Neon Canyon in May

BYU lets out in April and I am done teaching for the academic year. My son, Evan, and I are off to the canyons of the Escalante again. The Alpine School District is still in session until the end of May, so this outing will not involve my younger kids.

Rather than head back to lower Coyote Gulch (for the 4th time since last April), we are planning on visiting Neon Canyon and the slot canyons in the upper part of Coyote Gulch.

We will be heading out on a Thursday early in the morning and the plan is to make it to the trailhead at Egypt and hike the 3 to 4 miles down to the Escalante River to camp near Neon Canyon. We'll explore it the next day, along with Ringtail Slot and then hike back to the truck. The hike is detailed nicely here. Details of some possible technical canyoneering (which we will not be doing) are available here and here.

We'll car camp somewhere along the Hole-in-the-Rock road on Friday night and head to the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch to visit the slot canyons there. There are four to visit, Dry Fork, Peek-a-boo, Spooky Gulch, and Brimstone Gulch. Further downstream from Brimstone there is also some rock art, which we may visit if we have time.

Off to Muddy Creek!

Spring is here, sort of. So I am off hiking and camping for the first time this season (not counting my cold, cold escapade with the scouts last weekend which lasted much less than 24 hours).

The week after Easter is spring break for the Alpine School District, so I am taking my kids (all 4 I believe) to Muddy Creek down in the southern part of the San Rafael Swell. Since BYU does not have a spring break, the plan is to leave on Thursday afternoon once my teaching is done for the week. We'll drive down to the airfield near the Hidden Splendor Mine and camp there on Thursday night. On Friday we will all drive to Tomsich Butte and hike down Muddy Creek through "the Chute" 15 miles or so back to our campsite. There is a nice description of this hike here.

Saturday will entail a hike downstream from the campsite through the San Rafael Reef via Muddy Creek Gorge and then back upstream. This hike is detailed here and here.

So far I have my four children, a colleague from work and his son, one BYU student, a neice, my older daughter's boyfriend, my younger daughter's school friend, and four young men from the ward who have said they're coming along. It should be a fun outing.

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

This blog post by Donnald Marron is an interesting read for anyone interested in differences in standards of living.

"The productivity comparisons are striking: China, Indonesia, and India are 90% less productive than the 15 richest OECD countries. That’s an enormous gap."

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

Bank worker finds face of Jesus in his frying pan

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. I'm not sure why this is the first thing I post after such a long break.

"Toby, 22, is adamant this image genuinely appeared after he burnt a pancake. He was making dinner on Shrove Tuesday with his flatmate at their Salford apartment, and accidentally left the pan on the hob at bedtime."

"Toby woke in the middle of the night to find the leftovers smoking, and threw the pan into a sink full of cold water."

"When it came to doing the washing up a day later, he said the face of Jesus had been burned on."

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1193271_bank_worker_finds_face_of_jesus_in_his_frying_pan

Calendars

I made two calendars this year. I used Qoop.com. The calendars are located at the following two links.

I made one with photos from my trips to Coyote Gulch this year

The other is a collection of photos from 2008 & 2009

You can buy them at cost if you really want one, no royalites for poor 'ol Kerk.

Merry Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas from our family to you. I am afraid I may not get the cards sent out on time. And some of you may not be on the list for various reasons. (Like I don't have your address).

BTW, this is Chimney Rock near Coyote Gulch in Southern Utah.

Two Videos from Mongolia

Collection of short clips taken with my camera.
The music is from the Tumen Ekh performance highlighted below.

Tumen Ekh, the Mongolian National Song and Dance Ensemble, performs their nightly show at the National Recreation Center. July 18, 2009.

Buddhist Rock Art in Mongolia

The predominant religion in Mongolia up until the communists takeover in the 1920's was Buddhism; more specifically, the Tibetan style of Tantric Buddhism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's Buddhism has reemerged as the dominant religion once again.

The Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism began to take hold in Mongolia during the late 1500's under the patronage of Altan Khan and his successors. He is the one who granted the Dailai Lama his title. Prior to Buddhism most Mongolians were followers of native shamanism and there are a great number of shamanistic influences in Mongolian Buddhism and Mongolian culture in general.

The communist government shut down most monasteries and exiled or killed the Buddhist monks during its rule from 1921 through 1992. We visited two of these monasteries during our visit. The first is a small temple in Gorkhi Terelj National Park up the valley from Turtle Rock. The second is the huge temple complex of Manzushir Monastery (which I am fairly certain is named after the Boddhisattva Manjusri) that was completely destroyed during the communist era and which has had only one building rebuilt. The ruins of several of the old building remain.

At both places we saw examples of Buddhist rock art that had survived from earlier eras.

Inscription in the old Mongolian alphabet, in Gorkhi Terelj National Park

Book Review - Persian Fire

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, by Tom Holland

This book came very highly recommended and it did not disappoint. It is the story of the Persian Empire's attempt to conquer Greece in the 5th century B.C. Holland is a very good writer and the story unfolds almost like a novel.

He starts off with a history of the fall of the Assyrian Empire to the Medes from the highlands of Iran, and then of their conquest by the Persians further to the east. He explains how Cyrus ruled his new empire and was succeeded ultimately by Darius, who ordered the first invasion of Greece.

He also explains the history of both Sparta and Athens and their different paths toward a government system that would provide stability for their citizens. Only halfway through the book do the Persians and the Greeks meet on the field of battle.

The first invasion in 490 B.C. is foiled by a surprise victory by the Athenians over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. Holland explains how the Spartans refused to fight because of a conflict with their religious festivals.

Ten years later Darius' son, Xerxes, returns in person with a larger army and fleet to reattempt the invasion. The famous Battle of Thermopylae sees the death of the Greek contingent, lead by King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans, guarding the pass between Thermopylae and Athens. Athens is sacked and Sparta and the Peloponnesian states blockade the Isthmus of Corinth and prepare for a Persian attack. However, in the end, the Athenians, who had in ten years time built up a substantial navy from scratch, lead an naval battle at Salamis, just south of Athens, and cripples the Persian navy forcing Xerxes to withdraw.

Holland points out repeatedly the importance of these Greek victories. Democracy as a legitimate form of government was begun by the Athenians only a few years before the Persian invasions. Had the Persians successfully conquered Greece the history of the world would have been quite different indeed.

He also points out more subtly, the parallels between this bit of history and the modern conflict between the West and the Middle East. Holland implies a great deal of similarity between Darius' professed devotion to Ahura Mazda, the god of Zoroastrian monothesism, and the professed devotion of the rulers of modern Muslim nations to Allah. There is also a parallel in the contrast between the autocratic rule of the Persian Empire versus the relative freedom enjoyed by the citizens of the Greek city-states.

I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone with even a remote interest in history.

Partial Solar Eclipse

My Best Photo

There was a solar eclipse today in India & China. Apparently it was a total eclipse in Mumbai and Shanghai, but it was cloudy and rainy in both places. I heard the weather was perfect in Iwo Jima which also had totality. Here in Seoul, it was a 74% occlusion at the maximum around 10:48 a.m. Class was scheduled to start at 10:50, but I delayed the beginning of class until 11:10, well after the maximum.

I heard about the eclipse when I turned on the TV this morning, which I normally do not do. On the way to work I stopped by an office supply store and bought some blank CDs because they are pretty good light filters for an eclipse. However, the ones I got had some sort of grainy finish and everything looked blurry. I went back and got several sheets of red filter paper that the shop owners was selling for looking at the eclipse and they worked wonderfully. It was almost impossible to get decent photos with my camera because of the high contrast between direct sun and the background of the sky. The filter sheets were too wrinkly to allow for good focus. However, I did get one or two good shots when the clouds partially obscured the sun and you could see the eclipse through them with the naked eye.

Pinhole image of the eclipse from Frank McDonald's equipment

Frank McDonald who is teaching organic chemistry had a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and you could see the eclipse in the image shining through the hole on a piece of white paper. Classes let out at 10:40 and many of the ISC students gathered in front of Woodang Hall where we hold most of the classes. Iit was a rather festive atmosphere. A few minutes before the peak occlusion the clouds went in front of the sun for 10 minutes and we missed the maximum, but it was still very impressive nonetheless.

Students Watching the Eclipse in front of Woodang Hall

My next shot at a full eclipse is August 21, 2017 when the shadow will travel across southern Idaho and Wyoming. I am planning on camping out the night before in a very dry place with little chance of clouds.

Update:

Jen Youngstrom, who teaches psychology here this summer, forwarded some excellent photos from the fellow in the apartment next to her family in the CJ International House.

Trip to Mongolia 2009

Ger just outside Gorkhi-Terelj National Park

I suppose I ought to give a more coherent account of my trip to Mongolia with Tom & Ed, so here goes.

We left on Thursday afternoon after our last classes ended at 4:10. Tom had everything planned out in terms of the logistics. We took the bus to Incheon International Airport and then a Korean Airlines flight to Ulaanbaatar, arriving at 11:30 or so local time. It was a three hour flight from Korea. After clearing immigration and customs we hired an official taxi, one of the only ones in the parking lot with a real, true taxi sign on the top, to take us to the Ulaanbaatar Hotel for $10. We had reservations for "superior"rooms, but apparently they were all taken so we were bumped up to "junior suites". The hotel was quite nice. A bit old, but it had free high speed internet which Ed needed for the online class he taught on Friday morning.

Fried Mutton Chest

Dinner last Friday night was interesting, to say the least. We (meaning Tom) were searching for a restaurant that came highly recommended by both the Lonely Planet book on Mongolia and by Phil Nichols, one of the professors here at KU for summer campus. When we couldn't find it because it appeared to have disappeared without even leaving a building behind, we went looking for alternative eats.

We tried a street with lots of restaurants, but were having a hard time deciding which one to patronize. Tom really wanted Mongolian food, and Ed was just hungry and wanted to eat. Finally, Ed picked one that had a reasonable number of customers figuring the food must be at least OK and the wait wouldn't be too long. Ed and I ordered the fried mutton ribs, which were pretty good, if a bit fatty. Tom, however, made the mistake of asking our waitress what she recommended. I think his exact words were "number one." Now, in all fairness, she may have misunderstood and thought he was asking which dish had the most food, not which was best. Or perhaps she saw no distinction between the two. In any case he ended up ordering the "fried mutton chest."

As it turns out this was quite literally, the whole chest of a sheep. Not a lamb, mind you, but a fully grown sheep. When this generous bounty was delivered to the table and the shock wore off enough for Tom to speak, he said simply, "I can't eat this." Both Ed and I initially thought he meant there was too much food and he was offering to share. Looking more carefully at the meal on the plate and his grey face, however, we realized he was being quite literal.

He did pay for the meal, but quickly left without touching his food. Somebody feasted on free mutton chest that night. Tom ended up eating at the Indian restaurant in the hotel. Ironically, he had the lamb curry.

"Fried Mutton Chest" is now a running joke with us. If you see Tom ask him how it was. Be careful, however, as I think he is still experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Riding Mongolian Ponies

photo by Ed Monsour

I took a trip this last weekend to Mongolia with a couple of good friends from Korea University's International Summer Campus, Tom Doherty and Ed Monsour. Tom set everything up as our designated tour leader and Ed and I went along for the ride. On Friday we went to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, which is just northeast of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Our guide, Tselmeg Erdenekhuu, who goes by "Meg" talked me into going horseback riding with Tom and Ed while we were there.

Her regular 4WD was in the shop getting fixed up for a 15-day tour, so she took us out on the dirt roads in the park in her uncle's Toyota Celica. We were planning on visiting a monastery after lunch, but the roads were wet and muddy, and Ed really, really wanted to ride a horse, so I was talked into going with them on horseback, rather than just walking. Being a bit on the portly side I was concerned that I might be too heavy for the poor ponies, but I think our hosts took this as a bit of a challenge and were intent on proving how tough Mongol ponies really are. They got one of the larger ones, a male, and he did just fine. They were a bit worried that he was, perhaps, too spirited for an obvious greenhorn like myself and kept him on a lead most of the time. However, every once in a while Ed's pony would stop still and refuse to move. When our teenage guide went back to jump-start the pony I got to do some riding "off the leash".

An interesting incident occured as we were getting ready to set out. The children in the family that owned the horses had been riding around the area while we were eating lunch and afterward their father called them over to turn over their ponies to Ed and Tom. The girl whose pony Tom got took one look at the three of us and turned to her father and begged him to let Tom (the least heavy of the three of us) be the one to ride HER pony. It was one of those moments where the meaning came through crystal clear even though we couldn't understand the language. No translation necessary!

Photo by Tom Doherty
The young man in the hat was our wrangler

Photo by Tom Doherty

Photo by Ed Monsour

Photo by Ed Monsour

Yeongmi Becomes a US Citizen

Yeongmi was sworn in yesterday as a US citizen at a ceremony in Salt Lake City along with 194 other new citizens.

Here is a video of her taking the oath and talking about how she feels.

Lizard Eats Lizard

Photo by Mike Conrad

Hiking out of Coyote Gulch this past Friday morning, we ran across a pair of lizards right in the middle of the trail in Hurricane Wash. One was a big Long-Nosed Leopard Lizard, about 8 inches from snout to hind legs. She was obviously a female because she had bright orange stripes that only appear on females during the mating season. The one being eaten, or at least attacked, was a Tiger Whiptail and while almost as long from nose to tail, was substantially smaller.

This was one of the most unique things I have ever seen in the outdoors. Both these lizards are normally quite shy, but here they were in the middle of the trail wrestling, one for dear life.

Mike & Braden Conrad got some photos and Scott Preston got photos and some video. In the middle of all the commotion, a third lizard showed up for some unexplained reason. As near as I can figure it was an Orange-Headed Spiny Lizard. We only got video of it, however, and it's hard to tell for sure.

I posted a video of the whole episode on You Tube at the following URL - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1HbgHBrQu0.

A Swell Weekend

The lower of two large rock art panels in Short Canyon

I went on a campout this weekend with the scouts. We had the 12-13 year-old group (the scouts) and the 14-15 year-old group (the varsity scouts) with a total of 16 people.

We drove down Friday night to the Moore cutoff road and stopped at Dry Wash to see the petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks.

From there we drove around the edge of the Molen Reef to the mouth of Short Canyon. We had two 4WD pickups and a minivan. There were a few spots that were a bit iffy for the minivan, but we made it with no damage. The campsite was dry so we relied on the water we brought. After setting up camp four of us, Ryan Allen, Scott Preston, Brian Wheelhouse and I headed up the canyon to a spot where some pictographs had been geotagged on Flickr. By the time we got there it was getting dark and we wandered around looking for signs of rock art. Eventually, Scott and Brian found a small panel with two figures. One had wavy arms, so I am calling it the Wavy Arms panel.

An incredibly handsome guy next to the Wavy Arms panel.

We moved further up canyon along the ledge where we found these figures and then ran into a huge double panel. By the time we got there it was too dark to get good photos even with the flash, so we decided to revisit the site the next morning with the whole group.

I slept in the bed of my truck on Friday night. It was less lumpy than the ground and there was a bit of a canyon wind, so it was better than sleeping on a tarp as I had planned. I got up early enough to see the sunrise and enjoy it. After that we roused everyone up and headed back up the canyon.

I got some good photos of the double panel and we also found another small panel further upstream with a pair of figure, which I am calling the Bug-Eye panel because the larger of the two has big bug-eyes.

Scott shows monumental disrespect for the figures at the Bug-Eye panel

We explored further downstream along the same ledge and found some very faint petroglyphs that we would never have seen from the bottom of the canyon.

Scott also pointed out several other figures on the walls futher downstream that we had missed while hiking in. I got some telephoto shots of those, but there is not much detail.

I've posted all the photos from Short Canyon at the following URL - http://kerk.pomosa.com/myphotos/Rock%20Art/shortcanyon.htm

After Short Canyon we drove over to the entrance to Eagle Canyon just west of Forgotten Canyon. Our intent was to hike down into the canyon from here and then up Forgotten Canyon. However, a certain scout leader who shall remain unnamed, marked an incorrect waypoint and we ended up trying to enter through the wrong side canyon. In all fairness to the aforementioned scout leader, the descriptions of the entry were rather vague and there are at least three side canyons in the area. We tried the middle one first, right on the waypoint as marked and discovered that there was a cliff and pouroff that made it impossible to pass. We tried climbing out of the gully to the left and found a larger side canyon with somewhat manageable slopes in the upper reaches, but it has several cliffs and pouroffs further down that made it impassable too. The correct entry was to the right of our first obstacle, not the left, but I did not discover this until after we got back and I went over the terrain carefully using Google Earth. I'm still not sure how gradual the descent is. The first route looks easier, but you can't see vertical dropoffs very easily from satellite photos.

The second wrong way into Eagle Canyon

We decided to head home at this point because we were running out of time even if we had found the right entrance. We stopped at the Rocheseter Creek petroglyphs on the way back and made it home by 5:00 p.m.

Head of Sinbad Pictograph Panel

One of the other sites we hit on Saturday was a Barrier Canyon Style panel near the Head of Sinbad right in the middle of the Swell. The interstate passes within a mile or so of the panel, but historically this part of the Swell has not had a lot of traffic. It differs in this regard from the panels in Buckhorn Draw and Black Dragon Canyon which are both located along rather obvious travel routes. As a result, unlike these panels, the small one at the Head of Sinbad is in close to pristine condition. You can even see the brushstrokcs on some of the figures.

The panel was all in shadow while we were there which made for pretty good photos. Again you can see them at my rock art page. The ones below are some of my favorites.

Detail of a spirit figure? Or a shaman?

Birds or Antelope?

I am convinced beyond all doubt that this figure is supposed to be ET.

Black Dragon Canyon Pictographs

The Black Dragon?

I took a tour with my two youngest children this past Saturday. The Prehistory Museum at the College of Eastern Utah in Price does a regular series of expeditions through the San Rafael Swell, which they call "Saturday on the Swell". This last Saturday's was headed by Dr. Renee Barlow and focused on Native American rock art in the Swell. We visited 4 sites with the group and one of the most fascinating was the one in Black Dragon Canyon.

Black Dragon Canyon is, in fact, named for the pictographs there. There are two panels: one is a Barrier Canyon Style (BCS) panel like those found in Horseshoe Canyon. The other is roughly contemporaneous, meaning it is also three to five thousand years old. It is a completely different style, however. Being in a better overhang these pictographs are in better condition than the BCS panel which is more exposed to the elements and has faded a bit. Dr. Barlow informed us that the closest match to these pictographs comes from Southern Mexico.

Black Dragon Wash is easy enough to access. You need to exit the westbound lane of I-70 about 3/4 a mile after it crosses the San Rafael River. There is gate in the fence. Follow the dirt road north for just over a mile and you will come to a sign pointing up the wash to your left. If you don't have a four-wheel drive, park here and walk up the wash. You can drive (slowly) up the wash if you have four-wheel drive. From the sign to the panel is .65 miles. The canyon narrows and turns to the right and the panels are on the northeast side of the canyon as it loops back to the left again. The BCS panel is located on the cliffs above the rubble pile. The second panel is located to the left of this, lower down, under a slight overhang.

I have posted all the photos I took here, as ususal, on my rock art page. These are reduced resolution shots. Anyone interested can email me and I'll send you the full-resolution originals. The light was not ideal for the BCS panel, but shots of the second panel, which was in shade, turned out quite well.

One interesting thing I noticed after I got back is that someo of the figures in both panels have been outlined in what looks like white chalk. This seems to indicate that the outlining was done sometime after both sets of figures were drawn. How long, I can't begin to guess. Black Canyon Wash was a well-used route through the San Rafael Swell for many, many years. The chalk outlines could be modern or very old.

8-12 foot figures in the Barrier Canyon Style

Example of non-BCS figures

Coyote Gulch Pictograph Panel

The Central Figures

The pictograph panel in lower Coyote Gulch is located about half a mile downstream from Coyote Natural Bridge. It is located on the north wall of the canyon at the top of a sandy hill. There is a very clear path running up the hill to the panel.

I have posted all the photos I took here on my rock art webpage.

Most of the images are pictographs painted on the rock, but there is a faint hourglass shapped figure scratched into the rock. Also something that looks like a pair of horns that have been pecked into the rock deeper than the scratching.

The art shows a Fremont influence. At least the light grey-yellow painted figures which are similar to the horned figures found in Fremont rock art. The other figures are more difficult to place, especially for an amatuer like myself. In some cases, like the object we labelled the tennis racquet, the red pigment looks older than the grey. But in the case of what Dave called, "The Chief", the red looks just as recent as the grey.

When we looked around we noticed that someone had piled up some of the stones in the area to look like a low wall. I am skeptical that this is authentic, but the stones may have well been builiding block of earlier structures. We also found two circles that had numerous bits of corn cob, squash rind, bone, and hard flints. One was inside the low wall. The other was in what looked like a fire ring, but some of the rocks in the ring were actually adobe, not stone. Again, I suspect these have not been lying here like this for hundreds of years. Most likely they are objects that hikers have run across and deposited here since they saw earlier hikers had done so. Dave raised an interesting question though, why hasn't somebody just walked off with all this stuff? Perhaps they have, just not all of it. Or do Coyote Gulch hikers have enough civic virtue to only look and not steal? At least two do.

Looking around the shelf where these two circles were (located under a slight overhang to the west of the panel) we noticed little bits of black charcoal mixed in with the sand. Even a casual observer can see that this site was occupied in some form in the past.

In order to find out more about the site I checked out two published articles. One is a paper by Phil R. Geib, entitled "New Evidence for the Antiquity of Fremont Occupation in Glen Canyon, South-central Utah." The other is an anthropological paper from the University Of Utah written in 1959 by James H. Gunnerson, entitled "1957 Excavations, Glen Canyon Area."

Gunnerson reports on excavations at three sites in Coyote Gulch, but the sites are all several miles upstream from the pictograph panel. Geib reports on radiocarbon dating from the richest site there, called the Alvey site, and from four other sites in the Escalante drainage. I have not been able to find any published information on this particular site, so it may not have ever been excavated. Nonetheless, information about the other sites sheds light on who was living in the area and when.

Gieb finds evidence from his radiocarbone dating that the Fremont were well-entrenched in the area, raising corn & squash and using pottery during the period from 200 AD to 900 AD. This date is a bit earlier than previous researchers had hypothesised. The Alvey site consisted of three layers the middle of which corresponds to this time period. The top layer had objects of both Fremont and Anasazi origin mixed together. This indicates that the Anasazi appeared here after the Fremont. The most common dates I have come across for the Anasazi are in the range of 1000 to 1250 AD.

According to Don Montoya, Museum Curator at the Anasazi State Park Museum in Boulder, UT, there is rock art scattered through this general area dating back as far as 5500 BC. So, the figures that are not obviously Fremont could be archaic or Anasazi. Or perhaps of some other orgin altogether.

Bottom line is that the side trip up the sandy hill is well worth the effort. The pictographs are in excellent condition and you can get up fairly close to them to see what they look like.

Dave Spencer at the Panel

I am informed by Dave who was informed by other knowledgable sources named Elliot, that there is another well-known pictograph panel in the Gulch. When we were hiking in I saw a well-worn trail high up the side of the canyon on another sand hill that I suspected might lead to pictographs or a cliff dwelling. Perhaps this is where they are.

I found a photo of a different panel on Flickr. Perhaps this is the other site

Update

I enhanced the contrast on one of the photos and reproduce it below:

It looks to me like there are two more faintly scratched figures here. The "tennis racquet" is painted over the top of one. On closer examination, it may be that it was scratched over the top of the racquet. If fact, it may have been painted, but if so the paint has mostly worn off. The other is just to the right of the central white horned figure. You can make out the horns to the right of its head.
Actually, all the easily visible figures look like they are painted on top of or around older, fainter ones.
Another Update
Here are two photos that show the main figures in the panel. One show where I think there are faint horned hourglass figures. Maybe I'm just seeing things, though.


And I have an opinion from an expert as well. Dr. Renee Barlow from the CEU Prehistory Museum in Price says in an email:

"It is quite beautiful, and does appear to be somewhat impressionistic with elements resembling Fremont figures. I think though, that overall the panel does not look like typical Fremont rock art in this region, so it may be difficult to assign a definitive cultural affiliation. If the rock art were dated, that would help of course."

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.