Umtanum Creek Canyon — Saturday, Dec. 19, 2020

Ethan, Brenda, Jonah, Karen, & I decided to hike the Umtanum Canyon area one more time before it closes for the rest of the winter & spring.  We crossed the suspension bridge and climbed the trail up the ravine on the south side of the mouth of the canyon as if we were going to the Umtanum Ridgecrest.  When we got to the grove of aspens, however, we went left and followed the 2-track up to the bench at about 2000' that runs above both Umtanum & the Yakima Canyons.  For lack of a better name, I call this Umtanum Bench.  We walked south above the Yakima Canyon for a couple of miles or so until we came to a big side-canyon where we left the 2-track and walked east along a ridge-top to a nice lunch spot overlooking the Red's Fly Shop complex with views up and down the canyon.  We had a little sun when we started, but by 12:30 there was heavy overcast and it was quite a bit cooler.  We stayed about 45 min and then headed back.  Thanks to the Evans Canyon Fire in Sept, this whole area is a wasteland.  It will be green in the spring, but today it looked like a desert.  Along the way we heard a canyon wren and saw a couple of small groups of deer and met one other hiker ascending the ravine as we were going down.