back into our site again. After hooking back up to shore power, we cranked up the air conditioner, had lunch, and resumed work on the third Nevada blog post.
Dinner that evening was grilled zucchini, potatoes, and burgers. After dishes, we had Travato showers again and then finished and published the third Nevada blog around midnight. Tomorrow we'd be leaving Cathedral Gorge, and heading on to our next adventure.
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Next post: (coming soon)
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