Month: June 2006

Our initial goal on this trip was the Grand Canyon. Neither of us had ever been there before and it has a somewhat legendary status as far as things to see in your lifetime. We planned the trip so as to arrive on the North Rim after a fairly hard drive from Wolf Creek Pass in Colorado. The drive across Northern Arizona was long and quite desolate although I was surprised at the amount of traffic on the two-lane highway. It seems that no matter where you go these days there are a lot of people. We arrived in Page, AZ around 4 pm or so and drove down into Marble Canyon to cross over the Colorado River at the Glen Canyon Dam. Our goal was to get to the Kaibab Forest visitor’s center before it closed at 5 pm.

Driving along the Vermillion Cliffs just below the Paria Plateau we started gaining elevation and suddenly left behind the barren desert landscape and entered the Kaibab Forest. Arriving at the visitors center with time to spare we secured a map of the forest and inquired about good places to disperse camp along the rim of the Grand Canyon. Dispersed camping, in case you are not familiar with the term, means finding your own campsite somewhere in the forest. It has the advantage of guaranteeing solitude as long as you don’t mind dispensing with modern conveniences like water, showers and toilets. But then again; that’s what camping is all about. Right? 😉

Having received a couple of pointers from the Rangers we headed down the forest roads towards the canyon. Continue reading

I had only a few goals for this vacation trip but hiking a slot canyon was one of them. I did a fair amount of research on them and was happy to find that one of the premier slot canyons was very close to where we were planning to camp while visiting the Grand Canyon.

Their is an amazing piece of real estate along the Arizona/Utah border called the Paria Canyon/Wilderness area. It has several notable features; the Vermillion Cliffs, Coyote Butte, and the Buckskin Gulch slot canyon. Buckskin Gulch is considered by some to be the ultimate in slot canyons. For 12.5 miles, the gulch is enveloped in a very narrow gorge 100 to 200 feet deep, flanked by vaulting, convoluted walls of Navajo sandstone. Many people hike the entire canyon but this obviously requires a shuttle vehicle.

We were only interested in a short day hike so opted for the Wire Pass access to the main canyon. Wire Pass is notable because it is even narrower in places than Buckskin Gulch. We arrived at the Wire Pass trailhead on a beautiful morning, registered at the trailhead, and began the easy 1.2 mile walk through Coyote Wash. There were a surprising number of vehicles at the parking area, a testimony to the popularity of the place.

The trail remains wide and shallow, bounded by low slickrock bluffs and sandy bluffs, but evetnually the walls close in and you enter the first short stretch of narrows. Beyond this we were quickly swallowed up into a very narrow slot where only about 4 feet separate the canyon walls. We saw a large log wedged in between the walls about ten foot overhead which served as a good reminder of the tremendous force of flash floods in narrow desert canyons.

The colors were very striking and sculptured walls were textured in an array of shapes. the third and final narrow shrinks down to a mere two feet wide in places. After exiting this final slot there is a large shadowed alcove that has some extremely soft sandstone. So soft that you can make a handprint by working your fingers back and forth. Many people have done so as evidenced in the picture. We also saw some old Indian pictographs near here.

The junction of Wire Pass and Buckskin Gulch is wide and open with a number of sheer rock faces and interesting patterns. You can proceed up or downstream from here, we opted to head down stream and within a few hundred feet were back into the slots again. We eventually were stopped by a deep pool of water that was impassable without getting wet and we opted to head back since it was lunch time. We had our lunch in the open space where the two slots meet and then went upstream for a little ways before deciding that we needed to get back to the Jeep and keep moving.

The trip back up Wire Pass was a little more challenging as the drop-offs became climb-ups but we made it ok. It was definitely a rewarding hike and I would like to hike a few other slot canyons sometime in the future.

Click on the photos to enlarge them

Since all the pictures of the “Grand Adventure 2006” are not through processing, we are writing about our vacation/30th anniversary trip in sections and not all in order. This story begins on day 4 of our trip; we hiked Wire Pass in Southern Utah that day and are searching out a place to camp as we head back to Colorado. One of the visitor’s centers earlier in our trip had recommended Alstrom Point overlooking Lake Powell. This day, we stopped at another visitors center as we approached Big Water, Utah, for a more ‘local recommendation’. A New York couple camped in the center parking lot had just been out to the point and recommend it so highly, we decided to make the 25 mile trek. Map in hand we head out through ‘the moonscape’ as they called it and onto the point.

On the North side of Big Water, there is a gravel road – washboards and all- that has the dubious distinction of being called State Highway 12. We decided it is the only state highway we have seen anywhere that is dirt or gravel! This ‘highway’ is both. The landscape quickly changes at Big Water. It began in the red-orange rock of Coyote Buttes and within a distance no more than a mile became a bizarre moon-like gray dust that was almost completely void of life. Plant or animal with a very limited plant selection as the pictures show.

The buttes on the left were easily 1,000 feet high. The top 2/3rds were simply sheer rock faces and the bottom 1/3 was softened by the moon hills. The farm girl in me had to get out and feel the soil’s texture. It was a great photo op as this was something we wanted to remember. The soil was soft, light, almost the consistency of powdered sugar. Continue reading