I’m in love with the southwest corner of Utah in wintertime when it’s dark and gray in the PNW and I’m spiraling into my yearly bout of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Of course, I love the entire lower half of Utah, but in winter the SW corner is my favorite. The winter light in the desert is amazing, and even though it’s often freezing, there is sunshine and blue sky and it fills my heart up to full. While I re-visit many of my favorite places while there every winter, we explored some new places in 2024.
Here are a few new places we discovered in 2024:
Cathedral Gorge State Park, NV
Sandstone Mountain
The Vortex
beyond Scout Lookout on West Rim Trail, Zion NP
new areas of Yant Flat / Candy Cliffs
Elephant Arch
>>> Please see each individual post for more info and photos!
You can also see hikes in this area from previous years HERE.
I highly recommend the book Favorite Hikes In & Around Saint George by Bo Beck and Jeremy J. Gorzalski for exploring this area.
As different as it possibly gets, on the flight from SEA to LAS, we were fortunate to be able to do an extremely close fly-by of my beautiful mountain, Mt. Rainier. Seeing my wilderness love so up close from this perspective took my breath away! The river valley is created by the White River, which flows from the Emmons Glacier below the Sunrise area.
