Red Canyon Trail - Another Culvert Operation

Here we are again at The Steps -- a boondock area south of Lake Havasu City and north of Parker, Arizona.  We stayed here for 3 nights after Winter Blast in 2017, and we're doing that again this year.

This stay is an opportunity to be out on our own with opportunities to take Jeep drive, paddle kayaks and hike, all from our front door.  Well, the weather is too chilly for paddling, so it will have to be the other activities.  And, frankly, we've done lots of off-roading recently, but we haven't hiked enough.  So hiking it is.

We found a hike whose trailhead is only 1.5 miles from where we're camped.  It's called the Red Canyon Trail.  The information about the trail is sketchy, but we downloaded a map of the route and a brief trail description and brought along our experience and confidence in desert-and-wash hiking.

We got to the trailhead and found that the route started by walking through a culvert into the main wash:

Wait!  Isn't this what we did two years ago?  Yes, by golly.  Last time we found a hike down to the lakeshore and we called it, "A Culvert Operation," which you can click to see what our prior hike was like.

This one would prove to be a bigger adventure.  Immediately, the wash dropped into a slot canyon section.  Here, Kathy measures the width and concludes that we can get through these red rocks:

Within a half mile or so, we encountered our first impassable obstacle:  a pourover (dry waterfall) that descended in two stages a total of perhaps 30 feet.  It's hard to tell from this photo, but David is perched about 10 feet above the first level.  Beyond it is another drop-off of 20 feet or so that we decided we weren't going to attempt.

This was David's view as he contemplated whether to drop down, perhaps never to be able to climb back out:

He did eventually drop to the first level, but could go no further, and he required a strong double-handed assist from Kathy to get back up from the first level.  So it was that we decided to find a workaround by climbing the steep canyon walls, walking across a ridge, and then scrambling down some loose scree to return to the wash beyond our monster pour-over.

Once we accomplished this, the wash opened up into the type of Arizona desert landscape we know and love.  The rocks started to morph into gorgeous red sandstone, which is why we believe this is called Red Canyon:

Along the wash, we found a sandstone arch that sheltered the most unusual critter you've ever seen:

While this is more Mojave Desert than Sonoran, there are still some saguaro cacti homesteading in the wash.  They marked the trail down through the wash to the lake:

The red sandstone canyon walls bore those beautiful honeycomb circular holes caused by wind or (in this case probably) rushing water, where sand and pebbles start to hollow out the rock:

As we descended, we began to understand why this is called Red Canyon.  The red rock was everywhere, and it was complemented by the lush green vegetation from this year's greater-than-average rainfall:

After some climbing and scrambling up a ridge from the wash because our path was blocked by palo verde, willow and reeds, we caught our first sight of Lake Havasu:

Our wash empties out into a cove with a rocky island and -- in the left middle ground of this photo -- a palm tree, standing solo and of mysterious origin.  Has it been here since palm trees were more native?  Was it planted here?  Did it somehow generate from something brought in accidentally?  We'll never know.  We wanted to hike across the cove to get a better look at the palm tree, but it was time to have lunch, and then it would be time to start our return to the trailhead.  Maybe later.

For our lunch spot we selected the far end of a long peninsula jutting out into Lake Havasu from the end of Red Canyon.  Here is a view along the ridge line as we worked our way out to the point:

The wildflowers were everywhere.  Kathy finally could not contain herself as we walked along the ridge, and she captured this pretty view of wildflowers spilling down the hill toward the blue-green waters of the lake:

When we encounter an expanse such as this, it's very hard to capture the experience in words or photos.  So, as in many other situations, we try to convey the experience by taking a video of the entire expanse.  If you're interested, take a look at this 360-degree view on the peninsula at lake havasu at the bottom of red canyon wash.

We found the lee side of the peninsula ridge to sit and eat our lunch, planning our return trip.  The hiking information we downloaded showed that we could have continued another 2-3 hours around the lake and up another wash to return to our trailhead; but we decided that we had already used half of our alloted hiking time and decided to return the way we had come.  Still, it would have been enticing to walk around the shoreline and look more closely at beautiful coves such as this one, which we judged would have permitted the perfect approach to beach our kayaks for lunch if we had been paddling:

Hiking back, we looked for things we hadn't spotted on the way down.  For instance, we glimpsed this pretty little beavertail cactus hidden beside a boulder with a beautiful yellow flower as companion:

Looking up-wash with the sun behind us, we found many more scenes where the red rocks were complemented by almost purple soil and cliff faces:

This was the patrician of the saguaros along our route.  He deserved an appropriately respectful portrait:

While David wasn't looking, Kathy snapped this photo of the photographer at work.  By this time we knew our route and didn't have to worry so much about route-finding, scrambling and such.

Even so, we had one final, big rock scramble up a cliff to get back around the dry waterfall we had first encountered when we started the hike.  It seemed easier when we had climbed down.  Up was a little sketchy.  But we succeeded and spent the last half mile or so of the hike wondering if anyone had stolen the kayaks off our Jeep while we were out hiking.  Luckily, they hadn't, and we had an easy 1.5 mile drive back to our campsite, to prepare for happy hour with our friends Ron and Dee.

We have one more adventure to plan for tomorrow.  We'll have to see what tomorrow brings.