Recap of the Capitol Reef Mom Retreat

Welp, it’s official!

The first ever Adventures After Kids mom retreat is done! I can’t speak for everyone in the group, but personally, I had an AMAZING time. As I sit here basking in the afterglow of the trip it is easy to see why the retreat was such a success. It wasn’t because of my planning and coordination efforts. No, it was all to do with the power that comes from spending quality time with incredible women.

In this post, I will do my best to describe what we did and saw, but truth be told – you had to be there. My hope with this blog post is to not only reminisce on the epic adventure we shared but also to help those of you who weren’t there to see how much fun adventuring with moms can be. I also plan to share some helpful tips if you decide you would like to take a trip to Capitol Reef National Park. Capitol Reef is one of Utah’s less visited national parks, but please don’t underestimate it! This is my third visit within the last three years and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite destinations.

Day One

The first day of our trip was a travel day. We had moms join us from Utah, New Mexico, New York, and California. After airport pickups and carpool meetups, we made the long drive to our beautiful Airbnb. Truth be told, this Airbnb was half the reason I chose Capitol Reef National Park as a destination for my first retreat. You could say it was love at first sight. Now having been there I am a little hesitant to share it with others, for fear of it being booked the next time I want to use it. I am not exaggerating when I say it was everything I had hoped for and more!

We stayed in the Sage House in beautiful Torrey, Utah. Not only was it affordable, but it easily fit 14 people, and boasted incredible views. It also felt remote in a good way. While there were two other homes in the same little culdasac we never saw another soul. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Tip: If you are looking for a smaller location, you can rent the Pinyon House or Juniper House next door which do not have a basement and only house 6 guests comfortably or 8 if two people are willing to sleep on a pullout couch. Or if you are looking to do an epic family reunion you could look into renting all three houses: Sage, Pinyon, and Juniper House. The three houses together would comfortably house 26 people if they are willing to share beds or 30 people if 4 people are willing to sleep on pullout couches.

After getting settled into our rooms we grabbed a quick dinner at Capitol Burger, a local food truck. They have amazing burgers, as you can see from their tasty menu below. They were also able to accommodate our vegetarian and gluten-free guests, which is a home run in my book. If you are headed down there I would definitely recommend checking them out. You can find out where they are parked by checking their Facebook page.

To end the evening we made a quick trip into the park where we explored Goosenecks Overlook. From our high vantage point, we were able to see Sulphur Creek – our planned destination for day two. With the recent rainfall, it more closely resembled chocolate milk than a creek. We then headed over to Sunset Point to enjoy the last little bit of sunlight on the red cliffs of Capitol Reef. After soaking up every last little bit of fading scenery, we carefully picked our way back to the parking lot, through the descending darkness and the distant flicker of lightning.

Goosenecks Overlook: 0.4 miles round trip

Sunset Point: 0.7 miles round trip

Day Two

On the morning of our second day, we woke bright and early. With rain in the forecast, we wanted to get to the visitor center right when it opened at 8 am. Not only does the Capitol Reef Visitor Center turn into a zoo as the day progresses but we wanted to make sure we could take advantage of any options available to us depending on weather. While getting up early on a “retreat” might seem counterintuitive, we were blessed with a lovely sunrise.

Amazingly enough, we had a very motivated group of women with us and all 13 were ready and out of the house around 7:40 am. We reached the visitor center right when it opened and as we supposed, the park rangers advised us against doing Sulphur Creek due to a 70% chance of rain.

Tip: Sulphur Creek is not safe to do if there is a chance of rain. A good portion of it runs through a slot canyon and it is usually rainfall upstream that causes flash flooding. The park rangers at Capitol Reef refer to the National Weather Service for weather forecasts. The challenge with this site is it does not give you an hour-by-hour forecast. If you are thinking about hiking Sulphur Creek I would recommend referencing multiple weather sites. Another good weather page to reference (which was referred to me by our canyoneering guides) is Weather Underground. If the site you are using does not have a forecast for Capitol Reef then use Torrey, Utah as the location.

So we opted for plan B

We started our day by hiking Hickman Bridge. Hickman Bridge is a very popular hike, is safe to do when rain is threatening, and is great for all ages. The hike is 1.7 miles round trip with 416 feet of elevation gain and ends with a spectacular view of a natural bridge. This trail can get busy so if you want to check it out, try and hike it first thing in the morning or towards the end of the day. It is also typically less crowded mid-week than on weekends.

After Hickman Bridge, we headed to the Gifford Homestead with a quick stop at the petroglyphs. The petroglyph trail is less than a mile west of the Hickman Bridge trailhead and consists of about 0.3 miles of boardwalk that you can stroll. It is definitely worth a visit. The petroglyphs were made by the ancient Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan people dating back to 600-1300 AD.

The Gifford Homestead is also worth a visit. It’s one of the last relics in the area to remind visitors of the farming community that once occupied Fruita. The homestead has had a variety of owners, with the last owner being Dewey Gifford and his family. They lived on the homestead from 1928 until 1969 when Dewey and his wife Nell sold their home and land to the National Park Service. Not only is it beautiful to see the old home and barn, but there you can also buy jams, jellies, locally-made fruit pies, and homemade ice cream. As you can imagine the fruit pies were top of mind when we chose to head there.

Capitol Reef National Park is unique in that it has fruit orchards within its boundaries. These orchards are evident remnants of the first settlers of the area, Mormon pioneers. Many varieties of the heirloom fruit can be found in Capitol Reef’s historic orchards. The park grows apples, plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, and pears. If you would like to try some fresh pie, make sure to visit the Gifford House from March 14 (Pi Day) to late November. The pies sell out quickly so it is ideal to arrive a little before lunchtime if you hope to get one.

There is also an opportunity to see the trees in bloom or to pick some fruit to take home. Below is a schedule if you would like to visit during one of those times of the year.

Flowering
Apricots: early March to mid-April
Peaches: late March to late April
Pears: late March to early May
Apples: early April to early May

Harvest
Apricots: late June to mid-July
Peaches: late July to early September
Pears: early August to early September
Apples: mid-August to mid-October

Depending on how cold (or warm) winters are, blossom and harvest times can vary up to a few weeks earlier or later than the ranges given above. For updated fruit blossom and harvest times, call the park’s information line at (435) 425-3791. After the introduction, press #1 for visitor information, and then press #5 for the fruit hotline. At the time of writing this post, you can get fruit from the orchards for $2 per lb.

Note: Our canyoneering guide told us that at the back of the peach orchard, there is a cave that has petroglyphs in it. You can only access it when the orchard is open.

Scenic Drive

After lunch, we headed to the only part of the park that requires an entrance fee: The Scenic Drive. It is $20 per car and can be paid with cash at the entrance. The Scenic Drive is 7.9 miles long with the option to take two dirt spurs into the Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge. If you have the opportunity to do the scenic drive make sure to allot about an hour and a half round trip to see everything. There are little pull-offs along the way, where you can get out and take pictures. Just be aware that the dirt spurs and the scenic drive can be closed due to snow, ice, mud, or flash floods. It is best to call the visitor center before heading there. When we were there the Grand Wash and Capitol Gorge were closed – which was a major bummer.

After our drive, everyone was decidedly sleepy (too much pie if you ask me) so we decided to do one last hike for the day: Cohab Canyon. Cohab Canyon is a 3-mile out-and-back trail with 793 feet gain in elevation; however, you can do it one way, which is what we chose to do. We left one car at the Hickman Bridge trailhead and the other two cars in the parking lot across from the Gifford Homestead. This allowed us to begin our hike at the Gifford Homestead and end our hike at the Hickman Bridge trailhead. Just as we began our hike, the clouds began to burn off, rewarding us with brilliant blue skies. Not only was the trail and scenery beautiful, but we also enjoyed meeting fellow hikers. Our favorite was Manny, from Colorado, who was kind enough to take our group’s picture.

After two hikes, one beautiful drive, and a lot of pie we were ready to head back to the Airbnb. Given that we had missed the sunset the day before, we decided to try again. So we quickly cleaned up (well as quickly as 13 women can when there are only 3 bathrooms) and headed to an early dinner. Our restaurant of choice was the Rim Rock Restaurant (not to be confused with the Rim Rock Patio). The staff was friendly and accommodating, there were beautiful views from the windows, and there seemed to be a little bit of something on the menu for everyone. I ordered the ribeye steak with mashed potatoes and it was delicious. As we concluded our meal we could see from the windows that the sun was setting. So we put the pedal to the metal and made it out to Goosenecks Overlook, just in time to catch a beautiful rainbow and the last rays of the sunset.

By the time we made it back to our Airbnb, everyone was ready for bed…but not before we had the privilege of being entertained by the famous Jackie K. That girl’s got mad skills!

Day Three

By the morning of day three I can say with confidence that our little rag-tag group of 13 women had completely jelled…just in time for our capstone event – canyoneering. For those of you not familiar with the term canyoneering, it is an outdoor activity that combines hiking, rappelling, and sometimes swimming (depending on the canyon and time of year). Canyoneering in essence allows you to explore an area that you otherwise couldn’t explore without technical equipment.

For our canyoneering outing, we did Pete’s Dragon which consisted of a 3+ mile hike and 5 technical rappels. To help us with our little adventure I hired Capitol Reef Adventure Company. This company and its guides are some of the best I have ever worked with! They are super conscientious about safety, happy to explain everything they are doing, and are just generally fun people to be around. We had a blast with our two guides, Tim and Billy. They held up well under our endless teasing and barrage of questions and shared quite a few laughs with us. Billy even managed to hold up under an intense staring contest with one of our guests when she used her mom vision to search his soul and make sure he wasn’t going to let her die! If that isn’t skill, I don’t know what is!

The hike up to the canyon was a bit of a dozy. Our last day was nice and sunny which made for a toasty hike. The hike was further complicated by the fact that a flash flood had come through that area and wiped out half the trail. We had to get creative and do a little bushwacking to get where we needed to go.

While Pete’s Dragon wasn’t located far from Capitol Reef National Park (about 20 miles away) the landscape was quite a bit different. The sagebrush was blooming, dotting the hillside with bright yellow and the green vegetation popped against the red rocks.

In preparing for this trip I went down to Capitol Reef to do a route with the canyoneering guides. I wanted to ask them some questions and make sure they weren’t sketchy. I remember asking Tim if Pete’s Dragon was as awe-inspiring as Cassidy Arch. He said it would be. I will admit I was a bit skeptical, but having now done Pete’s Dragon I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is breathtaking! Hiking through country like that feeds my soul!

After 3 hot, sweaty miles we made it to the top of our route. There we took our time to rest and eat some snacks while Tim and Billy set up the first rappel. Knowing there would be water in the canyon we all tried to enjoy the warm sun, before facing the cold water and continual shade of the canyon.

First Rappel

There are 5 total rappels in Pete’s Dragon. The first rappel was about 40 feet, with a nice, easy approach. One of the tricky parts about canyoneering is trusting your harness and leaning back into it. Our natural tendency is to lean forward and cling to the rope as if our life depends on it – which technically…it does. The nice thing about the first rappel is that you aren’t having to step backward off a cliff. The cliff slowly slops downward allowing you to ease into the rappel and get used to the feel of your harness supporting you. Everyone did awesome on the rappel. There was one part of the rappel which is called the shin splitter. Unfortunately, Candace was our lucky one to experience it firsthand. Ouch! But she was a trooper and once we got her bandaged up – she was good to go!

Second Rappel

The second rappel was an interesting one. Instead of sitting in our harness and walking backward down it, Billy belayed us (that is a fancy word for “lowered” us – in rock climbing lingo) from the top and we had to slide down on our butts. The overall rappel wasn’t long (about 20 feet), but it was a little bit unnerving and overall hilarious to try and navigate that rappel with some semblance of grace. The end result was usually, the woman rappelling letting out a mixture of staccato screams and laughs, while the onlookers found themselves laughing so hard that they were afraid they were going to pee their pants. To further complicate things, this rappel was into water. Dark mirky water, the kind of water where you put your foot down, and down, and down until you are unsure if you ever are going to reach the bottom. If you would like to see a video of this rappel, you can see a clip of it on my Instagram page HERE.

Third Rappel

The third rappel was about 40 feet and had what we liked to call a “weeee” component. This meant that you would start down the rappel, and then about 5 feet into it, the rope would pull you to the other canyon wall, causing you to swing to the right. It was interesting in the least to hear what would come out of people’s mouths when they got to that section. Personally, I don’t love swinging when I am rappelling so I believe something to the likes of “argh” came out of my mouth when I got to that section. Not very ladylike, but what can you do?! This rappel also had water at the bottom of it, which left everyone feeling a bit chilled.

Fourth Rappel

The fourth rappel was about 60 feet into a deep pool of water. The view from the fourth rappel was breathtaking. Not only could you see out into where the canyon opened up, but you could also clearly see the fifth and final rappel. The way the canyon is shaped in that area, there was a cool breeze coming up to the top of that rappel – slowly turning Tim, our guide, into an icicle. Being wet and in the shade, the breeze was just the motivation everyone needed to get through the last two rappels so they could get back into the sun.

The approach to the fourth rappel required what I like to call the “bum scoot”. For those of you who don’t know, that is a technical canyoneering term. It is used to describe when you have to sit on the top of a rappel and then scoot your butt over until you scoot right off the rock. It is a very difficult move to master 😉 In the case of the fourth rappel, you had to perform the bum scoot so you could get over the top rock and plant your feet onto the adjacent wall.

With everyone feeling cold, there was a lot of strategizing amongst the group on how to avoid getting wet at the bottom. Some used the leg assist which is where someone would offer their leg to pull the person coming off the rappel to higher ground, so as to avoid the water. This was the preferred method until poor Cindy lost her balance and fell face-first into the water. After that, there was the booty shorts approach. This is where the person coming off the rappel would stand in a dry spot, hoist their shorts as high as they would go, and then wade through the water. This approach worked for some, but not others. It really depended on how stretchy your shorts were and how obscenely high you could get them. And the third and final method was the total surrender. This is where the person coming down knew they were already wet and simply waded waist-deep through the deep pool at the end of the rappel until they could get to higher ground.

Fifth Rappel

The fifth rappel was the longest one of the day at just under 100 feet in length. It was fairly straightforward with sweeping views of the canyon. Once everyone was down and we had some pictures taken (with Billy posing in the background for us – of course) we made the hike out. Once again the hike out was changed and a bit more challenging due to damage done in the area by a flash flood. You could see where the hillside had been torn apart by large amounts of water. Through some ingenuity and creative problem solving we were able to pick our way through the landscape and finally arrive back at the Sunglow Campground which, to many people’s great relief, had running water and flush toilets.

With such a large group, and the added complexity of the destroyed hiking trails we didn’t finish the canyon until closer to 5 pm.

This made for a long, tiring drive home. Next time we will definitely be staying an extra night to recover.

Additional Capitol Reef Tips

Some additional places you may want to explore on a trip to Capitol Reef are:

• Lower Spring Canyon
• Pleasant Creek
• Cassidy Arch
• Frying Pan Trail
• The Golden Throne

Some additional restaurant recommendations are:

• The Hunt and Gather
• Autentico Street Tacos
• The Wild Rabbit
• The Sweet Grass

So Fun!

Hopefully, you found this blog post interesting, helpful, motivating, or all of the above. If you missed out on attending this retreat, please consider joining us next year. I LOVED our trip to Capitol Reef so much I am planning another retreat for the near future. If you want a chance to attend then make sure to sign up for my newsletter HERE. I open up enrollment to my email list a week before everyone else and spots will be limited.

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