Origins: Mowhawk Mesa

An interesting thing happened to me recently: I have in my possession the very first cache I found. I finally made it back to that "first time": Mowhawk Mesa, Crack in the Earth Cache (note it's not an "earthcache"- there's a space between the words). I even picked up a souvineer: the cache itself. As it turned out, the container has been retaining water. While it doesn't rain too much here, it does every so often. When that happens, water fills up in the container. It's actually a nice container with no holes in it. The lid just isn't water-sealed, and looks like it can come off easily (not to mention the fact that we found the container with the lid off).

It was nice being in the area again. It's not just that it's a really nice area (although it is- amazing) with some really cool geologic features (going through a slot canyon is quite the adventure). It's just something about that "first cache" that creates something special about the place.

I'm just glad I was able to actually replace the cache. It's in a less interesting container (a standard ammo can), but at least it won't retain water when it rains in a few months.

Mowhawk Mesa, alone is interesting in just the way it's shaped. It's not a very big mesa (maybe 10 feet by 100 feet- max); although from one side, it is steep.

The big draw to the area is the slot canyon. A slot canyon is essentially a very narrow and deep canyon. It's probably only 5 feet wide- which means it's just barely big enough to walk through, and especially difficult if you have a backpack on or are carrying anything (like the original cache container). It's full of lots of turns, making it difficult to get through.

In these slot canyons, it's also rather dark. Just because of how deep they are (50+ feet) and how narrow they are, sunlight doesn't get in so well. That makes the insides of these canyons dark and (literally) cool.

There are also some drop-offs that are fun to try and get around. In the slot canyon I was in, it emptied into a bigger one. My friend and I thought long and hard about whether to try and drop down or go a long way around. If we did that, it'd mean going back through the slot canyon up over a few hills, and then trying to find a way into the bigger canyon... although we, at the time, didn't know if that bigger canyon would also have some drop-offs. We finally decided to do it. It was about a 10-foot drop-off to the bottom of a semi-circular ledge, followed by another 5-foot into the bigger canyon. Probably not the best idea to actually go down that. We made it out without injury, however.