Historic Babylon and Little Purgatory

With the weather warming up, it was a perfect opportunity for another hike. I again contacted my friend, Dan Lackey, who has great knowledge of many local hikes to see if he was up for a hike. We decided on the day and he picked the hike and off we went.
To get to the trail head, go through the town of leads a little to the north and take a right (west) on a dirt road called Babylon Road (though there was not a street sign, there was a small sign on the right side of the street before the turn off signaling that Babylon trail head was to the right. The first portion of the road is well maintained and travels past a few houses. Soon past the houses, the road becomes much more rough and would be difficult to traverse with a passenger car.

The drive in was fun and scenic. The different perspective – looking back at the Sky Mountain Golf Course from the other side of the big red reef – made for a fun change of scenery. The road ends just past an old silver mill by the Virgin River, after about 5 miles. We parked at the old structures to inspect and explore them. After a brief time, we decided to head back up the trail where we saw a sign for the Historic Babylon Trail head. We went through the fence and made our way through the large rock formations that contain some Indian Petroglyphs, combined with more modern vandalism, on the left side as you are hiking in. The trail crossed a small stream about a half dozen times until it finally found it's way to a desert meadow. The contrast between the soil, which had a purple hue to it, and the surrounding vegetation, which was just beginning to come into bloom in a light green, was spectacular.

A short time later we saw a farmers field in the distance and it became apparent that the trail made it's way right up to the field and then turned left. It was at this point where, for the first time, we encountered our first section of substantial elevation gain. The trail takes you up an inviting drainage as it intersects the Little Purgatory trail just before the 3 mile mark. At the junction, a trail sign marked the beginning of the Little Purgatory Trail. We continued to gain a little more elevation until it was finally apparent that we were about as high as we could get. From here, the highpoint at about 3700 feet, we had great views in all directions – but especially back to the town of Hurricane where we looked down on Sky Mountain, and had great views of Molly's Nipple and Sullivan Knoll.

The descent was made via long switchbacks. As we started our descent and looked down on the Babylon trail we had just been on minutes before, we both remarked on how we never expected the route to take us up to where we ended up. I also realized because of the switchbacks and the spectacular views, I was glad we had done the hike the way we had – by taking the Historic Babylon trail first to the Little Purgatory trail instead of the other way around.




For the most part the trail was easy to follow, although there were a couple of spots where it became faint. There were also a few spots on the Little Purgatory trail where cairns were used to mark the way. In total, we hiked for 5.7 miles in about 2.5 hours. It was a easy hike with a few good scenic views. Definitely a good warm up hike for what we have planned later on this year!