Our original plans were to head down a technical descent of Tatahatso canyon but when we woke up in the morning, the temperature was reading 16 degrees F. This is a bit cold and if something were to happen in the canyon under those conditions at night, it could have been fatal.

Mark Arnold, Jerry, James Edwards, and I opted to make the best of the weekend and head out to Jackass canyon.

Since we had Navajo Permits and Jackass canyon is a Navajo Canyon, we utilized out permits and headed over to jackass canyon.

This canyon was far easier than the commitments of tatahatso canyon but it was a nice charming little stroll through the canyon to the river.

this canyon is rated as a 2AII which means that we left our ropes and just had a nice hike down to the river.

The canyon was really straightforward and had some great walking corridors through over half of the canyon.

There is a north and south fork to the canyon that both connect back to the parking lot so we came down the south fork and came back up the north fork. 

There is a short narrow corridor that provides some nice views that was accompanied by a fixed line of rope to downlcimb.

After this section opened back up and there were some boulder hoping challenges to get around which was not all that bad.

This could be due to the lack of weight in our packs.

 

The river could be heard in the distance and about a half hour of boulder hopping turned into some nice wash walking and a faint trail to the river formed.

We made it to the trail fairly quickly and immediately noticed where the water line was from the recent water release that occurred in the Colorado river. 

Jackass canyon is a pretty heavily traveled canyon, especially for the Navajo fisherman that come down to the river to fish for the weekend. 

After a short break we started our hike out and headed through the north fork of the canyon which was short but pretty nice in comparison to the south fork.

We made the best of the half day as the sun started to heat up the desert and the ice started to thaw.

It was also nice to see jackass and view badger canyon on the other side of the river.