Fish Creek, maybe

It's either Lewis and Pranty Creek or Fish Creek. It's hard to tell from all the maps I've checked. Anyway, it's a canyon I've been meaning to explore for a few years. The weather was perfect yesterday so I headed for Fish Creek Hill, planning to explore some canyon or other out there. My first choice was to go upstream from the bridge at the bottom of Fish Creek Hill. There was a crowd of people there, though, and no place to park.

It looked a little intimidating at first. All those rocks would make walking difficult. It wasn't bad at all, though.

There are some impressive cliffs along the way.

Fall color.

I think the pictures might have been better if I had been there either earlier or later in the day. As it was, I was in a fairly dark canyon with very bright cliff faces up above. The HDRIs just don't look very good.

It's almost like a jungle.

It was cool and damp at the bottom of the canyon. Every now and then a warm, dry breeze would blow through. There were lots of footprints in the sand. Dozens of people must have walked up and down that canyon since the last rain. I didn't see anybody the whole time I was there, though. I don't think I saw what makes it so popular, though. I stopped to check the time once and calculated that I couldn't get back to the truck before sunset. It was still too warm to be tromping through tall grass and brush after sunset, so I started hurrying back then. I saw some nice stuff, but I don't think I've found the big attraction yet.

There are lots of shallow caves in the sides of the canyon.

My PN-40 didn't go belly-up due to lack of GPS signals, though it did seem to have a little trouble navigating in the narrow canyon. My SPOT seemed to be very confused. I'm going to have to go back earlier in the day and explore further. As it was, I think I went far enough since I'm not in very good shape right now. It was getting hard to walk by the time I got back to the truck, but I was trying to hurry and it was too dark for pictures so I wasn't stopping to rest at all. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2012_11_23