Searching for the Elephant

A photo of Elephant Arch I stole off the Internet

Yesterday a neighbor, Richard Jensen, and I went down to Dixie to do some hiking and maybe soak up a little heat. The plan was to hike to a place in the Red Cliffs Desert Preserve called Elephant Arch. This is a rock formation that resembles an elephant's trunk, including part of the head and eyes. Everything went beautifully except we hiked in the wrong place.

Richard soaking up a little Dixie sunshine

I was going to give Richard a demonstration of how a GPS works. As it turned out I don't think he was really impressed. I used my Mapsource software to program a waypoint in the GPS for the spot I thought was Elephant Arch. It wasn't identified on the map, so I sort of overlayed a map I got off the Internet on the USGS map and came up with a spot I thought would be fairly close.

Somewhere north of Washington

We started hiking out north of the town of Washington where the locked gate to the Preserve keeps you from driving further. Every description we read on the hike said we would find a locked gate and we would have to walk about a mile and a half on a dirt road before entering the wash the trail follows. What we didn't know at the time was that there is a gate just as you leave the asphalt road in Washington, that is sometimes locked, but wasn't locked yesterday, so we drove to the next locked gate about a mile and a half up the dirt road.

The numerous red rock formations make any hike in the area worthwhile

We parked there and walked our mile and a half, give or take, passing right by the wash we were supposed to follow, and followed another for several miles into the heart of a red rock jungle. The GPS was telling us we needed to be nearly a mile further east, but true to our male instincts we ignored it, still thinking we would find the trail heading that direction. After deciding we had gone too far north we explored each side gully and finally found something that looked like what we were hunting. We did quite a bit of rock scrambling only to find it wasn't.

The formation in the center sort of looks like an elephant's trunk don't you think? Please say yes.

We needed to be home by mid-afternoon, so we finally headed back. On the way we noted "Bone Wash" just a few hundred yards from the vehicle, and upon looking at the map at the Preserve boundary discovered that was the wash we should have followed. We made it way too hard.

Vernile looking for an elephant lost somewhere in the red rocks.

If we had just sauntered up that wash and right to the arch it wouldn't have made much of a story. At least now we have an excuse to return and find the real Elephant Arch. We plan to do that soon, along with some more hikes in the area. I have identified several in Snow Canyon State Park that look quite interesting while not too challenging. Anyone want to go?