ESCALANTE NATIONAL MONUMENT
DISCOVERYCHANNEL.COM
HOODOOS AND SLICKROCK
A vast empty sweep of red rock and blue sky stretches from the Grand Staircase country in the west, scrambles over the wild arid heights of the Kaiparowits Plateau, then tumbles eastward down to the twisted slickrock folds of the Escalante River. This is a pristine and little-known collection of badlands, broken cliffs, and maze-like canyons. And though it is a severe country, rough and jumbled, its awesome ruggedness possesses an almost ethereal beauty.
This land of wind and space, of solitude and distance, is the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, 1.7 million acres deep in the blood-red, rocky heart of southern Utah's canyon country. In the far distance, etched against the heavens, turrets and spires, domes and pinnacles, arches and weathered multi-colored cliffs rise into air so clean and dry, gazing about is like looking through a magnifying glass. Closer, a collection of hoodoo rocks, a gang of hobgoblins, march past in stony silence. Caprocks sprout like giant red toadstools from the sandstone.
Edward Abbey called this country home. It's a piece of the planet the desert anarchist and defender of wild places considered "the center of the world, God's navel, the red wasteland." Ever since I read Desert Solitaire, Abbey's classic account of the seasons he spent as a ranger at Arches National Monument, I have longed to explore this American Eden. Now, twenty years later, I'm following Cactus Ed's tracks across the slickrock.
Abbey loved rattling off his favorite place names: Deadhorse Point, Hells Backbone, Robbers Roost. Names on the land are a poetry of place, and here they speak to the tough, unforgiving nature of the Grand Staircase-Escalante: Little Death Hollow, Carcass Canyon, Spooky Gulch. This is a feral wilderness, a place to lose oneself in fragile splendor and raw freedom.
One who did lose himself in the tortured labyrinths of the Escalante country was Everett Ruess, a young artist, writer, and solitary traveler who found the siren song of the desert southwest irresistible. "I have loved the red rocks, the twisted trees, the red sand blowing in the wind, the slow, sunny clouds crossing the sky, the shafts of moonlight on my bed at night," he wrote. "I have seemed to be at one with the world." Ruess was last seen alive by a pair of sheepherders in the canyons of the Escalante in 1934. He was just twenty years old when he disappeared, and his body has never been found.
Adventure is what Dan Berns and I expect to find here, knowing full well that adventure can quickly turn to disaster in this fierce and dangerous land. The dangers are real and many: flash floods, dehydration, quicksand, and violent weather are just a few of the potential hazards. The monument is remote, just about as far out there as you can get in the lower forty-eight, and its roads and trails are few, primitive, and not well-maintained. Out here we are pretty much on our own.
That, of course, is Escalante's allure.
CALF CREEK FALLS
The trail climbs alongside a clear, cold creek flowing out of a steep-sided canyon. On either side, reddish walls of Navaho sandstone streaked with black stripes of desert varnish rise to block the sky; we peer upward in wonder at the sheer rock walls aflame in the rich red afternoon light.
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a big place, more off-the-beaten-path than most. Pulling in to the little hamlet of Escalante, we stopped to check the map. Four-wheel-drive tracks and nameless trails led off in all directions. But one path, the trail to Calf Creek Falls, was just ahead, a roughly six-mile round trip featuring a 126-foot waterfall. Just the thing to get us out of the truck and onto the land. If we hustled, we would be back by dark.
Now, still within a hundred yards of the trailhead, we look up to the left and see a perfect miniature arch carved in the sandstone by wind and water. The opening is a mere two feet in diameter, but I know it took the elements thousands of years to fashion that small round opening. The workmanship is exquisite. Stopping to look at the arch, I take a deep breath and feel the stress of travel seep away. I look around at the juniper, the pinyon pine scarred by a hungry porcupine searching for the tender inner bark, and I realize with a sense of relief that I am finally here.
The trail leads through saltbush and rabbitbrush. Most of the deciduous trees, the Gambel oaks, the box elders, have lost their leaves to the advancing season, but the prickly pear cactus are doing fine. Their flat, spiny stems line the path, and we watch where we put our feet. Soon we pass the remains of an old fence. Long ago, some rancher realized that if he put this barrier here to keep his calves from wandering downstream, the impassable sandstone walls on either side and at the head of the canyon would do the rest. Over time this perfect natural pasture became known as Calf Creek Canyon.
The calves are long gone, but the beavers have been hard at work here, building dams across the creek and forming ponds and marshes. As we hike past, flocks of mallards explode from the water in a hurry to get out of range, this being hunting season. The creek itself is filled with trout; where the trail passes near the stream we see dozens of the fish finning lazily above the shallow sandy bottom.
"Look up there, do you see it?" Dan points across the canyon. The sandstone wall opposite us is lit up as if by stage lights, made more dramatic by the brooding dark sky above. I look closely and then I do see it, a window in the stone halfway up the opposite cliff. The window is almost completely walled up with red brick, clearly the work of a stonemason. It's a thousand-year-old granary where the Indians who lived in this canyon and farmed its fertile bottom stored their harvest.
I am imagining who lived here and what their lives were like when Dan and I see something even more extraordinary across the river. There, on a smooth wall of sandstone in a deeply recessed alcove, we see three very large human-like figures painted in red. The figures stand three abreast and appear to be holding hands. Who are they? Gods? Heroes? Or is it the representation of some ceremony or event in the life of the artist?
The light is fading. Now only the very top of the rimrock is still lit by the occasional ray of light slipping through a crack in the clouds. Another mile up the trail and we feel a cool breeze soughing down canyon and we put on fleece jackets. Soon we reach trail's end.
Ahead, a stream of silvery water pours over a lip of rock 126 feet above. The water free-falls through the evening air, and crashes on the sloping canyon wall before sliding into the deep green pool below. A cool mist fills the air, trapped inside this perfect grotto by the parabolic rock walls that reach hundreds of feet into the starry night sky.
With a half-moon rising, we follow the sandy white trail back through the darkness. Off to the right, something rustles the dry November leaves and then moves away, up a side canyon into the night.
BATTLEGROUND
"So how did you find out about this place?" The question sounds like a challenge. I'm not quite sure how to respond. I toss on my pack, pat my pockets to make sure I have the key, then slam the truck door.
"Oh, it's been in the news a lot lately, I guess."
My interrogator replies with a disgusted shake of his head. He is a young man in his late twenties. We've never met before, and he isn't exactly being friendly. He is carrying a hard-used backpack and looks trail-worn. There's a coating of red dust on his clothing, his boots are caked with red mud.
Soon his hiking partner appears from around the corner of the trail. They drop their packs with a heavy thud in the red dust at the trailhead and take long, thirsty drinks from their water bottles.
"I've been coming here for years," says the second hiker after a moment. "And it's not the same anymore. Ever since this place was made into a national monument, all the magazines, all the newspapers have been carrying stories telling folks to come out here. People from New York and California. Before you know it, this area is going to be overrun."
Dan and I trade looks. An unspoken message passes between us: "It's probably not a good idea to mention the cameras and notepads in our backpacks. These guys probably don't want to hear that we're here to tell the world about their favorite canyon."
I can't say I blame them. Ever since President Clinton set aside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, earnest people who care about wild country have argued over whether or not official designation for these canyons and cliffs in southern Utah is a good thing. These hikers clearly feel national monument status will be the ruin of the Escalante country. And they aren't alone.
What these hikers fear is the plague Edward Abbey called "industrial tourism." When Abbey coined the term, he was lamenting the transformation of the obscure little national monument where he was a seasonal ranger, Arches, into a full-fledged automobile-accessible national park. Like these two backcountry ramblers just in from the canyons of the Escalante, Abbey was happiest poking around his 33,000-acre backyard by himself, sharing it with the deer, mountain lions, black widow spiders, and scorpions. When pavement, parking lots, and visitor facilities finally came to Arches, the wilderness qualities that made the place unique were eradicated. As he laments in Desert Solitaire, "it is an old story in the Park Service."
At the trail register I sign in, then read the comments written there by my fellow hikers. The record is a battle of words concerning the future of Escalante, and the register captures the feelings on both sides of the issue:
"Keep the National Park Service out!"
"Long live the government."
Dan and I start down the dry, sandy streambed of Hurricane Wash. We're headed to Coyote Gulch, a side canyon with a clear, quick tributary flowing into the Escalante River. Hurricane Wash flows across a boulder plain for several miles, then starts narrowing as it carves through the red rock, dropping deeper into the earth with each passing mile. In places where red clay banks line the wash we see the delicate heart-shaped tracks of deer. The wind has worn a thin, elegant sandstone arch into the top of a red rock dome.
Tonight, camped on a bench above the stream, safe from the flash floods that scour these canyons clean, I lean back in my camp chair and watch as the moon crests the canyon rim. The silence, the solitude, is complete. Later, heading for my sleeping bag, I think about what those two hikers wrote in the trail register:
"Stop Industrial Tourism!"
COYOTE GULCH
We're out of our sleeping bags before first light, sipping coffee as the stars fade from the night sky. From my perch on the sandstone slab I glance over at Dan, who is looking more like a desert rat every day. And then I remember the quandary we've put ourselves in by just being here, by being emissaries from the world beyond the canyon rim. Brooding, I gaze at the silent stone, at the prickly pear cactus, at the trickle of water running between the parallel sandstone walls. Those hikers were right, I decide. And somebody has got to take a stand.
Just look at Dan, I think. A refugee from modern times. The canyon has cast a magic spell over him. He looks relaxed, content, at peace. What kind of sanctuary will this canyon offer if it is overrun with pilgrims like us seeking respite from a world gone mad? Where will people go to re-create themselves?
I'm filled with resolve. Just this once, I'm going to do the right thing. I tell Dan to forget the cameras, forget the tripod, forget all this high technology. Toss it all down a slot in the rock somewhere where no one will ever find it. Leave the canyon be, I urge him. Don't tell a soul what we've found down here.
Dan takes a philosophical sip of coffee.
"And then you'll be fired," he says amiably.
I think about that for a moment.
"Let's go," I say.
Once again we toss on our packs and enter the narrowing defile. As we hike, the walls get gradually higher and steeper until they loom hundreds of feet above our heads. For some reason the trees down here in the belly of the earth are still resplendent in fall colors, though most of the foliage has faded from the trees up on the plain above. The bright yellows and golds are a pleasing complement to the infinite shades of canyon red.
After a mile of easy hiking, we come to the junction with Coyote Gulch. This stream is wider and more voluminous than Hurricane Wash, and from here on we jump or wade the stream at every bend. The canyon begins to twist and turn in a serpentine course toward it's meeting with the Escalante River, some eight looping miles downstream.
We come to a great bend in the river, where the waters of ten million flash floods have carved an enormous overhang in the canyon wall. At the deepest part of the bend, the rim forms a sweeping roof perhaps 100 feet above our heads, a roof that hangs a good 100 feet out over the river. It's like looking out from inside a massive cave. The acoustics are fantastic, and the echo takes almost a full second to return.
"WHO ARE YOU?" shouts Dan.
"WHO ARE YOU?" replies the canyon.
Another turn and we come face to face with Lobo Arch. According to Rudi Lambrechtse's Hiking The Escalante, though this arch is now called Jacob Hamblin Arch, the original settlers called it Lobo, after a legendary wolf that developed an unfortunate taste for cattle. The wolf's career finally ended when a hunter lured him into a trap and shot him, but not before the lobo dragged that trap for ten miles. We agree with Rudi. Lobo it is.
Another turn, another giant overhang, another fantastic rock formation. This one is called Coyote Natural Bridge, and it is a beautiful portal framing the entrance to the lower canyon. After a few miles of stream-jumping and foot-slogging, we come to a wide, grassy valley. A game trail ascends the slope to our left, up to a terrace recessed under an overhang in the cliff. We decide it will do nicely for a lunch spot, and begin the long hike up.
At the crest it is quite clear that others have had the same idea. There is charcoal scattered about, and bones, and bits of flint. There is a stone enclosure, with walls made of ochre rock held together by mortar. I can see the imprints of the mason's fingers between the stones. Inside the enclosure, more charcoal, more bone, and several corncobs. We've stumbled into an ancient cliff dwelling. Further investigation reveals a pictograph mural. We eat our peanut butter sandwiches under the watchful gaze of several otherworldly figures, painted by human hands some 1,000 years ago.
SPOOKY CANYON
A narrow dirt track studded with boulders and riven by deep gullies and tooth-jarring washboards traverses a vast, empty sweep of Utah desert. From behind the wheel I see a world of sagebrush, red rock, and blue sky stretching from the bony cliffs of the Kaiparowits Plateau to the serpentine chasms of the Escalante river.
Rambling across the sagebrush flats of Fiftymile Bench, the Ford Explorer follows the rough road, bouncing towards the ever-receding horizon. Suddenly, from up near the right front tire, a big black-tailed jackrabbit bursts from cover. He bounds away in a panic, conquering distance with impressive twenty-foot leaps, leaving us literally in his dust as I slow to cross a washout where a flash flood took a huge bite of road as it roared by to join the river miles away.
The gully is deep and sports an impressive set of sharp, oil-pan-ripping stones lying in wait for the unwary. For perhaps the tenth time this morning, Dan jumps out of the passenger seat to do a little road work. Pushing and shoving, he removes the snaggletooth rocks. After he clears the path I depress the accelerator ever so slightly, trying to gain purchase without spinning the wheels. Instead, I send a shotgun blast of sand and gravel flying back as the vehicle lurches out of the ravine. Fortunately, Dan had the good sense to stand off to the side.
"Well," he says as he gets back in, "I guess the sign wasn't kidding."
The sign, which we had seen impaled in the red earth some miles back, simply said, "CAUTION: FOUR WHEEL DRIVE ONLY." I had supposed it meant that the path ahead was ungraded, unpaved, primitive, in short, unfit for most vehicle travel. Perfect. It might as well have said "FUN AHEAD." We rocked and rolled right past it with anticipation of good things to come.
Continuing on toward the next obstacle, I remind Dan what Edward Abbey said about off-road driving: "A four-wheel-drive trail may be defined as any pair of wheel tracks which gets you into trouble, creates demoralizing repair bills, and generally goes nowhere."
"Well, that settles it," says Dan. "Nothing to do but plunge ahead."
Perhaps as an afterthought, another sign a little farther on says, "WARNING: ROADS MAY BECOME IMPASSABLE WHEN WET." Accustomed to a bedrock substrate of hard New England granite, I have no idea what this sign is talking about, so I promptly forget all about it.
The significance of the second message becomes clear the next morning when a heavy bank of gray cloud settles in and proceeds to drop a nasty mixture of snow, sleet, and freezing rain on our heads, turning the red clay surface of the Jeep track into a thick, sticky, viscous bouillabaisse the locals call gumbo. This Cajun-sounding stuff is so tenacious it clings like plaster, and before long our hiking boots weigh about ten pounds apiece. With relief we break camp, toss the gear in the back of the truck, and get ready to ride.
It's obvious even to us that we risk getting stuck , but we take up the challenge. We've got our camping gear, extra gas, and ample food and water. If we get stuck, who cares? Undaunted, we forge ahead. All goes well for about fifty yards. Then the Explorer skids crazily, as if on glare ice.
Steering madly, Dan somehow manages to keep the vehicle between the ditches. When we glide to a ludicrous halt facing 180 degrees from our earlier direction of travel, I get out to see what just happened. The tire lugs are packed solid with gumbo, making them as bald as a Marine recruit, offering zero traction. Admitting defeat, we slip and slide the vehicle back to camp, where we ignominiously clomp around in our absurd mud boots and pray for a change in the weather.
We don't have to wait long. In the evening as the sun drops behind the Straight Cliffs, a high-pressure system comes knifing down from the north, dropping the temperature and sweeping the skies clean. Tomorrow the road will be dry. We set up the tent on the slickrock amidst domes and pinnacles wind-worn sandstone. Chilly, we don our down jackets and build a crackling fire of pinion and juniper, then relax in our camp chairs and watch the bright sparks drift from the licking flames upward toward the icy stars.
Strangely, I'm elated to be stuck. There are so few places left where Nature still calls the shots. Even with our burly vehicle, we're shut down until further notice, and that's that. Things could be worse; The hunter, Orion, flies through the deep indigo night, returning our gaze from above. Coyotes yip and howl like lunatics from somewhere in the sagebrush beyond the dancing circle of light. My last thought before curling up in my sleeping bag is that I'm in a magical place, far beyond all that is safe, comfortable, familiar, and dull. I am exactly where I want to be. It's a big, raw, awesomely beautiful world out here, and there's not another human being within fifty miles.
In the morning we're free to go. We mount up the Explorer and hit the trail.
Dan grinds to a halt at the edge of a precipice. Trail's end. Lunch, water, and extra layers go into the daypacks. Ahead of us is a steep sandstone escarpment dropping off perhaps 100 feet into a sandy dry wash. Beyond, as far as we can see, is an endless country of creases and folds that looks like an unmade bed after a night of really bad dreams. Somewhere down there in those tangled sheets of stone is, appropriately enough, Spooky Canyon, our destination for today.
We drop off the lip into the gulch below, and whatever features were visible from above are lost in the maze. I wonder if we could even find our way back to the Explorer. It occurs to me to check the map.
"Hey, where's the map?"
"I thought you had it."
So it goes. Map recovered, compasses oriented, we follow Coyote Dry Fork until we spill out onto a broad, sandy outwash plain. Looking up to our left we see a tunnel of red sandstone boring down from who-knows-where. The insides of the tunnel are perfectly smooth, almost as if sanded and buffed to a slick shiny surface.
"That's it," says Dan. "Peek-A-Boo Canyon. Let's go."
Entering the canyon is not as easy as it appears. The rock is so smooth it takes us several attempts to ascend the first pour-over. Then the fun begins.
The first thing we see is a perfect double-arch spanning the roof of the narrowing canyon. We climb through the spans and suddenly the walls constrict to a width of about two feet. The sky is completely shut off, and as the canyon corkscrews through the rock, our visibility is limited to only a foot or two in either direction. Just enough light filters down through the crack of roof somewhere far above to cast an ethereal, rose-tinted glow. Our voices don't exactly echo in here, they resonate as though we were speaking through organ pipes.
"This is unbelievable."
"Wait 'till you see this."
"Hold on. Let's take a picture. Where are you?"
"Right next to you, around the corner. Here's the camera."
Every now and then the narrow slot is jammed by chockstones, boulders that were swept into the tight crevasse by flash floods. These we surmount by bracing our hands and feet against the opposite sides of the slot and, "chimney" straight up and over the obstructions. Some chockstones are wedged ten or twenty feet above us, and these we merely slip beneath.
"You know how those rocks got jammed up there, don't you?" asks Dan from beneath one tightly wedged boulder.
"Yeah, flash floods. You wouldn't have much of a chance if you got caught in here," I reply.
Like moles we burrow upward until we emerge back onto the slickrock bench at the top of the canyon. Suddenly, the world above-ground seems inexpressibly vast.
Next up is Spooky, and we head cross-country, keeping a close eye on the map and terrain as we navigate the half-mile or so to the next canyon. It may be a rather unscientific description, but Spooky is like a funhouse at an amusement park. The canyon starts tight and gets tighter, until we are slipping sideways through the slot, in some places holding our breath to slither through. Sometimes the slot tilts forwards or backwards, and we find ourselves practically wedged on our backs or on our chests as we squirm through the cracks.
"Not a place for a claustrophobe," I hear Dan say from somewhere up ahead.
Like true subterraneans, we finally emerge from Spooky at dusk. There's one more slot canyon, Brimstone, nearby. I suggest we try it.
"Isn't Brimstone where that guy got stuck for eight days and almost died?" Dan asks.
As casually as possible, I look west toward the late afternoon sun. "It's getting kind of late." I shrug. "Let's save Brimstone for another trip."
HOLE-IN-THE-ROCK
Crystalline days flow by, each one more gorgeous than the last. We hike the canyons, scramble up to ancient cliff dwellings, ponder the meaning of mysterious Anasazi pictographs, and tramp the rimrock of the Circle Cliffs in the burnished light of dawn. As the end of our time in Escalante draws near, there is one last place we want to see: the Hole-In-The-Rock, where one of the most audacious feats in the history of the American West took place.
In the autumn of 1879, the Mormon Church organized an expedition to settle the wild lands around the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. Some 250 men, women, and children responded to the call, and in one of the great pioneering epics of the American West, they made the long and dangerous trip from Escalante to what is now Bluff, Utah.
The pioneers packed everything they would need to build their new homes, garden seeds, farm tools and implements, 200 horses, and more than 1,000 head of cattle. Then, dismissing more lengthy routes to the north and south, they headed in a straight line towards their destination, not knowing what lay ahead but confident they could overcome any obstacle. Their worries about their ability to traverse the rugged country ahead were tempered by faith that they were on a divine mission.
The road-building went smoothly for the first fifty miles, but as the party approached the Colorado River, advance scouts brought back troublesome news. There was no good route down into the depths of Glen Canyon and across the roiling river. As the wagons crept across the final six miles of tortured slickrock to the edge of the sheer precipice, the future of the expedition was in serious doubt.
The route looked impossible. Two thousand feet below, the Colorado blocked their path. Undaunted, the expedition engineers chose a cleft in the canyon rim called Hole-In-The-Rock as the spot to descend. Crews were dispatched with picks and blasting powder, and a dangerously steep, crude wagon road was blasted out of stone. In places, steps were carved into the sandstone. The wagons were lowered, and six weeks later the entire expedition had made the descent, ferried the river, and climbed out of the canyon on the opposite side.
The road they built became known as the Hole-In-The-Rock Road, and it was never used again. Today, the ruts across the sagebrush plain left by their eighty wagons are still visible. A modern Jeep trail roughly parallels the Mormon route, and a journey down the Hole-In-The-Rock-Road is still an adventure, as Dan and I discover.
The first fifty miles of the road go smoothly for us as well. The ruts and washes we cross every so often pose no challenge for the Explorer, and the miles fly by.
When we approach the Hole-In-The-Rock, still some six miles distant, the route becomes difficult. Gone is the sandy, washboarded path through the sage.
Ahead is only rock, in places deeply gouged by erosion, in others scarred with steep gullies and ravines just inches to the left or right of our tires. Frequently we stop, scout out a route, and cautiously move ahead.
We take turns at the wheel, creeping along in low gear, inching across the cross-bedded sandstone, the petrified dunes of the Navajo formation. Like the Mormon pioneers, we build a road in places by filling gaps with boulders, by building rock bridges across spans that would bottom-out the vehicle, and simply by moving rocks out of the way. Picking our way through the shock-busting chuckholes and axle-breaking washouts, we gain appreciation for what those hardy pioneers achieved.
Slowly, we pass under the massive red bulk of the Kaiparowits Plateau, which rises high above us like the prow of a mighty ship. The sun strikes hammer blows from a perfect sky, and the heat bounces off the white rock below. There isn't a sound save for the slow crunching of the tires, or the sigh of the warm breeze swirling across the smooth rock face. Finally, there's a notch like a gunsight in the canyon rim. Hole-In-The-Rock. We get out and climb through the gap, down to the sparkling blue waters of Lake Powell, following the pioneers down stairs hand-hewn from the rock more than a century ago.
Back on top, we stop for a moment to catch our breath and look out over this land that we have come to know well. To the west, terraced Kaiparowits looms large in the warm dry air. To the north lie the twisted canyons of the Escalante River. Far beyond to the north and east, the snowcapped Henry Mountains rise above the red canyon country like a bank of snowy clouds.
There it is, I think. There's your monument.
But what makes this place so special? I wonder. The geologic formations are spectacular, to be sure, but no more so than those in other places throughout the Southwest. In fact, nearby Bryce and Zion National Parks have more sensational scenery. Is it the ancient Indian sites? No, the sites here are not really all that remarkable, compared to Mesa Verde, or Hovenweep National Monument, or a dozen other places where ancient cities still stand. Is it the history? Certainly there are fascinating tales in this landscape, particularly the story of this rough-hewn road I'm standing on, but no more than many historic regions throughout the Southwest.
No, what makes the Escalante so special isn't the geology, or the prehistory, or the history. What make it special is that it's big and undeveloped, roomy enough and wild enough to get lost in, to have adventures in. When people say "Don't change a thing!" in the visitor registers, they are saying "Let this remain a place where we can set out on our own and discover things for ourselves. Let us get lost if we misread the map. Let us get stuck if we find ourselves at the bottom of a Jeep trail in a downpour. Let us have adventures too."
Dan and I get back in the truck. Tomorrow we're hiking to Little Death Hollow and through Wolverine Canyon. We'll be out there for several days, we're not sure how many. The locals say it's a quite a trip, if you don't mind humping a heavy pack through miles and miles of blasted, eroded, twisted, and contorted red-rock wasteland.
We don't mind. That's what we came for.
