Road Canyon: Falling Roof Ruin and the Citadel

Road Canyon, accessed via Cigarette Springs Rd. off UT 261, has quite a collection of ruins. We had planned to hike to Falling Roof Ruin, then drive to the trailhead farther east and visit both The Citadel and Seven Kivas.

However, you have to be a bit flexible in wilderness hiking situations. One of our group decided to scout his own route and got lost, while another group member took a fall while climbing one of the steep slickrock slopes leading to Falling Roof, and had difficulty walking afterward.

Falling Roof ruin was spectacular, similar to the photos I'd seen of House on Fire (which we would visit later in the trip). But by the time we finished that hike and got back to the cars, we were already getting tired, and decided to hike to Seven Kivas (which was supposed to be easy) and skip the Citadel.

We got to the other trailhead just as another section of our group was coming back from The Citadel, planning to head to Seven Kivas next. We decided to remain separate, and our group would go to the Citadel instead of the Kivas.

Probably a good choice, since it turned out the Citadel hike was an easy and beautiful mesatop hike (except for the climb down and up to the Citadel itself, which most of us skipped), while Seven Kivas required descending all the way to the canyon bottom and back up.

Next: Sand Island and Lower Butler Wash. Up: Bluff 2017.