CRACK CANYON Epic Utah Slot Canyon Adventure

If you're looking for narrow slot canyons, zero crowds, and pure desert adventure, Crack Canyon near Green River might be your next favorite hike. Today we're going to be sharing with you one of our favorite hikes in the San Rafael Swell in Utah, featuring three distinct narrow sandstone slot canyons with 200 to 500 foot canyon walls surrounding you for most of the hike. This hike is epic. We're going to show you the entire thing and share all sorts of helpful information to visit. But first things first, we're home in Denver gearing up for another road trip. We're about to head out for a week-long trip to Green River Utah where we're going to be exploring all of the San Rafael Swell in the area. Our first stop on the road was in Glenwood Springs at our favorite donut place in the entire state of Colorado. Honestly, maybe my favorite in the country. It's called Sweet Colorado and they have the best cronuts that I have ever had. And then of course we made another stop after this at the Utah state border sign to get some photos of Mia. And then we carry on to Green River and after checking in we were stoked to find out that right behind our hotel there was an off-leash dog area, which was super awesome because Mia was so good for the long drive, but we wanted to kind of shake the legs out before we headed out for the afternoon. Now the main thing we're going to be sharing in this video is the hike through Crack Canyon, but we're actually going to do this hike tomorrow. And right now while we still have a few hours of sunlight, we're going to try to squeeze in a few adventures. So our first stop is going to be heading to Black Dragon Canyon, which isn't too far from our hotel in Green River, to check out the Black Dragon pictographs. And then pretty close to this, about a canyon or two over, we hiked some of the Spirit Arch and Petroglyph Panel Trail, which was also so awesome. This is such an underrated area of Utah. And actually we came out here for this trip to film a top 10 hikes and places to visit in Green River. So these are some of the things you can expect on that video, but there's going to be a lot more of epic locations on that, so stay in tune for that. But it had been a long day after the drive and the first few adventures that we did, so we got back to the hotel, made some food, and just got ready for the day to come. So good morning. So we are heading to Crack Canyon, and we're almost there. We just passed the turnoffs for Goblin Valley State Park, but Bree saw on the side of the road there were some pictographs and petroglyphs. So we just made a quick stop here, show you guys this, and then we will soon be at the trailhead for our hike today. I'm packing Mia's things, her water and treats, and my water. It is a little bit chilly right now. Obviously, we're the only people here. If we didn't see a car, honestly, like the entire drive. So we're doing Crack Canyon today. It's the biggest hike we're going to be doing. It's 4.8 miles, like 400 feet of elevation gain. So I think it's going to be a super easy hike. Definitely need a four-wheel drive to get out here. You drive through San Rafael Swell. It's beautiful. And then you kind of pass Goblin Valley, and you're on just some of these back roads behind Hanksville. In terms of this hike, probably the best hub, honestly, is going to be wild camping in the area. But if you're staying in a hotel like us, because it is off-season, so it is still freezing at night in the desert, Green River or Hanksville are going to be the best hubs for... Mia just found some old underwear. That's disgusting. Take out your trash and take out your underwear, even if you ---- your pants or something. That's disgusting. Anyways, yeah, hubs for coming and doing this are going to be camping in the area or Hanksville or Green River. We're staying in Green River for a few nights. It is February. Should be a beautiful day. It's going to be like 55 and sunny, just a little chilly here for the start. So right off the bat, the views were amazing, and there was canyons and rock faces in every direction. But this hike just gets cooler and cooler because the further you go, the deeper you get into the canyon, the narrower it gets, the more technical it gets, and it just keeps getting more and more beautiful. The rock formations we'll get to are truly out of this world, and it just goes to show no matter how many times we have explored Utah over the years, there are always new places to find and explore. When I found this hike and we were researching it, I saw all these really cool, obviously wavy rocks, kind of holes in the rocks and things like that. Super cool. I didn't see any parts about little drop-offs like that, so it was interesting, but I was able to kind of hold her and just go down safely with her. And going up I think will be much easier, so I'm not so worried about that on the way back. We were just hiking down. You saw the footage. Obviously when you're hiking this, it's just going to be a lot of wash. I think we're a little bit over a mile in. And when you get to that spot, clearly it's a way and part of the trail, it follows you down the wash. The first two, as you saw, we were able to do with Mia even after attempt or two. This one is kind of misleading. It's a much bigger drop than you think it would be, and I don't feel confident that we'd be able to come up, get back this way. So when you're at the top of these chutes, if you're looking this way, the left, don't take, there's not a way, but I did just kind of backtrack and find a workaround. So rather than doing this big drop-off, we're going to go back up around and then into the wash. So when you get to that point, just keep that in mind. So if you get to this point right here, go here, around, and then back into the wash. So we did that little workaround thing, and then we got in this thing that looked almost like the subway chamber in Zion National Park. This hike got so cool, so fast. It was a beautiful drive in. And the beginning of the hike was obviously beautiful, seeing this big rock cliffs and all that stuff. But once you're in it, it is just like a different world. And it's so cool. It's the best time to come to the desert because no one's here. Hotels are so much cheaper. So we love coming to Utah and the Southwest in the spring, fall, winter, no crowds, cheaper, and just kind of have these huge wide open spaces to explore on your own. It's really special. So we've been hiking for a while now. We had a few little technical moves, as you guys saw earlier, and we just approached another one, which we are not able to pass with Mia. So Kev is going to continue on a little bit and just kind of scope what's up there, like 200 feet, and her and I are going to hang back here. It's probably, honestly, like a 10 to 12 foot drop. It's hard to see, but someone put a piece of wood here, and there's a rock kind of hidden that it's kind of like steps for a human, but it's definitely like negative facing. So absolutely no chance. Mia's coming down this. All Trails has this at 4.8 miles round trip, and we've done 2.4 miles. So it's not like we were going to go much further anyways. Absolutely incredible trail. But yeah, I'm just going to go scope for a sec and then make our way back to the car for other adventures today. My fingers have finally defrosted. It was freezing for the whole hike up until the last like 15 minutes, and now I'm just living my best reptile life in the sun, basking. So we made our way mostly out of the canyon, and we've got like one more mile left back to the car. All in all, I think we'll do about five miles. And All Trails says there's three to 400 feet of elevation gain on the way back, but you're just going through a flat wash. It doesn't really feel like there's any elevation gain at all. Super, super epic hike. Feels amazing to be out here back in Utah. We have a few other things planned today. This is the main thing we want to show you for this video, but we will show you some of the other stuff. And just so you know, we are working on a top 10 hikes video for Green River. We have plenty of videos for Moab and plenty of videos from Hanksville, including top 10s for all the parks and areas and stuff like that. But yeah, stay tuned for a top 10 Green River video coming soon.