MJK Thrills N Spills: Backpacking in Grand Gulch

Over Memorial Day weekend a few friends and I went backpacking through Grand Gulch in southeastern Utah. We put one car at Bullet Canyon trail head where we would come out of the canyon and began our hike at the Collins Spring trail head on the other side. So it was a one-way 33-mile hike.

I did such an awesome job packing for it. I'm super proud of myself. My pack was only a 38 liter pack and didn't weigh 30 lbs. I did wear the same clothes for three days - but it was only 3 days and 2 nights in the canyon so there was no need to pack heavy. I needed all the advantage I could get since I knew I would be the slowest hiker there.

The first day was pretty cool except for hiking through all the sand. We did take a wrong turn down the wrong canyon which would have taken us down to the San Juan River to the south - when we needed to go east. But we got it figured out before too long and only added 1.5 miles to our hike that day - although we were trying to get 12-14 miles in that day.

The second day of hiking was through some pretty thick vegetation and thus was pretty close to bush-whacking. The two guys would frequently get ahead of us and then wait for us to catch up, but there was one point where the canyon split with Step Canyon and since we were tired, Lizzy was hurt, and we weren't paying attention to the canyon walls above us, we three girls turned up Step Canyon unknowingly and added a mile to our hike that day - which was already planned to be 11 miles. One of the guys left his pack with the other and came running up Step Canyon to get us. They had been yelling for us... and at one point it seemed like their yells were to our right and then later behind us.... but we doubted ourselves since their yells were echoing off the canyon walls.

The third day was the best day of hiking, very little sand and very little thick vegetation. And only 7 miles. We climbed up through a slick rock wash at the very end and that was pretty cool. We really tested my water filter's ability to filter water: the canyon was pretty dry and didn't have very much running water at all. So two out of the three times that we filtered water to drink and cook with it was from potholes that had tadpoles swimming around in... yuck. But my filter worked like a champ and we didn't get sick. I'll be replacing the actual filter portion of my water filter though.... it got pretty slow at pumping water by the end and I figure that is because the filter is clogged with all the stuff we didn't want to drink.

We counted 17 ruins that we saw! That is what Grand Gulch is famous for. Have you heard of Mesa Verde and the Anasazi ruins there? Well, Grand Gulch is chuck-full of ruins similar to the ones at Mesa Verde. The ruins were home to the Anasazi people sometime around 900-1200 AD. And you could walk up to these ruins and really check them out.