"Buried Treasure" in the desert

The southern Utah desert (and the northern for that matter) are chock full of what I call "buried treasure." It's not really buried, but on the surface and from a distance you just see hot, dry, dusty desert. But as soon as you take the time to enter a canyon you find playgrounds, lush greenery, and/or a water paradise. It's the kind of place that corporations try to model their waterparks after. But it's real and it's not full of chlorine and the smell of people frying their skin.


So here I am again, so fortunate to shoot photos in this beautiful environment.

Here is the obligatory self portrait (and I am pretty sure Hannah and Kyle are shooting their own self portrait in the background!)




A beautiful waterfall (never jump! A broken ankle in a place like this is the worst idea ever). We had a nice little corridor to scoot around to the side.

It's amazing to think about the forces of nature that created this waterfall. I'm pretty sure it's just a pile of debris that was flushed down in a flash flood and got stuck at this extra skinny corridor with sediment and more debris piling in behind it until the top leveled off. I could be wrong though... I'm no scientist. ;)

Still hiking on day one. We did have a small panic in the name of flash flood danger. The danger rating was low, but we heard thunder just after our lunch break, and then a few raindrops, so we decided to book it straight to camp (at the end of a good section with many "safe" places of high ground).





A nice spacious campsite for our group of 9.









We were hoping the water level would be high enough to float our packs on day two, or possibly float ourselves so we brought some super cheap tubes along for fun. It was a float-failure for most of us, but who cares, the scenery was AMAZING and the bright green donut colors just pop so nicely in the relative dark at the bottom of this canyon.


Although Hannah did find the right combo for the ultimate "lazy" river set-up. Nice view from there!