Fair 37° F

Home > Archive > Mar 22, 2007

Little Creek, Big View
By Sharon May
Managing Editor
I began my outing this week intending to visit the stunning petroglyphs in the Canaan Gap. I last saw these figures a few years ago with my sister, vacationing from San Francisco. I retraced my earlier drives to the rim of the Gap but ran into some trouble this time – a padlocked gate, to be exact. It seems the people who own the land above the site have gated the road and posted no trespassing signs, apparently ending my visits to a favorite local petroglyph panel.
I don’t blame the landowners: a look at the litter of broken bottles, trash and shotgun shells on the BLM side of the fence indicated why perhaps the owners locked the gates to traffic to the site. But I’m still sad about it. And a couple hours of urging my Jeep over a number of rutted roads, trying to find another way to the petroglyph site, proved fruitless. Maybe somebody with a GPS reading will help out here.
But I refused to waste good outdoor weather crying over locked gates and headed to another area I enjoy, just minutes away: the Little Creek Mountains – a plateau, really, with a panoramic view that’ll knock your moisture-wicking socks off.
It’s easy to find the area because an equipment-bitten cone of black cinder rock with a gray jacket of sage rises from the top of the plateau: head for it. Turn south (right) from Highway 59 at 1.5 miles beyond the Chevron station in Apple Valley. This road is just before the Smithsonian Butte Backway on the left.
After turning right into the dirt, a short distance of orange shallow sand quickly turns to washboard as the road nears the cinder cone. Continue past the hill and, really, take any of the numerous dirt roads you encounter. Each leads to grand views and interesting terrain to explore, including fascinating rock formations and boulder heaps of a scratchy orange-ish conglomerate or a grayish pocked limestone-looking rock (Sorry, I’m no geologist). Climb atop any of these low formations, though, and you can spend forever gazing into the far distance – a distance taking in the towering peaks of Zion, snow-patched Cedar Mountain, and northeast to Canaan Mountain and Hildale below. Accompany your boots up one of several conical hills or find the radio towers at the west end of the plateau and go gaga over the view.
It strikes me that this plateau would be a great biking or ATV locale, and, in fact, my Arizona Strip BLM map shows a bike trail circling the top. Knobby and sandy roads of differing widths head off everywhere, yet the plateau contains enough acreage of roadless walking to give you a truly backcountry feeling. On one of my visits, walking quietly over the spine of a rock formation, I surprised a bobcat on the other side. It’s one of the benefits of hiking solo. Of course, if it had been a mountain lion, I may not have counted being solo as a benefit.
On the handful (plus a few fingers) of times I’ve explored this plateau, I’ve encountered very few people – two or three bicyclists and, once, a group of paintballers in firing position in the juniper. It’s always quiet enough, though, to leave me with an intimate feeling for the place that smoothes my daily perspective into place.
The plateau of Little Creek has some interesting crevices to go with its conical protrusions. Continue west of the mined Little Creek knoll, rattle over a cattle guard and look for a pond (a mud puddle depression on my recent visit) to the left and a wash on the right that deepens to a black lava-lined canyon. A good hiking spot, the canyon has interesting spillways and eroded stream passages. I was told petroglyphs can be found along the walls, but I haven’t located any.
However, scattered petrified wood chunks, colorful pebbled rocks, marvelous views and a wild habitat of juniper, pinyon, sage and cactus are enough reasons to make this a rewarding place to explore again and again.

When You Go

Length: An abundance of knolls, gullies, outcroppings and dirt roads to explore
Elevation gain: none, some easy climbs to hilltops
Difficulty: Easy
Payoff: Fantastic views in all directions, quiet trails, interesting rock formations
Getting there: Take Hwy. 59 from Hurricane and travel east. Look for a dirt road on the right at 1.5 miles past the Little Creek (Apple Valley) gas station. Take the dirt road south past the mined cinder knoll (Little Creek Knoll). From here, roads loop in all directions around the plateau of Little Creek Mountains: choose one and see where it goes.

---