Myatt's Hikes: Ashdown Gorge via Long Hollow

Sep 6, 2012

I will start this report by saying, "What an adventure!" Liz and I decided to hike Ashdown Gorge by starting at the Crystal Spring trail head. This hike requires 2 cars. To get to the trail head, we took hwy 14 out of Cedar City for about 7 miles until we came to a small dirt road on the left - very easily missed. It is just before the new construction due to the landslide which closed the canyon for about a year. Anyway, there is a small parking area there as well as a closed gate which blocks off the dirt road, which is the same road you'll be hiking back on.

We left one car here and continued up canyon to the Crystal Springs trail head. We passed SUU Ranch on the right, Cedar Canyon Campground, and then went through an "S turn" in the road. Right after the "S turn" and 2.5 miles after SUU Ranch, is a small sign on the left hand side of the road indicating the Crystal Springs turn off. From here a pretty well maintained dirt road takes you to the trail head.

We drove for about .7 of a mile until we came to a small clearing at the top of the hill and found ample room to park the car. Not knowing what the rest of the dirt road had in store for my low clearance Honda Accord, and seeing that it went at a pretty steep decline, I decided to park it and hike the road the rest of the way. After hiking it, my car would have been able to make it the remaining .2 miles to the trail head, but I think I'd leave the car where I did if I hike it again.

We started our hike at 10:30, hiked the .2 miles as indicated above to get to the real trail head enclosed by a wooden fence, took some pictures of all the signs, and started on our way. Maybe 100 yards after we started, we came to a fork in the trail. A small post sign indicated that the "trail" went off to the left, although no trail name was given. The main trail that we were on (which was really an over-grown old 4-wheel drive road) wasn't marked at all. In studying my map, I came to the conclusion that the crossing trail was possibly the Blowhard trail.

I was pretty certain that we were supposed to continue straight ahead, following the over-grown 4-wheel drive road through expansive meadows. As we kept going, we came to more wilderness signs and the choice we made to go the way we did was confirmed as being the right one. The terrain turned from meadow to forest, with pine and aspen trees engulfing the trail.

Shortly after the trail took us through the forest, we came to a trail sign staked to a tree indicating that the "Black Canyon Trail" went off to the left and the Crystal Springs trail continued ahead. I looked on all 3 of my maps for the Black Canyon Trail but it isn't found on any of them.

A short time later we came to signs indicating the Blowhard trail junction and the Long Hollow trail junction. At the Long Hollow junction the Crystal Springs trail ends and you can take Long Hollow or Potato Hollow. Both trails eventually end up at the same place, the Long Hollow trail taking about 2 miles more to do it.

We took the Potato Hollow trail. A few hundred yards after the trail split, the Potato Hollow trail takes a sharp switchback up the hill side to the right to leave Long hollow, climb the ridge and drop down into Potato Hollow. Where the switchback is, the trail is faint to non existent. Needless to say, we continued on straight, missing the switchback and continuing down Long Hollow. There was no trail so I took out my map to see what we should be expecting. We blazed our own trail for .3 of a mile until we eventually caught up with the Long Hollow Trail even though, at the time, we assumed it was the Potato Hollow trail. So we followed the trail until we reached the dirt road which both the Long Hollow and Potato Hollow trails reach. The road was 3.5 miles from the crystal springs trail head.

The dirt road as seen from the Long Hollow trail

From here my maps and all the trip reports I read said to turn right on the road and take it for .25 of a mile where a trail will break off on the left and take us down to Ashdown Creek - for where the Potato Hollow trail connects to the road, of course...but we hit the dirt road where the Long Hollow trail connects to it, to the south west..

We hiked for .25 miles on the road, keeping our eyes peeled for any sort of a trail but we saw nothing. About a half mile on the road there was an orange construction tie off to the left with a faint game trail by it so we thought it had to be what we were looking for. But as we walked up to the edge of the road, we realized that this was going to be a very steep and somewhat dangerous decent. We descended the insanely steep slope until I could see the far side of Ashdown Creek and the creek its self about 300 vertical feet below. Also, it looked like sheer cliffs would be welcoming us in just a few more yards - or one more slip - below. I decided it would be best for us to turn around and get back to the road before we made it down to Ashdown Creek a lot faster than we had planned.

We all but army crawled back up the slope and continued on the road for about another .25 of a mile until we came to a large mud puddle blocking the entire road, followed by a closed gate. My map showed that the road ended by the river but there was no telling if it would be a few hundred vertical feet above it or right beside it.

So instead of taking the chance - and getting all muddy - we decided to turn around and follow the small stream that we had been following while we were on the Long Hollow Trail. In fact, the map showed that we would be taking Potato Hollow down to Ashdown Creek. The only problem for us was we had no way of knowing what kind of terrain awaited us.

With the backtrack on the road complete, we were back to where we first left the Long Hollow Trail and crossed the road. We hiked over a trampled barbed wire fence and took to the river. At first the way was manageable as we stayed to the left of the creek on a meadow. We came to the remnants of the base of an old log cabin. As the meadow ended we realized that we were already about 25 feet above the stream so we needed to bite the bullet and get back down to the stream.

The bushwhacking begins...

From here, our adventure began. I have had to bushwhack my way through spots before, but nothing like what I was about to go through. The stream got deeper within the canyon walls and thick brush lined the sides of what small riverbank there was. The going was slow and I was glad I had decided to wear long pants as the brush was relentless in digging into my pants and shirt impeding my progress.

We got to a point where we had made it through the thick brush into a temporary clearing of sorts and just when I though I might take a short breather, I looked up only to see right in front of me wreckage from a plane crash. It was an eerie sight. Liz, being the curious one in the family was already starting up the embankment to investigate. I just knew we were going to see some sort of dead body in amongst the wreckage which, to my amateur eye, looked pretty fresh. The plane had been ripped apart in several places but the big chunks of the plane remained pretty well intact. We saw a number of animal bones in the immediate area but fortunately no human remains. When we got home, we did a little research and found out that to our shock, the plane had crashed there on September 4, 1987 and that of the 3 people on the Cessna, 2 had survived. They had taken off from Cedar City on their way to Page, Arizona when they had encountered turbulence and had to crash land in the small side canyon - Long Hollow. It was a very surreal situation to have stumbled upon this wreckage in the middle of nowhere.

The first waterfall

As we continued on, we heard a deep thumping sound from back behind us around where the wreckage was - the kind of sound you hear when a large dear gallops off after you spook it, only much, much louder. We didn't stop to find out what it was as the whole situation was a bit on the eerie side.

Shortly after the wreckage and a bit more bushwhacking, we came to the first obstacle - the first of 3 waterfalls. It was the easiest of the 3 and only about 8 feet high with gradual drops. We carefully made our way down the mossy rocks and continued fighting our way through the dense foliage.

The second waterfall was a little more challenging and maybe about 10 feet tall. It was at this time that I started to worry about how the river would make it's confluence with Ashdown Creek - would it be a massive waterfall that would force us to turn back and have to climb back up these waterfalls we were coming down? Gulp.

The third waterfall was the toughest. I contemplated turning around but we were already so invested in our route that I tried a little harder to find a suitable way down. We traversed the steep, loose slope to the right and made it around the 30 foot falls.

The end was finally in sight as we could see the far canyon wall of Ashdown Creek. As we got closer, we could even see highway 14 off in the distance. But as I looked up ahead, I noticed that the canyon dropped at a very fast rate as it joined Ashdown Creek. My fears were realized as I looked down ahead and could see the tops of big pine trees that were only tens of yards away.

I knew we couldn't keep following the river at this point. Our only hope would be that the cliff bands above the stream would give us enough room to get around the waterfall and down. I did some reconnaissance around the left hand side while I had Liz stay put until it was determined that it was safe enough to make it down. I determined that we could do it. It would be sketchy in one part and steep for the first little while, but it was doable. And I could finally see Ashdown Creek just about 50 vertical feet below us!

The Rattlesnake under the branches

We slowly and carefully made our way down the steep slope until we finally were down in the Ashdown Creek bed. The last mile or so of bushwhacking had taken us just as long as the first 5 miles of the hike. We turned to go up stream to see if we could find the spot where the stream that we had been following flowed into Ashdown Creek, but just as I was about to step over a log, a faint but unmistakable rattle convinced me to stop in my tracks. I looked down and spotted a fairly large rattle snake about 3 feet away but, fortunately for me, on the other side of a large log. I snapped a quick picture and decided that maybe it was time to head back to the car and end our adventure.

I was hoping to enter Ashdown Creek above the narrow gorge that I had read about but we came in below it. The canyon was pretty, though, and the next little part of the hike, wading through ankle deep water, was somewhat reminiscent of my hikes through Kanarra Creek, Water Canyon and the Narrows.

The final bit of the hike

The landslide that closed highway 14 also managed to disrupt the natural flow of the creek and the last little bit was a bit tedious climbing over boulders and through trees (once again) to make it back. We came to a couple of man made waterways which we bypassed on the right. After the second waterway, the dirt road where we parked our first car appeared and the going from there was easy.

All told, the hike was only 7.9 miles and took us 4 hours and 50 minutes. This hike would definitely not be for someone afraid to get scratched or bruised up. Also because the Long Hollow trail disappears in spots, a good map and a knowledge of how to read it would be advisable. I hope to get back there to try to figure out the correct way to make it down to the river.

The large parking area at the trail head. We probably could have drove our car to this point but decided to leave it at the top of the hill.

Signage at the trail head.

This is the sign that confused us just a hundred yards into the hike. The Crystal Springs trail doesn't follow the "trail" to the left. It follows the unmarked 4-wheel track that continues to the right.