Road trip part 6 - phipps arch

On our last day in the Escalante, we headed up a side canyon to find phipps arch. The route took us into a box canyon and then up a series of slickrock bulges to an arch tucked into the rim of the canyon...








The nice thing about slickrock is that it's really pretty sticky...



The skinny white speck above the bush is PHred...



And this is the view from where he's standing...



That little black speck under the arch, right on the horizon? Yep, that's PHred again...


Late afternoon cumulous started to let loose (as usual) so we decided to get off the rock and head west...



A view down the drainage we descended...


That's me...

this is the sixth post in a series on the canyon country road trip.
Up next - Zion, Nevada basin & Range country, and ancient bristlecone pines.

Road trip part 5 - hoodoos

Stopped at Devil's Garden for a bit of dinner at the end of the day and spent a little time among the hoodoos as the sun set and the light turned magical...



Storm cells petered out at the end of the day and we found a nice spot on the canyon rim to sleep under the stars.

this is the fifth post in a series on the canyon country road trip

Road trip part 4 - spooky gulch

After clambering out of peekaboo gulch we headed across the rim to this drainage which leads to spooky gulch. And now a word about flash floods and slot canyons. See this drainage...




It drains to here. So, say that little storm cell was breaking over this part of the canyon. All the rain hitting the slick rock would roll on down to the drainage and funnel into here...

and then it gets squeezed into here...



...and then into here. An inch of water a hundred feet wide forced into a slot that's 2 feet wide gets pretty deep and pretty fast in a big hurry. It carries a lot of force. Which is why it's a really good idea to keep an eye on the weather when hiking canyon country.

So, mom, forget you saw that picture of the storm cell in the last post.


After this point it becomes very narrow - a tight squeeze really - and since the slot is about three times as deep as peek-a-boo it gets dark too. You'll have to take my word for it so here's the scoop on Spooky gulch: gets so narrow you have to take off your pack, goes up and down around boulder and logjams from flash floods - one of which contained a small rattler (yikes). At one point it got downright obnoxious (and this is the only climb I've ever done to merit such a tag) had to take off my day pack, wriggle it around a bend and drop it 6 feet to the floor before then having to do the same myself. It finally widened out again towards the end and spilled into the same drainage a few hundred feet downstream from where we'd clambered up into peekaboo.


What you can't see in this photo is the scrape on PHred's adam's apple which he got slithering through one of the narrowest spots in the gulch. Crazy!

this is the fourth post in a series on the canyon country road trip

Road trip part 3 - peekaboo gultch

I'd been wanting to check out Peekaboo & Spooky gultches for quite some time. Ever since the Flying Fish and I came here in the spring of 2000ish. That trip we walked in at Harris Wash - a half-day walk across the slickrock and a drop down to a quiet stream in a secluded side canyon off the Escante. For 5 days we saw one other campsite and no one, except the guy who wandered into a cave we'd found and asked if we knew where we were. He had a good idea of where he was but wasn't sure. We knew exactly how he felt. The river's a little windy and even an experienced navigator can loose track of the twists and turns on the topo.

We'd read about spooky and peekaboo but since it was snowing when we climbed back out at Fence canyon we decided to pass.

So I was really happy to have a day with nothing better to do than scramble through a couple slots. We parked on the rim and found a trail down the canyon leading to the mouth of peekaboo. A quick scramble up the 10' fall at the base led to a tear-drop shaped carved slot...



Peek-a-boo gulch...



Gets a little narrow in there...





We popped out to find a slight turn in the weather...


and we headed across the rim to Spooky gulch.

this is the third post in a series on the canyon country road trip
click the title of the first post in this series for a link to more road trip photos

Road trip part 2 - 50 miles of dirt road

Topside again, after Buckskin Gultch, we headed north into the backcountry of the grand staircase...



and started out along 50 miles of dirt road. The formations to the right are like the plates of a stegasaurous. They're 50+ feet tall and march along the road for miles and miles and miles...



We camped that night above cottonwood canyon. The sky was clear and so far away from any towns there was no light pollution - all the stars in galaxy were out. It was impossible not to sleep outside beneath them.

Next morning we continued north and turned off to check out Grosevnor Arch...



Up close and personal under the arch...



Continuing north the canyon opened up. On a switchback headed down to the floor we stopped for this great shot of PHred in the big country...



Once we hit the end of that dirt road, we looked for another road back into the backcountry. We headed down 40 mile road and stopped off to check out some pinnacles...



and play on the slickrock...



and pose for nice photos for mom...



Cumulous clouds grew all day and exploded in the afternoon...


So of course we looked for some more gulches and slots to explore...

this is the second post in a series on the canyon country road trip

PHred & BG road trip to canyon country (part 1)

In early September I hit the road and headed out to Boise to pick up PHred and we headed south to canyon country in Utah's Grand Staircase Escalante national monument. We'd been there before a few years back and spent a week hiking down Coyote Gulch to the big river and back. This time we were a little less ambitious - owing in part to my inability to find the water filter and bringing the wrong parts to the stove (I'm blaming it all on the remodel).

After an uneventful drive through Nevada made it to canyon country and started our tour of gulches and arches along the backroads of the Escalante...



We started out with Buckskin gultch. A moderate slot canyon that's typically impassable without floats except in the driest months. We dropped in here at White Pass...



Where the going immediately got narrow...



Once in Buckskin gultch, it got narrower still and as the sun climbed overhead it lit up like a paper lantern. Boy was it gorgeous! And quiet. An occasional raven flew through the slot above our heads - we could hear the woosh of air under every beat of its wings...



The water got chest-high in places and none too warm. We were happy to have only brought day packs as our full rigs would've gotten soaked...



The canyon widened out at this lovely bench that would have been just right for camping. The bench was about 20 feet up, just higher than a massive log jam we passed under upstream. A spooky reminder that flash floods are real hazards in the narrows and it's always worth noting exit routes and safe havens such as this...

this is the first post in a series on the canyon country road trip
click the title of this post for a link to more road trip photos