Exploring Snow Canyon: Essential Tips for Hiking in Warm Weather

What if you could explore one of Utah's hidden gems while learning invaluable tips for hiking in warm weather? Join me, Craig the Natural Medic, on an awe-inspiring hike through Snow Canyon State Park's Scout Cave Trail. This six-mile journey takes you through vivid red cliffs, mesmerizing black lava fields, and the rich desert vegetation that thrives in this unique landscape. Along the way, you'll discover the fascinating flora and fauna, including blooming hedgehog cacti and a colony of burrowing bees that make this ecosystem come alive.

As we navigate this breathtaking terrain, I share essential strategies for staying cool and protected from the sun. From the best times to hike to the gear that can make your adventure more comfortable, you'll learn how a wide-brimmed hat, a Shimag, and a sun hoodie can be your best friends on a sunny trail. So, lace up your boots, grab your sunscreen, and get ready for an unforgettable adventure in Snow Canyon State Park that blends practical hiking tips with the serene beauty of Utah's desert landscapes.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, it's Craig the Natural Medic. I'm in Utah on this particular trip. I'm in Snow Canyon State Park and if you'll pan over here a little bit, you can see it's very red, rocky, but there's also some black lava over there. Snow Canyon has a lot of trails. It's a pretty good size state park. One we're going to do today is called scout cave. It's a six mile round trip, moderate. This goes this way.

Speaker 1: 0:30

And why don't you follow me through the desert? If you ever played the game, the floor is lava. Yep, everything we're seeing out here is lava. There's a lot of it, right? So there's a lot of stuff that came up under the ground at one point in the past and you got your typical desert vegetation out here Apricot, milo, that's one right there. Your bigger bushes that look like brushes to me, those are creosote bushes. There was a cactus I just saw, but I lost it already. But there's some nice blooming cactus.

Speaker 1: 1:11

This is late April. Today's the last day of April of 2024. And I'm hiking this. Pretty interesting, pretty interesting indeed. Here is some more lava, some liquid, hot magma coming through. Then you have the beautiful red cliffs up here, really cool. Yeah, so this is a cactus, obviously, but it's blooming, isn't that beautiful? Nice views of the red rocks, hedgehog cactus, some little bugs are going in and out of it, getting a little bit of pollen End of April 2024, so it's blooming and over there would be Johnson Canyon, which is currently closed due to a bird that they're trying to protect, so you can't go in there right now, not until September, the 15th.

Speaker 1: 2:08

So I don't know what I'm looking at exactly, but these are bees. If somebody watching this can leave a comment as to what these are. I don't know, but it's a bunch of little bees that burrow in these little shallow little tubes in the dirt sand, whatever, and they don't appear to be harmful or anything, but they sure are interesting, hey, so I'm about a mile into the trail to scout cave. I wanted to talk to you for a minute about that rock is hot, about warmer weather or hot weather, hiking. It's late April right now in the St George area, which is southwestern Utah, it's going to get hot out here. So, one of the things you can do, try to go in the early morning. We started in the afternoon, but it's not so hot today. It's only supposed to be in the 80s when it gets really hot. Try to go early in the day if possible. Hike down in here in the canyon it's a little bit breezy, so not too bad.

Speaker 1: 3:09

You'll notice I have a wide brimmed hat. This is a hat from Mission. I believe I got it at some kind of discount store. I think you can get them at Walmart. You can get them on Amazon. It's a nice wide brim, well-vented hat. Protects me from the sun. As you can see, there is no shade out here. There's a few trees over here by the creek, but for the most part it's pretty sunny out here. No shade On my neck. I have two things going on. I have my Shimag, which can be configured in a whole bunch of different setups. I'll do a video on that in the near future about that and I have my Buff. Good thing about either one of those you can wet those and as long as they're on your neck, they'll provide some cooling because the carotid arteries which go up in this little notch in your neck here up to your brain, that helps with some cooling.

Speaker 1: 3:58

The shirt I have on is from belief, which is an amazon brand as far as I know. It's a sun hoodie. It's got thumb holes if I really want to have protection. I can put my hand, like that covers it up and it's like a wicking material. But also it provides SPF for my skin so I don't get too hot. And it actually has a hood too. I can pull up my hood if I want to have more protection on my ears and the back of my neck and stuff like that. But that's being taken care of right now by the Shimog and the Buff Convertible pants, which I normally wear when I'm hiking pretty much 365 days out of the year, even 366 when there's a leap year like this year Because they are lightweight, they're flexible, they're breathable and if I get too hot I can zip them off. But this provides more protection Not really a danger of ticks out here or anything that's going to jump on you insect-wise, but there's a lot of things that try to poke you out here. So you want to have some good protection on your legs Down here on the bottom show a little leg. I've got just Merrell hiking socks, which are a I believe, a wool acrylic blend, and I have Salomon Speedcross 4s, which I've had for many years now. If you've been watching my videos, you've probably seen these in other videos and they are trail runners so they have a nice aggressive tread. But they're lightweight and breathable and if by chance it's not very likely it's going to rain today, they will dry very quickly if they get wet. Additionally, I have water with me, I have other devices that I can make shade with, and so it's just a good idea to be prepared when you come out here to the desert to do your hiking.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Pretty little butterfly Just climbed this big hill here on the steps. Might be a little interesting going down. I could see how you could trip and fall and just face plant down the whole hill Behind me, scout Cave, rather, it is right up there. So now I'm at the end of the trail at Scout Cave, and Scout Cave is a sandstone cave here in Snow Canyon. You can see it's not a cave where you would see formations and stuff Like Carlsbad or something like that. That's a different type of cave, but you can definitely see there's lots of interesting little. I would call those wacos. Those are just little holes where the rock has eroded away from wind or water or both. It's not a very big cave, maybe the size of an average house or so total. It's a little bit of a passageway back there. Supposedly people canyoneer down into this little crevice right there. People canyoneer into that. So pretty well, pretty wild.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Some pictures here ceiling probably maximum, I would say about 50 feet or so up here. I don't know how far that is offhand up up there, but I guess they get on top of the rock and then they come down to that crack and I would say it's a good 125, 150 feet would be my guess. I'm not sure, but that's pretty wild. And when you come out here, when you come out here, this is where you would see pretty much the whole valley right here on this side. A lot of that black lava is over there, on the opposite side from those houses. There's some more trail over here and then over here there's a little bit of a pathway up into this little crack. Can't really go very far up in there, I don't think. Let's see what we can do. There's another cave over there. It looks like that's cool. Anyway, probably going to head back and try to do some more of Snow Canyon.

Speaker 1: 8:13

Alright, back from the Scout Cave. Hike Took about 2 hours, 45, including grabbing an earth cache, geocache round trip 4.38. So it's a little bit different than say this, the six Miles, I don't know where my sunglasses are. So this rock, just to tell you, the black rock is Called basalt and what it is is liquid magma from the mat, from the mantle, and it just screwed it up through the earth and that's how it happened and usually has this kind of a blackish gray color, and that's a pretty cool thing to see. One thing I definitely recommend if you're coming out here I forgot to mention wear sunglasses, because that's good to keep keep your eyes a little more healthy and it gets bright out here and that that can be overall long-term bad to your eyes, isn't that right? Anyway, gonna scoot down here to some other parts of snow canyon, but until next time, thumbs up. If you like the video, leave a comment below and I will see you on the trail.