The Escalante River - Hard Work

Friday May 24th we drove to the town of Escalante, Utah.  I rode with Roger, Debbie rode with Randy.   We stayed at the Escalante campground across from visitor center.  We had dinner at Circle D restaurant.

Saturday we drove to Egypt trailhead. Amazingly, someone volunteered to carry two loads down the hill for us!!  We walked down, but got off trail, and ended up in canyon, when we should have been on the ridge. Debbie and I dropped our packs at 2/3 point, headed back to the trailhead, and ran shuttle. We both had awful heavy packs on the way down; I arrived at camp at dusk, exhausted. Everyone was tired, so we did no cooking.

Sunday AM we packed boats, got on the water about 11:30. Randy and Debbie experimented with loading their packrafts.  The river was nice, with some scraping and maneuvering. We made the short hike to the Golden Cathedral in Neon canyon.  We camped on the bar across from 25 mile canyon.

Randy, Roger, and Debbie

Monday. The weather was nice at first, then hard rain and wind. We saw many waterfalls. I started to get hypothermia by Baker canyon, shivering, so we stopped and set up my tent.  I should have brought my dry suit; the inflatable kayak is a colder and wetter boat than my canoe.  The side creek ran high. The rain stopped in the evening.

Scorpion Rapid

Tuesday was partly cloudy and warmer. We had some adventures. I fell out of my boat once. At Scorpion rapid, our plan was to eddy out left.  I was first and did that.  Roger eddied out a bit upstream. The rapid looked crazy to me. There were people on shore urging us to run it. Amazingly, everybody disregarded the plan and followed the advice of people we did not know. Randy flipped and his boat disappeared downstream. Roger flipped at the end.  I portaged, and still flipped on the lower section. We headed downstream, hoping to find Randy’s boat and gear, and making contingency plans. Miraculously, we found the boat half a mile downstream. We headed for George’s camp at mile 57, but ended up across the river.  9 miles today, a good number on this river.  The rangers came to camp around 7:30, and we invited them to stay, which they did. Their packs were impressively small. We pumped them for information.

Wednesday the river was down a few inches, and we scraped a lot.  Sometimes it felt like we were the ball in pinball.  The mandatory portage was a lot of work, perhaps 75 yards. We camped across from Fools canyon, a good camp, but not a good takeout. We made 10 miles.

Steven's Arch

Thursday. The weather was warmer and drier.  The river was down a little more. We got on the river earlier. There was some running aground, and pinballing off rocks. We got to Coyote Canyon about 1 PM, and walked up the stream bed to camp, 5 minutes up the canyon.   I scouted the route out; to get out of the canyon involves scrambling on downsloping rock and sand, with significant exposure.

Another party hauling packs at the crack

Friday. We left camp around 8. On the rock section, I ended up shuttling everyone's pack. The hike to Crack in the Wall was brutal, heavy loads, multiple carries, uphill on sand, the hottest day of the trip, and we ran out of water.  Crack in the wall was a bit of a social event, groups cooperating to move loads through that section, including ropes.

Richard in crack

Looking down from Crack in Wall

We left much of the gear at the top of the canyon, to be carried the next day.  We all agreed that it was the hardest day we could remember. Everyone was exhausted.    We spent 11 hours hauling gear, and camped in the parking lot.

Tha last part of the hike out

Saturday. We spent 8 AM to 1 PM hauling gear back to car. So it took us 16 hours of work to haul our boats and gear out of the canyon.  We stayed in Escalante at Circle D motel, with dinner at the restaurant. We took a stroll down main street; many of the buildings had historical markers on them.

Sunday - We had breakfast at the Circle D, and drove home without incident.

After the trip, there did not seem to be much enthusiasm for pack rafting, partly because we would all need new ultralight gear, in order to be able to haul in a single load.   The double hauls mean that you have to travel three times the distance.   People liked the river, but would not come back if we had to hike in and hike out.