Cave Canyon and Fossil Canyon 4.6.2010

Red Rock Canyon State Park offers many great hiking spots. This particular hike is NOT in the park, but rather just right across from the park on the south side, near the horse corrals.

It starts out easy hike, passing 2 horse corrals and eventually walking into the canyon. The canyon then divides into two ways. The left is to Cave Canyon, and the right is to Fossil Canyon. We went to Cave Canyon first. There were visible path we could follow, walking around big boulders.

The area here was once in the deep ocean, so if you take a close look at the stones and boulders, you can see fossils. But more are visible down in the Fossil Canyon section later. The trail is somewhat steep, but fairly quickly we got to the first small cave, well they are more or less "big hole in the wall".

Sadly, We saw some graffiti in those mini caves. I wish people can be more respectful to our history. These are pieces of evidence that life has existed thousands of years ago.

After this point, we were basically stair-stepping big time on the rock up to the main cave. No need to use ropes or anything, but each step is big so we had to use hands a lot to hold on and keep the balance. 

The entrance to the main cave is behind the big boulder. It can be missed easily. Well I missed it. My husband found it.  Once you step in it, I was like "OH MY GOD!" I was speechless. It's HUGE and goes deep in the back about 70-80yards. Of course it's almost pitch black as it goes back further as sunlight doesn't reach that far.                                                                                                                                        

Inside the cave there are lots of middens. They are made of trash, urine, plants and all other materials that ancient people left behind from thousand of years ago. They are all solidified and now like rocks. They are simply amazing. I felt the history right in front of my eyes!

midden

I have a lot more pictures that I can't possibly put all on this blog, so request them if you want to see more!

OK. Now it's time to go to the Fossil Canyon. So just turn around and go back to where we came from, but this time we are taking the other trail at the fork in the path. This trail can go a long way and there are full of fossils like below. 

We walked about a mile or so in this canyon. Since we didn't see where it ended we turned around, climbed out of the canyon to hilltop where we walked back to the horse corral. Here is the view from the hillside.

This day, we hiked about 5 hours only because we did two canyon altogether and fiddle fart around along the way. It was Great Discovery Day!!