Slickhorn Canyon

We headed out to Slickhorn Canyon on Cedar Mesa to do a short exploratory hike. Rain was predicted to come around noon, so we wanted to be off the trail and red dirt roads before then. We would do a 4.5 mile round trip with about 300 ft of overall gain. We didn't see any other hikers on the trail or cars on this road.
We started at Access road #1 to enter Slickhorn Canyon in the first fork.

The beginning of this wash is a very gentle decent.

There are some interesting boulders to hike under

and between

beautiful sandstone walls

lovely swirling patterns in the sandstone

some large rock formations

We followed the cairns up the east side of the canyon to get around the very large and steep pour out in the canyon.

We weren't sure where the steep switchbacks leading back down into the canyon were

Because of the impending rain and our turn around time, we left before descending down into this portion of the canyon.
I hope to return one day to hike further down into this gorgeous canyon.

We decided to stay on the bottom of the wash on our hike back out. We found some water holes

and hiked up the easier pour offs

















Some of the wildflowers and flora we saw this morning: