Glorious Utah, the edge of Bryce

After the Bryce experience Mike and I were looking for something quieter and more remote. So we left the main tourist area of the Canyon and drove down the road that leads to Tropic and eventually Escalante National Monument, to see the very tail end of Bryce, which is out of the main park.

A small parking lot marks the start of the Mossy Cave Trail. Here the high ground has pinnacles but the lower part is smoother as it has been eroded by a stream running down from an artificial water course, the Tropic Ditch hewn by the early Mormon settlers to attempt some sort of irrigation. They were bringing water from the East Sevier River on the Paunsaugunt Plateau, to Tropic a valley town which has its own watercourse, the Paria River, which does not run all year. It took them 3 years to carve out the ditch and even then had to contend with blistering summers and long icy winters as well as flash floods and poison weeds that killed the cattle. There is a small waterfall where the stream runs over some harder dolomitic limestone.

The walk is not long, only around 1/2 mile and ends at the Mossy Cave which has been formed by an underground spring. In the heat of summer this must be a refreshing path and in winter the cave must be more dramatic.