May 10, 2009, 10:07 pm Our first order of business, after breakfast at our B&B, was to go to the National Monument visitor center and get directions to several of the popular slot canyons, including Peekaboo, Spooky, and Zebra. Peekaboo and Spooky were on my to do list. Web research before the trip had turned up these two canyons as very interesting locations, and I wanted to visit them, even though some of the rock scrambling required might have been more than we can do. However, having seen the photos of Zebra the night before, and since we would come to its trailhead first, I decided we’d start with it.
The trailhead was a little over 8 miles south of Highway 12 on Hole in the Rock Road. It’s easy to find the trailhead—it’s at the third cattle guard. The trail is fairly obvious until it reaches Harris Wash, but even in the wash it’s not too hard to find. We found Zebra canyon easily enough, but heard voices that indicated there were quite a few people back in the slot, and we met a young couple leaving who said they were going to wait for them to leave and were going to Tunnel first. We decided the same but didn’t have a good idea of where Tunnel was. After running into the couple again up a dead end, we found out he had lat/lon coordinates, but no GPS. So I loaded his coordinates into my GPS and got us both situated and going in the right direction. I’m glad we bumped into them—not sure I would have found Tunnel otherwise.
Most of the hiking at this point was in sandy washes, and it was a bit of a slog. We found Tunnel—an extremely narrow crack at the top that eroded a tunnel out below—and explored it. Then we headed back to Zebra.
 Zebra Canyon, Escalante Grand Staircase Zebra is fascinating, with smooth curves in the walls and interesting bands of color. We got in as far as the first vertical climb, shimmying sideways in a couple of places. This kind of climbing is not as easy as it used to be. Perhaps if I had shed the daypack and camera I could have scrambled up, and then maybe hauled Karen up, but we chose to go no farther. This also made it clear that we would have had problems at Peekaboo and Spooky.
Finding our way back out of Harris Wash was easy enough, and I did have the GPS track as backup. By this time it was well after noon, and on the warmish side. Back at the trailhead, we had logged about 8.5 miles, and we were clearly done hiking for the day (tuckered out). We did drive on farther on Hole in the Rock Road to Devils Garden, where I made a quick pass taking some photos of the rock formations while Karen sat reading in the shade of a tree. Driving on a little further we got to a dinosaur footprint site, but it would have required a bit of a hike (and route finding) to see the footprints, so we passed.
Back in Escalante, we had the dilemma of finding a place to eat on Sunday (the little restaurant closest to our B&B was closed) and Mother’s Day (the locals were out in droves). We tried the Cowboy Blues, which was crowded with locals, and had just run out of their prime rib. There were no windows, and it was noisy. So, we went back to Escalante Outfitters for pizza. We sat on the patio enjoying the fresh air and the view, and the pizza was delicious. Frankly, it was a much better choice than the prime rib dinner place.
Links
—Zebra Canyon 2009 photo gallery
May 9, 2009, 9:33 pm  Biking the Burr Trail At breakfast we asked the B&B owner, host, and cook for a recommendation for a road bike ride. After some thought, he recommended the paved, canyon portion of the Burr Trail. This road runs from Boulder east to Notom-Bullfrog road. The eastern end is dirt with quite a few switchbacks, but clearly we wouldn’t go that far. This sounded good to us, so we packed up the bikes and headed to Boulder.
As the photos show, Escalante is a really small town, and the best storefronts on main street are pretty depressing. I suspect tourism is the major business.
We parked the car at a wide spot in the road a few miles east of Boulder, started our ride over rolling terrain, and really enjoyed the views. After 3 or 4 miles we dropped precipitously into a canyon (and paid dearly for it on the climb out) and then lazily rode a gentle uphill climb, enjoying the canyon walls and cliffs. We stopped to explore a short slot canyon on our way back.
After loading the bikes in the truck, we hiked for a bit along Deer Creek, but there didn’t seem to be anything of interest the direction we went. I then thought of doing a 3 mile hike into a narrow slot canyon near the end of the Burr Trail, but when we arrived at the beginning of the dirt road and I looked at the time, I realized we used up all our time and we needed to return to Escalante.
Links
—The Burr Trail 2009 photo gallery
May 8, 2009, 9:37 pm This was a travel day, from Hurricane (our motel), through Springdale and Zion, up through Zion’s east entrance, to Bryce Canyon, and then on to Escalante.
 Hoodoos at Red Canyon We stopped first in Springdale for coffee. Our favorite coffee house across from Oscar’s Cafe was closed (Oscar’s, by the way, is a great place to eat), but we picked up coffee at another place. Then we were off climbing up out of the canyon to the east entrance on a switchback road with a long, narrow tunnel. The tunnel is narrow enough that motorhomes can’t stay in their lane, so when motorhomes are around (they were) there is traffic control limiting the tunnel to one-way traffic. We did have wait a bit to traverse the tunnel.
We didn’t stop again until Red Canyon (just a few miles west of Bryce Canyon). We hiked the short little nature trail and took photos of the hoodoos. One of the photos in the slide show below shows an anomalous collection of rounded grey stones among all the red sandstone. The guide pamphlet pointed out that this is an ancient streambed (and I just thought it was some grey rocks).
As we drove on closer to Bryce, we stopped at the Pines Motel and Restaurant and enjoyed a piece of apple pie. One of Karen’s friends loves this motel and area. It wasn’t fancy, just kind of homey.
We drove into Bryce and stopped at a couple of viewpoints. There are probably several interesting hikes, but we just weren’t up to it.
We arrived in Escalante just before dinner time, checked ourselves into our bed and breakfast room (the proprietor had just left a key for us), and walked to the nearby little cafe for dinner. While there I struck up a conversation with a photographer who was reviewing photos on his camera while waiting, and he showed me some very nice photos of Zebra Canyon. I think we need to go there.
Links
—Red Canyon, Bryce photo gallery
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Consider this:“All of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.” 1 Peter 3:8 |
