Canyoneering Nighthawk

Our family is really fortunate to live in such a beautiful area of the world! Taking advantage of where we live, Scott has really gotten into canyoneering lately. I'm grateful that Scott can go with his children and share that interest in common. Here's Scott's report on the trip they recently took:

I took David, Everett, and Everett's girlfriend Caroline to Nighthawk Canyon in Capitol Reef National Park on Labor Day weekend. It's a fun canyon with an impressive 200' rappel at the end. We drove down the night before and crashed in an unofficial campground outside the park. We woke up pretty early the next morning, ate a hasty breakfast, and rushed to the trailhead. We worried that there would be a lot of people at the park for the holiday, and we didn't want to get stuck behind a slow-moving canyoneering group. Although there were several groups at the trailhead parking lot, no one was doing Nighthawk, and we had the whole canyon to themselves.

The approach to the first rappel was about an hour and a half. The trail required a little route-finding. At one point the trail seemed to peter out and there weren't any cairns. But after trying a few different alternatives, we found the path again. There were great views along the way.

Looking at the canyon on the way up.

A side-view of the canyon.

The first rappel required a little ingenuity. The park asks canyoneers NOT to use trees as rappelling anchors. There weren't many great anchoring options, and we didn't really want to leave any gear or webbing behind.

After rappelling into the canyon, the route follows a series of potholes. In spite of the very dry weather, many of the potholes still had water.

David rappelling into the canyon. The first potholes are visible on the lower right of this photo.

The canyon isn't bolted. There aren't any bolted anchor points for any of the rappels. We had to get creative at times. I was the "meat" anchor for one of the rappels.

Another anchor point was some webbing slung around a dead log wedged into a crack in the canyon floor.

The crown jewel of canyon is the last rappel. It is a 200' drop into a beautiful slot.

We followed the slot to where it ended in a green shady pool surrounded by sandstone before hiking out to the van.

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