Last week I posted about a hike through Wire Pass. Later that day we took another, easier nearby hike to the Toadstool Hoodoos in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
This image is from the first time I visited the area in November 2016. The sunny day lit up the colorful white, red and yellow Entrada sandstone. You can also see the harder caprock Dakota sandstone in the center atop one toadstool and a collection on the top cliff. The softer Entrada erodes away while the caprock becomes balanced above creating the toadstools or hoodoos.
This trail is just off U.S. 89 between Kanab, Utah and Paige, Arizona. Last week, I mentioned the lottery for the Wave hike. In January 2020, we sat in the BLM ranger office in Kanab where they used to do the lottery like picking Bingo number balls out of roller bin. (Today, it’s all on-line and electronic.) After losing (again) we drove that very cold morning to the Toadstools. As we got closer, with clear blue sky above, a thick cloud lay low on the horizon. We drove into the heavy fog shortly before the trailhead. Eerie hoarfrost covered the few desert plants.
And lay tight on the ground.
This January, storm clouds gathered that would result in a big snowfall the next day which diverted our planned travel, but made for dramatic skies on this visit.
I’d not noticed the toadstools pictured above on my prior visits; they are a couple hundred feet above the ones you hike to. I spotted them further back on the hike and got this image using a long lens. Some millennium in the future this may be eroded down after the others disappear. These were above the rock layer you see in the image below.
As I was working on this post, an apt Paul Simon song played. It seemed he sang it a bit differently:
“I’d say now, hoodoo, hoodoo you think you’re fooling? . . .
My mama loves me, she loves me
She get down on her knees and hug me
Like she love me like a rock.”
Was this creature singing that song?
Or maybe I was.
