Tag Archives: grand staircase escalante

Canyons of Life and Time

Early Christians went into the desert to strip away the burdens and temptations of civilization and contemplate something greater. Nowadays even the most self-consciously devout Christians would eye someone doing that as if they had a screw loose. Lawrence of Arabia went into the desert to rally Arab tribesmen and smash the Ottoman Empire; now, he’d be called a white savior colonialist, and the enemy surveillance state would hunt him down. Edward Abbey went into the desert to get away from other humans, but in an era of AI, misanthrope feels like it’s fighting a war from the past. I go to a particular desert because I have come to love it, and I add more reasons as I go.

I am, apparently, on a four-year cycle of visits to the canyon country of southern Utah. This time my annual hiking crew of Bob, Rob, Amy, and Ed is with me, and some things have changed. A real estate rush is on in the region. St. George booms with new McMansions atop ridgelines, and the glamping opportunities around Bryce Canyon have grown exponentially. But head east beyond the park gateway towns and southern Utah starts to fall away into a dusty, harsh backcountry, where ramshackle homes cling to tentative oases of greenery alongside washes and ex-rivers, all dry in a season of drought. Mormon settlers nestled into these remote hamlets in the late nineteenth century, and some of their little outposts live on. It is a land of radial loneliness and fervent belief, and at times just a simple escape. These landscapes attract people differently, and perhaps inspire some unexpected responses.

Capitol Reef National Park sits at the origins of my fondness for canyon country. A few memories of a venture as a 14-year-old hang on: settling in a tent in a green field dotted with fruit trees, the towering red and white cliffs beyond; picking a route up switchbacks and along a canyon and plunging down to cool off my feet in the icy waters of the Fremont River. We day hike here to acclimate ourselves, past a grand natural bridge and up to commanding view over the valley of the Fremont. A quick dip into this landscape and the troubles start to drift away. Up on Boulder Mountain, the aspens herald the coming of fall and turn the heights golden, while ridges of colored rock undulate away into the east. There is even more to this region than I knew.

But the desert sets its own terms, and things do not go according to plan. Monsoon season should be over, but a freak Pacific hurricane has flash flood warnings looming even this far inland. Our planned time in the true backcountry is cut in half. We settle instead at Calf Creek Campground in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in the same campsite I occupied four years ago. We stroll up Calf Creek and clamber up the rocks for happy hour and spend the better part of a night wondering just when our campfire will finally incinerate the teabag Ed has tossed upon one of the logs. Reset the pace, reset the expectations.

I am unbothered: something about these canyons makes them my happy place. It could be the awe-inspiring scale, towering cliffs funneling all life down narrow chutes and labyrinths across an otherwise impassable landscape. It could be the life-giving gifts of the rivers, ribbons of oasis that bring greenery and hope to a deadly climate. It could be the power of that water, blasting down with remarkable force and, over generations, carving its way through rock and time. It could be the sheer remoteness and isolation of these lands, a reminder that I really can disappear from all outside forces for a spell. Whatever it is, this land keeps a smile on my face, triggers surges of wonder even upon repeat viewing. I’ve been to many beautiful corners of this world, but this one demands returns in ways that many others do not.

Even when clipped in half, our hike, through the canyon of the Escalante River from its eponymous town to a highway bridge some ways downriver, is unlike any other. Just about every minute of it offers some vista that could be photographed. Giant canyon walls rise up most of the way, red or white or some shade of brown; sometimes they give the river space, while at others the waterway cuts right up against the towering cliffs. There are some obvious landmarks: an arch, a natural bridge, a few pictographs left by the Frémont people. In this dry year the Escalante is a muddy trickle above Death Hollow, but here Mamie Creek feeds in and gives it a burst of life. Flood evidence dots the route in the form of bent-over plants and accumulated debris and waterlines that show just how high the flow can get. Sometimes the trail over land is a dense thicket of tamarisk; at others, an open field of prickly plants. Further down the canyon widens into cottonwood savannas, airy parks split between sun and shade. Take a shortcut and it is a desert of sage scrub and terra cotta mud flats.

What is unavoidable is a walk in the river, sometimes for quick crossings and at others a long stroll down through the water. We seek out entries and exits on steep, sandy banks that crumble away beneath our feet, and we learn where the quicksand tends to appear: usually on the inner side of a tight curve, though unless there is rock underfoot, no one step is fully safe from muck. We follow dog and human prints as guides, but see on a handful of people deep in the canyon.

We camp for two nights on a large sand flat a little ways up Death Hollow from the Escalante. This even narrower canyon hosts rushing Mamie Creek, and there are hints as to its forbidding name: the floodwater evidence, ample poison ivy, the family of black widows spinning webs by our unofficial toilet area. But if I were nature, I too would try to protect the beauty of Death Hollow. Wading up the stream a few miles leads to even tighter spaces than on the Escalante, up past a graceful waterfall that turns loose a light shower into a pool below, edging along underwater ledges between cliffs and still deeps, picking paths up rapids, and, finally, the point of no return, a watery narrows of unclear depths that we choose not to swim.

The night sky in Death Hollow is as spectacular as I’ve ever seen. The canyon frames the Big Dipper perfectly, and the Milky Way makes a perpendicular cut across our gash in the rock. A few shooting stars burn past us. Vega glows straight overhead, while Polaris hides just behind the cliff. Later in the night, I think someone is shining a light in my tent, but it is merely the moon, finally rising over the rock walls, well short of full but bright enough to take a leak with no added light.

Off the trail the next day, a Zion-adjacent car campground is adequate, solitude sacrificed for a shower building and on-site restaurant. But it does give easy access to Eden. A stroll across the plateau along the East Rim of Zion Canyon takes us to Observation Point, a perch so commanding that it looks down on Angel’s Landing below. The crowd here is small, and we can marvel at our better view than that enjoyed by the masses down on the promontory below us. I trace my route up the West Rim four years ago, on to my lonely camp in cold and ice and the revelation of the glittering sunrise that followed the next morning, all the way up the red cliffs and white caps and through the green trees to the flatlands up top. This, I muse, is one of the coolest views a person will ever see, and I gaze down at the Shangri-La below and start the clock until my next return.

There is some validity to the concern that overtourism has come to Utah’s great national parks. Edward Abbey blasted the building of roads and upgraded campgrounds and other such amenities that ease access to canyon country. If he could see what tourism trends have done in the decades since, he’d roll over in his unmarked desert grave. They are busy and the roads can get packed, and the money is flowing in. But for my part, I think getting lost in canyons is a much more constructive use of people’s time than many of their other pursuits, and I make no special claim on any places to myself just because I had the good fortune to see them before they blew up. Conservation of natural treasures and their magic in the face of increased tourism is a solvable problem to manage, not an automatic crisis or signifier of decline. In fact, it allows people to recalibrate, to escape from the eternal progress machine they inhabit and commune with the grandeur that creates meaning. The more people we get to taste that, the better. If Zion now feels over-touristed to you, head to Grand Staircase-Escalante—or, for that matter, just walk up Zion Canyon instead of taking its shuttle. The American West is vast enough to hold all of us, which is why large parts of it are owned by all of us.

There are side perks to increased visitation, too: Escalante country has become a realm of low-key culinary achievement. The crown jewel is Hell’s Backbone Grill, a farm-to-table staple whose 2018 New Yorker feature first tripped my interest in this region. We have a night of great happiness on its patio. But there is also the Kiva Koffeehouse, an artsy outpost nestled into a cliff above the Highway 12 bridge over the Escalante. In the town of Escalante, Old Bull Kitchen serves elevated, Japanese-inspired fare. Even the Escalante Mercantile has lovely biscuit and croissant sandwiches for breakfast, surrounded by a most random collection of local food and art for sale. A rock slide across a highway keeps us from Springdale, Zion’s main gate, but it too now feeds its visitors well.

As we descend the Virgin River Gorge and leave red rock country, we know things are about to change. Perhaps nothing could be more discordant than beginning and ending a wilderness venture in Las Vegas. This city is the anti-wilderness, a world of artifice and flashy screens and money-chasing, a place to descend deep into bad habits instead of a realm of restoration. It is accessible to a fault, the democracy of mass tastes juxtaposed against the trail-seeking select who go far beyond its glitzy Strip. It would be easy to dismiss it with a haughty wave and move on.

And yet I appreciate Las Vegas more with each visit. Appreciation does not necessarily mean I like it. Look closely and there are a lot of people around who are broken or breaking. Vegas has also drifted away from the building drama of the poker or craps table into greater screen time, sadder and sadder as the same trashy slot machines that one would find in any random backwater casino now infect even the lobby of the Bellagio. But the food scene is good, and we poke about the Cosmopolitan’s speakeasies and gawk at the pastiche absurdity of the Venetian, a true postmodern architectural triumph. A lot of people are delighted and having fun, and it’s hard not to gawk at the sleek new sports stadiums and rising new towers, the American growth machine at its apex. Vegas races headlong into the future ahead of the rest of us, a source of both intrigue and warning, and a temptation to let it all loose, at least for a night. For now, I settle for a fun, Rob-curated exploration before we say our goodbyes over a hotel room nightcap.

It will be a bit before I return to canyon country, but the rhythms of life aren’t too far off from a hike down a canyon. We are bounded by certain walls, constrained by forces of nature that long predate us and set us on a general path. Sometimes we can climb out, sometimes we are stuck struggling through sagebrush and invasive greenery, through prickly things and across mud flats. The path can start to feel monotonous, and some turns in the canyon start to resemble previous ones. Others are new and reveal cozy campsites or clues from long-gone inhabitants. Sometimes fresh new steams dump in to give things new life. Sometimes it is a tight slot and a traveler can only shuffle ahead carefully, but sometimes a range of paths diverge, offer options and chances to share trails with others. There are flash floods, there are droughts, but usually the life force flows along easily enough. Even in these oases the water continues to flow, wash over layers shaped by time.

As we age we often become more ourselves, locked in our ways, more apt to stick with what we know and dismiss the rest—if we even think of it, and are not sitting at our slot machine thoughtlessly pressing the same button again and again. Becoming one with the flow down a desert stream asks us how to exercise the time we’ve been gifted, to figure out the best pace, which might just vary a little from what we’ve done before. For all my ups and downs of the past few years, I stop to appreciate one legitimate triumph: these days I have the free time to do the things I want to do, able to add regular fresh delight as I please. There is time to see what is around the next bend in the canyon.

Grand Staircase II: Stairway into the Unknown

This is Part 2 of a three-part travel series. Part 1 is here.

My night outside Zion is fitful, nervous, eager with anticipation, the sense that my plan for the next two days is no casual stroll. I have a one-night date with the West Rim Trail. When I go to collect my permit, the ranger appraises me carefully: this hike is a 3,000-foot climb, the upper reaches of the ascent are covered in snow, up top the trails are thick with mud, the only water source there is probably snow-covered, and oh, have you noticed all the rain in the forecast? I assure her I am a northern Minnesotan, and when she learns I’ve day hiked to three-quarters of the route before, she gains a bit more confidence in my abilities. The day dawns a dreary grey, which only makes for perfect hiking weather. A couple with overnight packs is also on my shuttle up the canyon, and we leapfrog our way all the way up to Cabin Spring, where they settle in at the first campsite on Zion’s roof.

This trek is one of phases. The first 2.5 miles follow the well-worn route to Angels Landing, the iconic clamber up chains between thousand-foot drop-offs that I conquered four years ago and feel zero compulsion to climb again. After Angels Landing is my favorite part of the whole trek, as the crowds thin out and the trail climbs a series of shelves with views to rival those of the famed promontory, culminating in a huge, white dome. From there, it tucks in along the backside of one of the mounts lining the canyon, past cool streams of snowmelt trickling down the rock. Higher up, the snow begins, first as little clumps alongside the trail, and later covering substantial portions of the trail itself, though it is firm enough and well-enough worn that at no point is it awful. At the top of the snow I encounter a family I’d seen high up on the East Rim the previous day, and their intrepid 10-year-old daughter advises me on how best to have fun with the snow. My kingdom for children who someday show the same pluck and guile as her. From here, there are more exposed switchbacks up another steep wall to the West Rim Lookout at Cabin Spring, where most day hikers (including myself four years ago) turn around.

I see no one in my 24 hours beyond Cabin Spring. There are more climbs, but they are gradual, and the muck is indeed treacherous in places, first as an insidious yellow mud that isn’t thick but clings to boots like leeches on legs, and later in a thicker, gloppy ascent with a full-blown stream running down the middle. The views are stellar, or so I am forced to guess: I am in the clouds, the chances to see outward sporadic, and while the mesa here is exposed enough that most snow is off the trail, it still clings to shaded hillsides. The late winter landscape takes on a haunted, empty air, and phantom voices carry through the howling wind. I am as alone as I’ve ever been.

Finally, I arrive at campsite 5, which sits atop a ridge between Phantom Valley to the west and Telephone and Imlay Canyons to the east. The clouds whip directly over me and plunge my ridge into obscurity, and I pass the afternoon cycling from one side to the other, admiring the vista in whichever direction has the higher clouds at that moment. I don’t tire of it. In time, though, the thicker clouds get too close, and rain, interspersed with ice pellets, begins to fall. I have a tent malfunction, but some string and some rocks solve my dilemma and keep me dry through a 12-hour span under the covers. I sleep poorly, never warm but never exactly cold, yet somehow content that I have made it where I want to be. I rise at sunrise and finally look out to see the view from my throne atop Zion. The world glitters beneath me, ignited by a fiery glow. I am transfixed, my pilgrimage at its apex.

I wait until nearly ten to break camp so the sun can eat away at the ice on my equipment and dry out as much as it can. The trek down reveals all the views I’d missed the day before, made somehow more stunning by their temporary withholding, and I plow down in an hour less time than it took me to make the climb. Beyond the snowy bits I join a day-hiking couple from Beaver Bay, just an hour north of Duluth; we trade shared acquaintances as we go. Angels Landing is an absolute zoo, and I may have seen it at its absolute worst: in just two days, the National Park Service is finally imposing a permit system on the famed hike, and only the select, pre-scheduled few will be able to head up the chains. I fight the crowds down the switchbacks and settle for a half-mile stroll along the canyon bottom back to the Zion Lodge for a much-needed meal and a drink.

The Lodge is not quite what the doctor ordered for a weary hiker. The food has all the flavor of a McDonalds with none of the speed. There is only one beer on tap until the distributor’s truck arrives again, though at least it is a decent local microbrew. There are no open tables and alcohol is not allowed off the patio on to the inviting lawn, so I decamp on a wall by the beer stand until a departing couple takes pity on me. I pay it forward and let a couple from St. Louis join me, and we bond over our fondness for road trips and incredulity over the crowds. (Shouldn’t all these children be in school?!) I share my shuttle back down the canyon with a clump of high schoolers on some sort of Christian retreat, all of whom ignore the mask mandate and talk earnestly about what they are looking for in relationships. Is it bad that my instinct is to buy them a case of beer?

I return to my car and climb back up out of Zion, back through the Mount Carmel tunnel and then north on US-89. My abode for the next two nights is a no-frills roadside cabin some 20 miles west of Bryce Canyon, and my dinner that night comes at a family diner in the town of Panguich, a bustling joint staffed almost entirely by teenagers. From my spot at the bar, I get a front row seat to the chaos, as the POS system is deemed a POS and three orders come out for tables with no one sitting at them. At least the wings are tasty.

A poll of acquaintances who have visited both Zion and Bryce has been inconclusive on which is better. While Bryce cannot match the sheer scale of Zion, it has an intimacy to it, and its famed hoodoos never cease to amaze with their wild shapes. Trails chart labyrinthine courses around the pinnacles of rock, never flat as they wind down to the floor of the canyon and then back up and around to get over to the next feature. South of the bustling amphitheater, a 17-mile road snakes its way up past 9,000 feet in elevation, with repeated overlooks up and down the Grand Staircase and across the Paria River valley. It’s snowing when I arrive, and while it is a bit too warm for anything to accumulate, three more squalls break out over the course of the day. The most eventful one comes as I traverse the Bristlecone Trail at the far end of the scenic drive; the woman I am following loses the trail entirely for a spell. She is one of five lost people I help over the course of the day, and I can’t pass up the opportunity to lament the decline of navigational skills. “Trust me, I don’t get lost!” I want to yell at the dude making his second circuit of the Peek-a-Boo Trail even though he is sure he isn’t; later in the day, we meet at an overlook and he concedes defeat. Don’t mess with my geography skills.

The burst of wind and snow that nearly stole my hat away atop Bryce Point tells me it’s time to wrap things up here. I wrap up my Bryce hiking with a quick trot to an ice-filled cave off Highway 12, where dripping water produces a trickling symphony that silences the cluster of viewers. I am glad I saw Bryce, but in a day, I feel like I have seen what it has to offer, while after nearly a week in Zion across two trips, I still haven’t touched its northern unit or The Narrows or Observation Point or its little-known southern desert. I conclude my tour of Bryce with a geology lesson in the visitor center, content with a rock-filled day sandwiched between two experiences of wilderness sublime.

This entire trip is, in effect, a traverse of the Grand Staircase, a series of rock layers that rise up from the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River into central Utah. These different bands of geological time give the rocks different hues, often ending in dramatic dropping shelves. Closest to the Colorado are the Chocolate Cliffs, while the Vermilion Cliffs rise near Kanab, just south of the Utah-Arizona state line, and include the Coral Pink Sand Dunes, the areas around Colorado City, and the lower layers of Zion. Next come the White Cliffs, which look like a jagged scrape on an aerial image; they form Zion’s upper reaches. The drive from Zion to Bryce follows the cut of the Sevier River up through the Grey Cliffs, and finally, at the top, are the Pink Cliffs that reach the heights of Bryce at 9,000 feet. Above these sit the great upland plateaus of south-central Utah, themselves rising in steps: the Markagunt, the Paunsaugunt, and the Aquarius. The Staircase’s eastern railing is the Kaiparowits Plateau, which stretches down from the Aquarius to the Colorado and falls off on its own eastern side from the Straight Cliffs into the canyonlands of the Escalante River. It is in this remote land, the last portion of the lower 48 states to be mapped by the US government, that I will spend the bulk of the next two days.

The drive east from Bryce has the distinct feeling of heading deeper into the wilderness. I tumble down from the Paunsaugunt through a series of Mormon frontier towns in the Paria River valley, oasis outposts with verdant fruit trees clustering around dust-choked homes. The road winds up into the Kaipirowits and down through funky Escalante, traffic thinned to a trickle. My eagerness at this fresh landscape grows, but nothing quite prepares for the Head of the Rocks Overlook, where the scrubby plateau disappears and the rocky canyonlands of the Escalante River undulate out in all directions below, the ribbon of the CCC-built Highway 12 the only thing interrupting the march of these rocky waves out to a few snow-capped ranges on the fringes of the wilderness.

At the direction of a ranger, I head straight for the Calf Creek Campground and claim one of the 13 sites nestled just above that small stream’s confluence with the Escalante. I wish I could have arrived just two weeks later to see this small Eden at its best, but as it is, these oases in the desert are budding and coming to life. I plug up the creek some three miles to Lower Calf Creek Falls, a 120-foot plunge of water into a deep, cold pool. The route is gradual, with views to ancient pictographs and granaries up on cliffs, and while a healthy crowd hikes this trail, it has nothing on Zion or Bryce. I dip my feet in the icy waters and take my time to soak in the warmth on the stroll back.

After a recovery spell in a hammock, I drive north into Boulder. On the way, Highway 12 skirts high above Calf Creek and the canyonlands to the east, an Angels Landing for cars atop the ridge, and then plunges into Boulder, the last town in the US to have mule-delivered mail, accessible only by unpaved road until the 1980s. The Burr Trail, an old cattle route, swings east from here, and a cheery sign announces a mere 72-mile trip to the Lake Powell Ferry. The trek would take hours; I settle for a trip in to the aptly named Long Canyon, a deep red gash in the stone, and home to a lonely slot canyon worthy of a quick exploration. That night, back at Calf Creek, I hop up on a natural red rock seat, sip away at some wine, and drift into a reverie as the stars emerge, deep in this lonely desert, the crackling fires and stray laughs across the campground filling me with a warmth independent of the cool evening air.

Some ice forms in the water bottle I leave out on the picnic table, but I have my soundest night of sleep in a tent on this trip. After packing up, I do a 6-mile stroll up and down the Escalante, wading its frigid waters 14 times as I process up the canyon to a natural bridge and an arch. The trail snakes along those pure flowing waters, up and down ledges and across dry washes, nestling beneath cliffs and cottonwoods and through fields of sage. All is at peace.

I take my time in making my exit from Grand Staircase-Escalante. First, another hiker mentions some unadvertised petroglyphs just above the parking lot by the river where I’ve been hiking, so I head up the trail opposite the river and, after a few false turns, arrive at these signs from the past. On the other side of the river, I pause for a scrumptious lunch at the Kiva Koffeeshop, a new agey wonder built right into the hill, with views up and down the canyon. Grand Staircase-Escalante is a beauty, Zion’s essence distilled to its basics and stripped of its crowds. I shall return.

Part 3 is here.