Labor Day Weekend

For Labor Day some friends and I drove down to the Escalante area of Utah - down to Grand Staircase and backpacked into Coyote Gulch. Lindsey had tried to go down there earlier in the summer over Memorial Day weekend, but there had been so much rain the week leading up to the weekend that the river was swollen and completely impassable - and you spend much of your time hiking through the river. Coyote Gulch is the canyon that the Escalante River winds through and this time around the river was practically only a trickle. We hiked in 5 miles to Jacob Hamblin Arch. It literally took us all day to hike in since we kept coming up on really cool stuff - like waterfalls and towering canyon walls and even an outhouse caused us to stop and enjoy it's convenience!

We originally set up camp on a sandy beach just a couple feet above the riverbed. But later than evening a pretty good thunderstorm rolled in and dumped on us. We were kind of under a outcropping so we all jumped back under it so didn't have to get into our tents, but even then that outcropping didn't provide much protection since the water began to run down the wall. After the storm let up, the river started getting louder so I went over there and watched the river rise by about a foot. I started getting really nervous about flooding since Coyote Gulch is known for it's flash floods. But we tried to go to bed anyways. But just as I was getting in my sleeping bag, the river began to get even louder, so Lindsey and I went out and watched the river rise another foot - which brought it within a foot of our sandy beach. Both times the river rose, it only took a couple minutes and on the second time were were seeing debris floating down in the river. So that's when we decided to move camp to higher ground. In the morning we found out that the water stopped rising after that, but you know what....? I slept better because of it and better safe than sorry.

So we hiked out 6 miles, ate a yummy sandwich lunch at the cars and then drove the 40-mile dirt road back out to Escalante. We did have a couple exciting mud-spots in the dirt road though. That storm the night before sent little rivers over the low parts of the road and created some fairly long mud holes to drive through. Thankfully we had 4WD. Oh! And one other side note - as we hiked out we saw a construction cone in the riverbed not a mile or two from our campsite and I swear I saw that cone on the side of the dirt road marking a spot where the road was beginning to wash away! We also took a detour to Devil's Garden along the dirt road - that was pretty cool - it's the last picture in this entry.

Then we headed to Zion National Park to go canyoneering. We had a yummy dutch oven lasagna dinner with salad and dutch oven peach cobbler for dinner that night. We were all starved because there was only 7 of us and we ate both dutch ovens full of food. Tim scored big points when he finished off the lasagna which made for 3 big helpings for him. But that lasagna turned out surprisingly well!

So Monday we headed out to go find Spry Canyon to go canyoneering through it... and we hiked and hiked and scrambled up rocky mountain-sides and scaled down them and .... all to no avail. We could night find the entrance to the canyon. We hiked around for 4 hours or so. It was beautiful country though so no one was too disappointed, but the later it got the less likely we were going to get out of the canyon and on the drive home until late that evening. So I think that was bearing on everyone's mind as well. So, in stead, we hiked back out and went into town to enjoy a meal at a Mexican restaurant and then hit the road, getting home around 10 pm.

It was a fabulous weekend! It's always great to have friends to play with and ones that are so flexible and fun!