If you love to hike, this one should be at the top of your must hike list.
Wow...just wow! This has to be my favorite hike ever! It's also one of the longest hikes we've taken. If you don't hike much, or haven't been to Moab, Utah, you'll want to do your research to be prepared for this one. I started walking a couple miles at least once a week a couple month ahead.
Located in the backcountry desert of Moab off of the beautiful Scenic Byway 128, this just over 9 mile round trip hike takes you through beautiful desert landscapes into the Mary Jane Slot Canyon where you are surrounded by majestic red orange rock canyon walls. The Professor Creek runs along the whole route. Some websites claim it to be 7.5 - 8 miles. According to our All Trails map, we walked just over 9 and didn't even get to the end.
It is a pretty rough gravel road as you drive to the parking lot and you'll want to drive it slow. The parking lot is small and limited to 28 spaces. It was full when we arrived on a Saturday afternoon and cars were parked all along the side of the road a mile plus from the parking lot.
The trailhead is on public land but neighbors private property so you'll want to be respectful of the landowners. This is a day use only area so you are not allowed to camp or sleeping in the vehicles. A sign sits at the beginning of the trail pointing the direction with the beautiful Adobe Mesa in the background!
There is no internet service so you'll want to make sure you download an offline map to track where you are so you don't get off trail, or get lost. There are various apps out there. We used All Trails. It is very easy to get off track even following the creek. There are several points we stopped to see which direction to go and one time we discovered we had roamed off the trail for a little bit but did get back on track without knowing.
There is so much to see along the hike like the scene in the photo above. There's a cool large rock with a big hole in it. The rock is probably 4 foot tall. You also see lots of different mesa mountain rock formations and cool junipers and other trees that have fun characteristics to them.
Make sure you bring lots and lots of water with you! Plan on 3-4 hours. We both had 64 oz of water and there wasn't much left when we got back to the car. We also packed a lunch and snacks.
It can get really hot in the summer. We went in early May and it was in the upper 80's which wasn't to bad as we are from the Ozarks and are upper 80's feels like 100 because of the humidity and there wasn't much humidity there. The temperature does cool down when you reach the canyon area.
Mary Jane Canyon---wow! That sunlight can make those orange red canyon walls glow! It can also get dark in the canyon pretty quickly. It was around 4pm when we were there and it was getting pretty dark as the canyon is deep so the shadow of the walls make it shaded.
There are lots of little waterfalls and rapids along the creek.
This is a hike where your feet will get wet! We counted over water 100 crossings. We purchased some water proof socks because we were worried about the water being too cold in May but since it was a pretty warm day, the cool water felt good so we didn't even wear them.
At the end of the trail, you'll find a large waterfall. We didn't go all the way to the end for this hike as it was getting dark in the canyon and we were told you had to swim to get to the waterfall as it was chin deep. I didn't want to risk my equipment getting wet so we stopped about 1/4 - 1/8 of a mile away. I also wanted to make sure we made it back in time for me to get to my planned sunset spot and we had a 45 min drive to it plus the hike back. If the waterfall is the only reason you want to take this hike, do some research to see how high the water is at the falls. You're more likely able to get to the waterfall if there hasn't been much rain in the area. Regardless, I still think this hike is worth it rather you see the falls or not.
The hike took us just over 4 hours round trip. Took about 3 hours to get to where we turned around because of all the stops and photo taking.
If you love hikes and beautiful scenery, this is one you'll want to take.
Below is a video we did of our hike to help give you some tips and be prepared.
If you'd like to see some of the photos I took, here are a couple links:
Fine Art America:
https://5-jennifer-white.pixels.com/art/professor+utah
Pictorem:
https://www.pictorem.com/gallery/Jennifer.White?keyword=professor
Enjoy and be blessed!
