Mystery of Fay Canyon

A few days ago I went back to Fay Canyon with my friend, John.It was overcast and that cooled things off. When my friend asked to join me on my hike, I chose a short, simple, trail. Or so I thought. It was supposed to be 1 hour round trip. The guide book says it is an easy trail that ends with an arch. Well, I missed the arch last time. I had to leave early to get to the office.

We walked along the wide and flat trail until we reached a red rock formation with signs of the trail going up to a ledge. We took the trail, climbed onto the ledge and kept walking along the trail, which started narrowing. Pretty soon we were being whacked with bushes and branches of trees. I wondered why the forestry service had not maintained the trail and made some joke. The joke was immediately shot down by the sharp edges of some holly leaves. Ouch! We kept walking, persevering cuts, ducking under very low branches, hopping over rocks...Until we reached a wall that looked to difficult to climb. We were deep in the canyon. The views were incredible. We drank water, sat for a while, took photos. We didn't want to go back yet.

Good thing I saw those cairns on the other side of the ledge. We walked and found the trail again. Kind of precariously close to the edge, still ducking trees, we were determined to find that arch. Within 15 minutes we reached a wide open ledge, that was not flat. Stuck again. Go down or up? Well, I inched down a little bit and then jumped across to another part of the ledge. My friend tried to climb up a little bit and then walk across. A piece of red rock broke when he stepped on it. He slid down and landed on the ledge near me. We were both shocked to see how close he was to falling. That's when our brains woke up.

It seemed like we had been hiking for well over an hour, but the trail was supposed to be one hour both ways. He questioned whether the arch really existed; maybe I didn't read the guidebook correctly. He pulled out his android phone and got our coordinates. We had hiked over 4 miles instead of one. Google showed a photo of the famed arch and noted that many people miss it because they mistake it for one of the normal rocks. At that point I thought we had passed it because we were so intent on climbing. So we turned around and ran the gamut of prickly trees, rocks and ledges again. When we got back to the spot that I thought was the arch, we found a very unique rock formation, but no arch. Descending down to the actual trail, we ran into an older couple who had similarly gone off on another trail looking for the arch. They ended up stuck in the depths of another side of the canyon. They corroborated my story about the guidebook's instructions. They gave us some mysterious directions they heard from another couple who reportedly climbed up to the arch.

We tried. We looked up, down and all around. But our steps eventually led us back to the parking lot. Maybe if we were not so bruised (our legs, butts and egos) we would have stayed to find it. The mystery remains and I will have to go back to Fay Canyon again. Maybe I will go back with someone who has lived in the area a lot longer. Or, maybe I will explore the labyrinth of trails in the canyon. It was an unexpected adventure and it made me watch myself:my emotional reactions and my decisions. This is a different kind of meditation. I kept my eyes open the rest of the day. I hope you enjoy the photos of this beautiful challenge.