For the extended Memorial Day weekend we headed down to the Historic Land of Four Seasons (aka Beaver, UT) to visit the in-laws. It was pretty much raining all weekend in Salt Lake, so it was nice to get away from that. The weather has been crazy this year and all the mountains are still snowed in and the rivers are all overflowing, so we decided to head out to a place that would normally be too hot and dry this time of year. The Rock Corral area of the Mineral Mountains west of Beaver is one of my favorite places to visit in the area. I’ve been itching to go explore some of the cliffs and formations above Rock Corral. The rock is a soft type of granite that erodes in to these awesome formations.

The picnic area is pretty remote. There aren’t very many official recreation areas in the state that you can visit on Memorial day and not be fighting for a parking spot. While we were there, one other person pulled in to the parking lot and turned around and left. In fact, there isn’t really even a trail out of the picnic area in to the cliffs. There are a few little unofficial paths, but within 100 yards of the picnic tables, you are pretty much bushwacking your way to wherever you want to go.

Before the manventure could begin, we spent some time picnicking and riding horses and hanging out with the grandparents and grandkids. After everyone had had enough and went home, Uncle Kurt and I took to the hills to see if we could reach Granite Peak, the high point of the range. I’ve spent so much time on kid friendly-ish hikes the last few years, that I was excited to have uncle Kurt along for some serious exploring and hiking. Since there are no real trails, I just had to go off of what I could remember from a few accounts of others who had attempted the summit from Rock Corral. It was pretty late in the day and neither one of us was committed to get to the top, so we just decided to play it by ear and get as far as we could. First thing, we ran in to a wild turkey herding her chicks along, which was kind of cool, but then we had to decide which way to go.

The ridges tend to blend together in this range and everything is so steep, you really can’t see whatever is behind what is directly in front of you. Our summit attempt took us up the base of the cliffs on the left side of this photo, in to the little saddle in the middle, and halfway up the peak on the right side before we couldn’t go any further. We climbed over 1000 vertical feet, but that was still 1500 vertical feet and another mile or more to go to Granite Peak. So yeah, we didn’t come close.

Here is a view from the saddle, looking in to the next drainage over that we should have probably taken if we wanted to get further than we did. It doesn’t look like much in the photo, but the cliff drops of there about 100 feet. We couldn’t have even descended in to that drainage from here if we wanted to.

This is the little crack in the dome that we took from the saddle, halfway up the peak. It was a long shot, but at least we gave it a try. From here we decided to head downhill but up the canyon in to the drainage above Rock Corral to explore. The only bad thing about that plan was that the closer we got to the water, the thicker the brush got.

We did make it down to the river and it was pretty obvious that there was plenty of manventure left on this trip. We had to turn around and go back up canyon when we reached a waterfall and couldn’t climb down. Everywhere is super steep and covered in brush, so that was a challenge. We could see that the water went through a short gap in the rocks that you can see in this photo. It was downhill from where we were and looked like a cool place to visit, so we were pretty sure that there wouldn’t be another impassable waterfall.

That’s where we were wrong. Here’s the vantage point from the cliff where we are just above the 40 foot tall trees in the bottom of the canyon. If we would have had some rope, we could have rappelled, but who wants to be prepared and haul that around?

There was this 30 foot chute that was like the overflow for the waterfall that we scoped out as a possible way down, but it was about 5 feet to span at the top and then it belled out for the bottom 15 feet, so there would have been a pretty good drop to that sandy spot. It was a nice thought, but we decided to hike back out and around.

Here’s Kurt taking the easy way out and around the waterfall. This was actually nice because there wasn’t 8 foot tall brush to fight through for this short section.

We got on top of the ridge and spotted some cow pies and knew that we should be able to make it down from here. This giant boulder was pretty cool, especially for how undercut it is on the one side and still balances there.

Here’s some more views of the awesome formations and wispy clouds.

We got back down to the river and came through this spectacular place that is only about 100 yards from the picnic area. There is a tight canyon that the water cuts through, and giant boulders have fallen down and made this series of tunnels. The water is shallow enough that you can climb right down through the tunnels.

Here Kurt comes down around a little waterfall, underneath a massive boulder.

This is looking downstream under the same boulder. The ceiling is high enough that you can pretty much walk through here if you hunch over a little. This spot is actually pretty accessible from the picnic area and kids love climbing around in here.

I think this area is just as spectacular as the national parks of Southern Utah. Unlike the national parks, I wish a few more people would visit and help establish some trails into these awesome mountains. Then again, maybe that is what I like best about places like this. You can really enter a place like this and feel like you are traveling uncharted territory. At least until you step in a cow pie that is.