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.

Report on Hiking Coyote Gulch

Jacob Hamblin Arch from Downstream

The backpacking trip to Coyote Gulch went off without a hitch this week. OK, it went off with only minor hitches.

After much debate, we opted to go in via the trailhead near Chimney Rock, rather than the climb down the slickrock near Jacob Hamblin Arch. This added a couple of miles to the hike in, but the descent was relatively gradual and the scenery was great. It required route finding over the sand and slickrock for about a mile or so from the trailhead into Hurricane Wash, but the entry was easy to spot after cresting a ridge after a half mile. The descent over the slickrock into the wash was a bit round about to avoid potholes and such, but not difficult.

The young men from my church group are planning on doing an overnighter here in June. Dave's son is also thinking about taking his scouts here sometime in the future. So with this in mind I wrote up some thoughts on how one might approach this hike with young men and only one night in the gulch.

We hiked in a little past Jacob Hamblin Arch near the base of the slickrock exit there. The park service has installed a two-seat composting toilet there because it is such a popular site. Many people like to camp there before climbing out along the ridge the next morning. We counted 4-5 different groups in the general area.

Dave brought bratwurst for dinner which he had frozen before the trip and they were nicely thawed by dinner time.

The next day we hiked downstream further with daypacks and the going was much easier. We made it about four miles downstream at a very leisurely pace. The highlights included several beautiful cascades and waterfalls, a natural bridge, a cliffside arch, and a stunning set of pictographs. I will devote a whole post to the pictographs later, but in the meantime you can view all the photos at my website.

The trail was very easy to follow. The only semi-tough spots were a boulder field just upstream of Cliff Arch, and a pair of waterfalls just downstream of Cliff Arch. You need to bypass the later two, but the trail was easy to miss and we ended up above the lower falls with a 15 foot drop or scramble down and no obvious way back up. A group of French hikers came up from below while we were eating lunch there and we just sort of shrugged at each other. We couldn't find a way down and they couldn't find a way up.

We turned around at this point because I was getting tired and Dave was starting to feel blisters on his feet. This turned out to be a good idea because the blisters were more serious than he thought initially.

We hiked out the next morning the way we had come in. The climb out of Hurricane Wash was a beast. We knew the general direction was almost directly due east, but the trailhead is not visible from the wash and you have to take a twisting route up through the slickrock to avoid the really steep spots and the potholes. We did not take a waypoint reading at the trailhead and this turned out to be a big mistake. Instead, we read off the coordinates from the map. These are 37º 24' 59" N and 111º 05' 54" W. However we made a typing error and put in 25' rather than 24'. That turns out to be 1.15 miles north of the trailhead. So after climbing out of the wash we took a heading on the GPS and headed off to the NW rather than due west. This took us to much higher terrain and over some steep sandy ground. I was pretty pooped out by the time we crested the ridge. Dave got there first and said, "Well, if there was a truck out there I would see it for sure and I don't see one." The truck was about a half mile to our SW, however, and about 90 degress off the heading we had been taking. The rest of the way was pretty easy, but we were both exhausted by the time we got back to the truck.

To top everything off, the truck would not start. Everything was totally dead. Its a quirk of the vehicle (since repaired) that the battery connector occasionally comes loose, so you have to pop the hood and jiggle it around to get a good connection. I knew this and wan't too worried, but I think Dave was for at least a little bit.

All in all it was a wonderful trip. The scenery was stunning and the hiking was fun despite the challenges. The pictographs were a very pleasant surprize, much better than expected. More on that later.

Hiking the Escalante River Canyon

This is a relatively easy hike along the Escalante River through some very beautiful scenery. I went with the boy scouts on this one last June. The upper trailhead is just outside the town of Escalante and the trailhead at the other end is by the bridge where highway 12 crosses the river at Calf Creek. You can do the hike in a day, but it's alot of walking and you wouldn't have much time to explore or enjoy the scenery. Most people do it in two days. We took three.

You will need to register for a backcountry permit at the interagency visitor's center in Escalante if you are planing on staying overnight. You should also be prepared to utilize Leave No Trace principles, which in Escalante Canyon includes no open fires and pack out your toilet paper.

The hike divides easily into two parts of roughly equal length: 1) from Escalante to the Death Hollow and 2) from Death Hollow to Calf Creek.

Escalante to Death Hollow

For the first part, the canyon is much narrower than further down and the stream is much smaller. I suspect the main reason is that much of the water that used to flow down the Escalante here is now siphoned off for use in the town of Escalante.

There are at least three native American pictograph panels located in the first two and half miles of the hike. The first is located just over a mile in, on the north side of one of the big loops the river makes. Look for a couple of large trees on the west side of the stream and you'll see a clear path from there to the cliff face where the petroglyphs are carved. There are at least two spots here with pictographs, so look around and be sure you see both. Look behind the brushes growing next to the clearly visible panels as there are some carvings that are hidden.

First Pictograph Site

The second site is located downstream on the next loop in the river, at almost the exact same spot in the loop, the northwest. This one is smaller and has some more modern additions.

Second Pictograph Site

The third site is located two more bends down the river in a huge alcove on the north side of the river. It's impossible to miss. This alcove is so big and so obviously a great shelter, you wonder why the Anasazi didn't build a big complex here like they did at Mesa Verde. On a follow up hike just after Thanksgiving with my family, I discovered at least a partial answer. This site gets no direct sun in the Winter.

The pictographs here are in pretty bad shape and look to have been restored at some time. The more you look around the more you can tell that this site used to be covered in graffiti, but it has been scrubbed away. Who knows what other Fremont or Anazai pictographs were here before the graffiti was scawled all over? The main art is a series of four figures linked arm-to-arm at the back. It is unmissable. There are some other figures a few feet to the left and some very small ones on the wall at the far right in the back of the alcove.

Third Pictograph Site

The other interesting thing here is the hard sand that forms the floor of the alcove. Where it drops off into the stream bed people have carved all sorts of faniciful things into the five-foot high sand cliff.

The alcove from aross the river and slightly downstream

This is a good place to camp if you have the time. If you are trying to do the hike in two days, you should keep on hiking. The water in the river slowly dwindles and completely disappears a few miles below this site, so your next best camping spot is at the mouth of Death Hollow. The spot marked on my map above with the red circle had no water, so don't plan on camping there.

The hike from the alcove to the mouth of Death Hollow is 4 to 4.5 miles and the section about a mile upstream from the confluence is especially impressive. The hiking is easy all along this route, but especially so here since there is no water in the riverbed.

Be sure to take some time and hike at least some small distance up Death Hollow. The banks have patches of poison ivy, so your best route is to walk up in the middle of the stream bed. The canyon is very spectacular and it would be a shame to miss it after coming all this way.

Death Hollow to Calf Creek

The hike from Death Hollow to Sand Creek is a bit harder, but still not very hard. The biggest impediment, if you are backpacking, is the river crossings. The river is no longer dry and its not a little stream you can jump across like it is at the begining of the hike. Plan on getting your feet wet. The banks are steep and very sandy. Going down is easy, climbing up the opposite bank is a real pain. Most people give up and just hike along the stream bed. It's slower going and the loops in the river make it longer, but its much more pleasant, especially if you are in no particular hurry.

Two and half miles downstream from Death Hollow, the river makes a big southern loop. The south side of the canyon is a towering sheer cliff, and the river bottom is covered with trees growing in soft white sand. This would make a good campsite if you were on an extended trip.

The Sandy Loop

Another mile below this Sand Creek joins the Escalante from a canyon to the north. The canyon is much wider here and the trail is well-defined. The hiking is easier on the trail than in the river. About a half mile below Sand Creek there is a huge natural arch on the south wall of the canyon. To the east of this is an alcove in the cliff high above the canyon wall with several Anasazi cliff houses in it. This is also a good place to camp.

The Natural Arch

Alcove with Cliff Houses

Another half mile downstream from here, hidden in shadows on the south side of the canyon, is Ecalante Natural Bridge. The shadows make it difficult to photograph, but it is easy to see and you can walk up underneath it with a little effort.
From here it is another two miles to the trailhead at Calf Creek. If you have time and energy left over you can follow a trail from the parking lot up onto the north side of the canyon and see the Hundred Hands pictograph. A walk downstream below the bridge for a couple hundred yards or so will allow you a view of another cliff house on the north side of the canyon.
This is a fun hike through some spectacular country and it's relatively easy with not much up and down. You could spend days exploring here if you wanted to.
For a more detailed, higher resolution version of the maps here, try this link.
Here are a couple of handouts from the visitor's center:

• What to expect when hiking in the area.
• Leave No Trace guidelines for Escalante Canyon.