Tuesday 3rd October 2017 We drove east from Las Vegas stopping off overnight at Snow Canyon State Park and then onto the towns of Hildale/Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border. Our aim was to do a two day loop hike up Water canyon onto the slickrock plateau of Canaan Mountain,camp and explore a bit before returning down Squirrel creek back to the car- map here.
We hiked up the steep trail in Water Canyon with good flowing water (as you might expect) before the trail zig-zagged upwards steeply west of the canyon floor to ‘top rock’ – a small platform overlooking the canyons. This is a superb section of hiking taking an improbable line out of the canyon and onto the rim. From there we followed slick rock drainages holding good pothole water to the summit ridge of Canaan Mountain in a beautiful area called the White Domes.
We camped near here under a full moon and the next day meandered amongst the domes enjoying the slow creep of the morning sun glancing over the slick rock. Leaving our gear at the camp, we hiked west on an old stock trail with a mix of slickrock and deep sand amidst ponderosas with views north to Zion National Park.
On return to White Domes we collected up the camping gear and followed the stock trail east through some deep sand patches. A drop down into a scooped basin on the purest of slick rock was amazing though and we crossed the head of Water canyon, over a col, then gradually on more slick rock towards Squirrel creek. This was a wonderful, traverse. At the head of Squirrel creek we crossed a heavier used trail and turned down into the canyon with its lush greenery created from a flowing spring source. A jeep trail at the bottom made for easy walking via Short creek back down to the trailhead where our vehicle was now frying in the afternoon sun!
Squirrel and Short creek are part of an alternate of the Hayduke trail and Water canyon could be used as a further alternate to the Hayduke providing some extra stunning scenery at the cost of maybe 2-3 additional hours if you had spare energy!
You could also hike from the Water canyon trailhead north all the way over Canaan mountain to near Rockville on Highway 9 (which goes into Zion national park) as described in the guidebook ‘Favorite hikes in & around Zion National Park’.
A wee walk 