Saturday night we experienced our first big storm in Utah and it was a doozy. High winds, lightning, and rain combined to make a serious little squall and I had to say I was a little nervous.  We had positioned ourselves up on the cliff rather than down on the beach itself and we saw lots of people moving away from the sandier shore when the storm was coming.  Relatively easy to move quickly in a Class A or Class C but since it was evening and it takes us longer to hitch we decided to ride it out.  And it turned out to be OK for us, although I had this fear the wind would push us over into the deep ravine next to us.  Lee and I talked about it a little bit, but he felt pretty confident we would be OK, because, well, physics.

I have to say I really wish I would have taken physics in high school and college, because unlike calculus, physics related questions do come up rather frequently in life.  I am sure there is a formula for how much wind it would take to push us over, and I would love to be able to do the math ourselves. I found a formula online, but have no idea if it is accurate, but it sounds good. We should probably have Bill do the math and see what he thinks!

V = SQRT(W*b/{0.00666*l*(h-h2/2)*(h/2+h2/4)})

where
V = wind speed, mph
W = trailer weight, lbs
b = trailer width (tire center-center), ft
l = trailer length, ft
h = trailer height (from ground), ft
h2 = tire height, ft

I also found a study done by Thomas W. Schmidlin and Barbara O. Hammer of Kent State University called “Wind Speeds Required to Upset Vehicles” where they concluded that a stationary high profile vehicle could be flipped with 95 mph wind.  This study was primarily about tornado winds and is an older study, but sounded about right to me.  The thing is though that I know lots of people who pull their slides in during heavy winds, but we have only done that once and I am not sure what effect (if any) having the slides out would have.  Most people pull in their slides because they have slide toppers to worry about in high winds, but we intentionally didn’t buy those and I have to say I am really glad we didn’t.  We rarely stay in places where we are under heavy tree cover, and except for one brief stint in the Redwoods have never felt their lack.

Anyway, I am going down a rabbit hole here.  The main point is it was a somewhat brief but turbulent storm and we rode it out just fine thankfully.  One thing that was was really unusual though is the smell the rain produced.  The hills and sand here are red because of heavy iron content and that smell was really strong right before and right after the storm.  I’ve never smelled anything quite like it, and since it was dark by the time the storm passed we couldn’t see the impact on the sand until the next morning.  That also turned out to be just fine.  The sand was definitely softer in places, and we probably wouldn’t have driven far on dirt roads, but it wasn’t the muddy mess I was worried about.  And since it turned out to be a brilliant blue sky day we decided to go ahead and do the Toadstool Hike.

The Toadstool Hike trailhead is right off of 89 and is roughly in the middle between Kanab and Page.  It is a 1.5 mile round trip hike, up to a plateau with Toadstool shaped rocks.  Since our friend Cori had recommended the hike I was eager to go, but once again I underestimated how rough the terrain would be, and left my hiking poles at home.  The trip started out OK, with a relatively big parking lot and a nice flat walk to the toadstools which we could see in the distance.  The problem was the initial trail was a little washed out and although walking on the dirt was just fine we weren’t 100% which way to go and ended up veering right when we should have stayed to the left.  That little walk was actually really pretty (the colors really popped after the storm washed the dust off of things the previous night), but we kept moving away from where I knew the rocks were, and after about a half mile I told Lee I wasn’t going any further in that direction and we had to turn around.

 

 

Once we got back to the left we found what we thought was the path and started watching for trail markers.  There are more of them the closer you get to the Toadstools, but in the beginning it was still a bit confusing.  Plus the path is quite a bit steeper than I expected, staying out of the wash (which was good because it was a little muddy), but also going up and down several little hills.  Finally we turned a corner and could clearly see the major toadstool formation and we saw the steepish climb that was required at the end. At this point I was more tired than I expected to be and was dreading that climb a little bit, but since we saw many people older than us walking the trail, I took a few deep breaths and we kept going.

 

 

 

 

Once we reached the top though it was totally worth it.  The toadstools were indeed really cool, but we actually enjoyed the cliff walls even more.  There were huge shallow areas that had been carved by the wind, and they reminded me of pictures I had seen of Egypt with similar spaces that had giant statues in them. We ended up spending a long time up on the plateau and loved every minute of it.  Coming back down was much easier than going up had been and we both agreed it was totally worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really loved the entire time we spent up there, because you really couldn’t take a bad picture.  I do wish I would have brought my hat though because it was full sun and was warm in those areas where the wind was blocked.  I have rarely seen Lee that happy.  He was climbing on rocks, getting way too close to the edge (in my opinion), and we took over 400 pictures.  It was just the type of interactive nature that we both love, and was a great hike for that reason if not for the trail itself.

 

 

 

 

The way back was much easier, because we knew where we were going and we paid more attention to the trail signs.  I really recommend this hike (just stay to the left) especially if you want to spend a little time in Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument but don’t have a ton of time.

 

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