Waterfalls- Lower Calf Creek Falls in Grand Staircase Escalante

Well, I had mentioned the ruggedness of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in my earlier post on Devil's Garden. The place is simply wonderful and full of surprises. On Scenic-Byway-12 (MAP) driving 15-miles from Escalante one can find another pleasant, lush and lovely desert surprise- Lower Calf Creek Falls in Calf Creek Recreation Area. 

First glimpse of the waterfall from the trail

The pretty waterfall and the cool cove makes it a oasis in the desert. Water plunges down a high sandstone cliff with yellow and green shades created by algae. Crystal clear water and blue pool at the base makes it a swimmers paradise. If you take a map from the kiosk at the trailhead, you could spot the pictograph panel created by the Native Indians on a high cliff. 

The hike is 6-miles round trip on a well maintained trail to this 126-ft high waterfalls. The trail is not challenging and there is not much of  elevation change. That makes the trail very popular. But, there is sand on most of the trail which makes it a bit hard on ankles and that slightly slows you down. It took around three hours  for me including 30-mins break at the base of the falls. The trail is semi exposed and during October some of the trees had turned yellow making the experience much more beautiful. There were many hikers on the trail though all of them were returning in the late afternoon.

3-miles of strolling in the canyon flanked by high cliffs and surrounded by some fall color to reach the base of a cool and spectacular desert waterfall is so very refreshing! When I reached the falls very few photographers were trying different compositions. It was very very cold. 

There is another tire of this beautiful waterfall called Upper Calf Creek Falls which requires a mile long scrambling down the rocks from a totally different trail. It was very late in the afternoon and I skipped it. Not sure if it is as beautiful as the lower falls!

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Scrapbook- A Travel Blog by Kusum Sanu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.