“How much?”
“$27.80 sir.”
“Here’s 45, keep it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah man, you just saved our week!”
He really had. We had no place to go or even a way to get there if we did. Escalante Utah is a long way from anywhere and has pretty limited options for a last minute stay. About seven miles down Hole in the Rock road my check tire light had come on and sure enough we had a leak. Luckily, it was a slow one that allowed us to get into that little town and find the auto repair shop. We pulled in at quarter to five, fifteen minutes before closing and the repairman was gracious enough to patch my tire before heading home. To me, that was a really nice thing for him to do. Even though it was a Monday I am sure he had better things to do than stay late to fix some tourists’ tire. He fixed our tire in less than ten minutes and gave us some very useful info on how to avoid another flat. He told us that he repairs flats an average of thirty-five to forty times a week.
It turns out that Hole in the Rock road is graded with some very sharp coral rock for the first ten miles and he told us to just air down our tires and take it easy. We had a permit to do an overnight backpack in Coyote Gulch which is over forty miles down that gravel and dirt track. With nowhere else to stay and very little prospect of finding a new tire within a hundred miles (as far as we knew) our plans would have been wrecked for the week.
Klay, Dave and I were on day four of a two week epic of a road trip that would take us over 6300 miles in search of some of the greatest natural areas in the country. Sometimes the best road trips involve a lot of road and we hit some of the best stretches we have ever seen.
This specific stretch ended on a high plain in the desert with mountains a ways off in the distance. We reached the trailhead just before dusk and set up our tents to a stunning sunset.
We were many miles from civilization and for that matter other people. We hadn’t seen another vehicle on the entire forty mile drive down those dirt and gravel roads. There is both wonder and disquiet in that sort of isolation. The only sources of modernity that night were the small gas stove we used to cook our dinner, our headlamps and the alarms we set on our phones so we could stargaze after the moon set. It was exhilarating.
- Dawn arose in purples and reds then yellows and blues and we were off down the trail. It was the first overnight hike for Klay and Dave and the second for me. The first couple of miles was through scrub and sand until the bedrock fully broke through and the canyon fell away. The scenery in southern Utah is well described, we had a good Idea of what to expect. We had already done day hikes in Arches and Capitol Reef National Parks. The first view of Stevens Arch and the Gulch itself were still jaw dropping. It took us a few minutes to find our way to the trail we would be using to get down. With that view, we were in no hurry.
The entry point we had chosen can barely be called a trail. The Crack in the Rock as it is called is literally that, a fissure just wide enough to crawl down through. We lowered our packs to the ledge below and climbed. The crack is just wide enough for an average sized man to fit through, belly and back scraping along as you shuffle sideways. Once out of the crack it is a downhill slog through deep sand that takes longer than you would expect. The scale of the place is much different than what we are used to in the upper midwest. For the most part your guide is a slight sand ridge that curves around towards a little island of green in the sea of reddish rock and sand. You can’t see the gulch until you are essentially in it but wow what a place it was when we got there!
We were greeted by willows and a small stream that ran about ankle deep. We were headed upstream. In that direction the stream had carved out a little half tunnel in the rock that was striated with multiple different shades of red, black and grey. The trail is mostly walking in the stream or just alongside it, canyon walls rising hundreds of feet overhead. This isn’t a slot canyon like the famous Narrows in Zion, the walls are far enough apart to let plenty of light in.
We walked upstream, quiet for long stretches except for the wows and holy cows that come with experiencing a place like this for the first time. It is hard to imagine where the water comes from to make the river. Desert for hundreds of miles around and still there are springs that weap from the rock. One of those springs forms a small lagoon in its own little amphitheater. Seven or eight feet deep and maybe forty yards across at its widest. Spring water runs down the red rock from high above feeding a small ecosystem of insects, fish, frogs and leeches. On a bright sunny day the greens and blacks of the moss covered and mineral stained rocks really shimmer and pop.
I would imagine that the lagoon was a sacred place to the ancient peoples who lived in this area. The amphitheater walls shimmer like dragonfly wings where the groundwater seeps out to meet the midday sun. Those dragonflies match the surrounding color pallette. Evolution colored them to match the blue of the water, orange of the rocks and green of the foliage, only even more vibrant. It holds fresh lifegiving water and food. The trees offer shade and a cool respite from the strong desert sun. I can still feel the magic of the place when ever my mind wanders to it.
That lagoon isn’t easy to find. From the river you can’t see the trail that leads to it. The trail snakes over a boggy area from behind a giant cottonwood tree for a couple of hundred yards, we wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t know to look for it. Nothing in my research told me where it was, just that it was there, somewhere near the midway point of our planned hike. I have a decent instinct for route finding, nothing compared to more experienced hikers but i tend to notice terrain changes and markers of human travel. To this day Dave will still tell you that the lagoon doesn’t exist. I can show you the video of him making that claim while waist deep in the water!
When the leeches came out we figured our time in the lagoon had come to an end so we gathered up our packs and hiked on. A few miles and many oohs and ahs later we came to Jacob Hamblin Arch which this tiny river runs through. It was difficult to imagine how this little trickle of a stream could carve out such a formation until I realized that all the water from the surrounding desert carved out the entire canyon I was standing in. the water just found a weak point and broke through, then over time whenever there was a good rain storm a flash flood roared through and expanded the hole to the twenty or twenty-five feet high that it is today.
We stopped in the shade of the arch for lunch and to refill our water. We weren’t sure how much further our exit point was but we thought it couldn’t be too far so we left our heavy packs and went searching for it. We were almost right. It was only two more miles upstream but by the time we had gotten there we had already walked 12 miles in the southern Utah heat. It was well worth walking that stretch three times however as for me it was some of the most beautiful and awe inspiring hiking I have ever done. The river carves back and forth in this area in wide sweeping turns, sometimes underneath overhangs that are several hundred feet overhead. In other parts it carves potholes and ripples into the stone, rushing through small gaps and falls. It was golden hour as we made it through for the final time. I never really knew what that meant, I am a very amateur photographer, until we saw the river here. The water shimmered gold as it flowed over the red and yellow bedrock and the canyon walls glowed in deeper, more voluminous hues as the shadows crept in.
Although we weren’t expecting any rain we decided to camp on a small plateau right near our canyon exit. It is best to think safety first, especially when you are in unfamiliar terrain.
The next morning we climbed out of the canyon. Grade 3 and 4 scrambling is no joke and you need to be careful. The very beginning is nearly class 5. We scouted the route the night before when we were exhausted from a 16 mile day, there were serious doubts raised about our groups ability to get up that first section. We took our time and used the ropes someone had conveniently left to help us up. It was a relatively short four mile hike back to the car but it was uphill for three quarters of it, then sand. We spotted my small SUV (Roger the Rogue) about a mile off and luckily didn’t run into any ravines that needed to be traversed or rounded. We were wiped when we got there and grateful for the air conditioning.
Hikes like that can change your perspective. While i can’t speak for my two friends on how that hike affected them i do have my own observations. For Klay it was a test and a real challenge, especially the climb out. He overcame some very real fears and did things he didn’t think he could do. This was his second wilderness trip, his first being a seven day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on the Minnesota/Canada border. We were a long way from civilization there but this hike was further, much less familiar and more isolated. He now has convinced his partner that regular weekend camping trips are a necessary part of life, they both love it!
Dave is much more the silent type but after this road trip he seems to have caught the travel bug and he and his partner have purchased a van and are currently converting it to a new home on wheels so that they can adventure together.
As for me, it was only a day and a half, I have been in the wilderness for longer stretches but never in a place that I understand so little. The deserts of the American southwest are vast but they are by no means desolate. People can and do thrive there and have for millenia. The challenges are different than the one I face back home in the Upper midwest. I know how to find food, water and shelter there. The desert is a much different animal and one that I have a healthy respect for. The abundance of home is absent there and I realize how fragile life can be when I visit. I also realize how big the world is and that everyone is shaped by their environment. Most importantly for me, I realize that I want to see more of this world and learn more about the people that the land shapes in different ways.