Backpacking to Neon Canyon, May 2010

Last May, my brother Kendall, my son Evan, and I backpacked into Neon Canyon for three days and two nights.

Neon Canyon is a box canyon tributary to the Escalante River and is accessed from the Egypt trailhead off of the Hole in the Rock Road, south of Escalante, Utah.


We left Orem on the morning of Thursday, May 6th and drove down to the town of Escalante where we got a backcountry permit. From there we drove to the Egypt trailhead and set out. The people at the interagency office in Escalante suggested we head cross country to the mouth of Neon Canyon and hike down to the river via some sand dunes, so that is what we did. We misjudged the exact entrance, however, and had to hike along the dunes upstream along a fifty to hundred foot cliff until we found a break that we could scuttle down through to get to the floor of the canyon.


View Larger Map

The mouth of Neon Canyon is in the center of the map above. Ringtail Slot is the thin line draining into the Escalante in the lower right from the East. Fence Canyon is the two canyons on the left of the map. The main trail in and out is along the lower one.

We camped for one night in a grove of trees near the mouth of Neon Canyon. The campsite was great and the weather in May was beautiful. The Escalante River was running a bit high, due to spring runoff, I suppose. And at the crossings we used it was waist deep or higher. We had bratwurst and rice for dinner. We froze the sausages the night before we left and they were perfectly thawed by dinnertime.

Campsite

Don't worry, I didn't actually touch the rock

The next day, I hiked upstream a bit and found a huge petroglyph panel on the lower cliff faces on the east side of the river. Kendall and I hiked downstream that morning to Ringtail Slot and wandered up the slot canyon a couple hundred yards. It was very deep and very dark. If you go, take a headlamp or flashlight. From there we hiked back and found the second petroglyph panel downstream from the mouth of Neon Canyon.

Inside Ringtail Slot

In the afternoon the three of us wandered up Neon Canyon to the Golden Cathedral, a pool and pouroff that effectively ends the hike. It was very impressive. We lingered there for an hour or so and watched a group of canyoneers rappell down the pouroff from the slot canyon above. It was lots of fun to watch.

Rappelling into the Golden Cathedral (not me)

After that we hiked out via Fence Canyon because the thought of trudging uphill through the sanddunes with a full pack did not seem at all appealing to any of us. It was a long slog, especially the climb up the slickrock back to the trailhead and Evan, in particular, was feeling sick struggled a bit, but in the end we made it before sundown.

We car camped that night a half mile or so off of the Hole in the Rock Road and headed to the slot canyons in upper Coyote Gulch in the morning. Evan stayed in the truck at the trailhead as he was still feeling under the weather, but Kendall and I hiked down into the canyon and explored the Dry Fork slot and went a little ways up Spooky Gulch. Peek-a-boo was too hard for fat ol' me to feel comfortable trying the scramble in (next time I'll bring some webbing or a short rope and let somebody fit go first). And we never made it to Brimestone Gulch. Girth was also an issue getting more than a couple hundred yards up Spooky. I understand we could enter from the upstream side if we did a bit of cross-country route finding, so maybe that's what we'll do this May when we go back.

Me stuck in Spooky Gulch