Llama pack trip, Silver Falls Canyon, October 10-18, 2015

In the fall of 2015, I (Bill Priedhorsky) led a week-long wilderness expedition for the Mountaineers, my 107th trip to the Canyon Country since my first trip to Dark Canyon in the fall of 1979.  Participants included Karen Grace, Kathleen Gruetzmacher, Patti Walls, Bob Williams, Judy Buckingham, Evan Rose, and Cathy Grastataro. The trip was originally scheduled as a return to Silver Falls Canyon, which we last visited in the fall of 2002. However, our llama packer, BJ Orozco of Llama2Boot, called on the 7th, four days before our departure, with some significant news. His scouting trip to the trailhead didn’t make it – the road was washed out, and a trip down Silver Falls Canyon would be difficult or impossible.  We talked it over, and settled on a very attractive alternative – a hike down the canyon of the Escalante River, from the Escalante town trailhead to the highway 12 bridge, with two camps enroute. We planned to camp our first three nights at the mouth of Death Hollow, and the second at the mouth of Sand Canyon.
 
The route downcanyon totals 15 miles, and is scenic every step of the way. The canyon is high-walled with few routes out until well below Death Hollow, then changes to a more open slickrock terrain for the last few miles. Weather was warm and clear most of our trip, with a rainstorm coming in only the morning of our departure. The only downside was that, unlike past years, the route is rather crowded. We saw an average of two other parties each day, and went to some effort to secure our preferred campsites.
 
We left Los Alamos at 8 AM on Saturday, October 10, seven of us travelling in three cars. Evan was already in Utah and would meet us at the trailhead the next day. We drove hard, not taking time for a warmup hike en route, with a quick stop for a Navajo taco at a softball game in Montezuma Creek. We arrived in Torrey just after 5 PM, where we had rooms reserved at the Capitol Reef Inn and Café (a clean and inexpensive joint), and most of us had dinner at the gourmet Café Diablo a quarter mile down the road.  Breakfast was at 7 AM the next day, when the café opened, and we were on the road by 8 AM for a trailhead rendezvous at 10 AM. We picked up Evan at the bridge trailhead, leaving his truck for the end-of-trip shuttle, and pulled up to the Escalante trailhead just behind BJ. Packing was smoother than ever before, with participants sticking to their allocation of 50 pounds of personal gear (on top of about 100 pounds of community tables, kitchen kit, tarp, stove, fuel, etc.)
 
Sunday’s hike was the longest freight stage of the trip, running about 7 miles along the river. Since the storm that had washed out the Silver Falls road a few days earlier, things had dried out, and flow in the Escalante was a bit more than a trickle. The hike was scenic but hard, crossing back and forth across the river and always between steep grey walls, with petroglyphs at a few points along the way. This day, like most of the others, we wore wet shoes and stayed wet, never far from the creek, waiting until camp to put on something drier. We reach our camp, on a bench just across from the mouth of Death Hollow, about 4:30. The flow from Death Hollow was much more than the Escalante itself. The evening was spent pitching camp, and I pulled together a simple dinner of bread, smoked salmon, cheese, soup, and cookies. Of all the things that we have and backpackers do not, our camp chairs are my favorite. A two-burner stove is a big plus, also.
 

 
Entering the canyon - the trip begins
 

 
Karen hikes with a llama "friend"
 
Our first exploration day was Monday. All seven of us started the wade up Death Hollow at our regular starting time, 10 AM, but not all continued. Much of the hike is in the river, in part because of the concentrations of poison ivy – yellow-red and easy to see this time of year. The canyon was shady, and the water just too cold for some of the party. About five of us hiked to spectacular narrows with a rocky floor punctuated by deep pools; the other three explored the slope south of camp, though they were stopped by slopes too steep for a non-technical party, then started up Death Hollow once it had warmed up at 12:45 PM. Brown trout inhabited every deep pool in Death Hollow, although they were skitterish, disappearing in a puff of sand as soon as they saw a human.  Patti fell on the way down Death Hollow, but was probably saved from injury any worse than her bruise by her hiking pole, which paid the ultimate price. We were back to camp by about 4 PM. Bob and Judy cooked sausage in tomato sauce on polenta. The night was dark and clear, but stargazing was limited by the high canyon walls.
 

 
Death Hollow - deep and wet
 
On Tuesday, we set out together to explore a rugged trail up the south wall to the rim, which took off less than half a mile downstream from camp. The trail climbs up the soft deposits to the bottom of steep sandstone, than turns straight up. BJ led, followed by me, who offered a rope to the 5 ladies who were following. The steep climb was not quite to their taste, so they turned back, crossed the river, and explored a route on the north slope that took them to a gorgeous side drainage with a series of pools, the largest perhaps 10 feet across and deeper than a hiking pole. BJ, I, and Evan (who had taken an alternate route) continued to the rim, where they found a well-trodden trail on the way to a dirt road trailhead. BJ continued to the trailhead to rendezvous with his wife Abby for some essential gear, while Evan and Bill explored along the western rim of a side drainage to the Escalante that is informally known as “micro Death Hollow”. Rather to their surprise, a descent down a checkerboard hillside and a final step behind a rock outcrop took them to the bottom of µDH. Within a hundred years upstream, the inner canyon closed into a slot, which I pursued, and Evan pursued a little further, until the slot was so tight as to squeeze back to chest even when moving sideways. The lower end of µDH was impassable, so they returned uphill, and after a difficult traverse found a tricky route down to the Escalante, bypassing the original route but not particularly easier.  The sandstone routes up and down, some of which I did sliding on my behind, left my shorts in tatters, which we fixed for the rest of the trip thanks to Cathy’s Gorilla Tape. Evan and I were back in camp before 5 PM, about an hour after the rest of the party.
 

 
The slot canyon in micro Death Hollow squeezed tighter and tighter until we couldn't go farther
 
Wednesday was moving day. We had to squeeze our load onto 7 llamas because the 8th had taken ill, but with a load lightened by 3 days of consumption, and a little heavier llama loading for the flat 4+-miles trip, there was no trouble packing. We were targeting a special campsite at the mouth of Sand Canyon, and were anxious to secure it as early in the day as possible.  Besides a cool camping place in the cottonwoods, the mouth of Sand Creek offers a dripping spring that we could drink without treatment, leaving our water filters in their bags. Bill and Patti started ahead at 10 AM, arriving at the camp at 12:30 PM and found it unoccupied for the night, although a pleasant couple from Boulder was there to join them for lunch. The rest of the party arrived at 2:30 PM; most relaxed while Bill did a quick scout up Sand Creek, which was, like Death Hollow, populated by abundant but skitterish brown trout, some of which looked to be as large as 15 inches.
 

 
Our camp at the mouth of Sand Creek
 
On Thursday the party again split, with Bill exploring all day up Sand Creek, and the rest except Cathy following the old Bowington Road up from the north rim of the Escalante, moving across sand and slickrock to climb the highest dome in the vicinity. The surroundings of Sand Creek are brushy and in some places thorny, although poison ivy was rare. Much of the bottom is indeed deep sand, really quicksand, into which one can sink to some depth. Dinner was turkey jerky and bison jerky built into polenta towers, with a tangy rice, turkey, and cranberry mix, which Evan pulled together per the instructions of his wife Felicia. He was on his own for dessert, hence Chip Ahoy cookies. As on most days, the ladies spent the last part of the afternoon cleaning up at the sun showers, while the guys generally threw themselves into the creek. The ladies might have left a quart or two of shower water, or maybe not, but we were too impatient to wait. (The ladies add “as it it should be”.)
 
All of our trips are months in the planning, and as departure comes closer, we count down – leaving in six weeks, then three, then two, now a week to go, last evening at home, and suddenly we are on the way with a whole week of wilderness freedom in our future. From the front end of the trip, it seems like it will never end, but we all know how quickly life goes by, and how a week can fly. Suddenly it was Friday morning and we were down to the last full day of exploration. We all felt that we should spend the day together, and set out on a trail up to the slickrock that started just behind camp. The trail ended at a sandstone slope, and we worked our way through small sandstone domes to the plateau.  Bob and Judy turned back, realizing that Judy needed a rest day, and the remaining six continued to a break atop one small dome, then lunch at bigger, with views to the north across Sand Hollow to McGrath Point and Boulder Mountain beyond. After lunch we moved north to the bottom of a drainage that paralleled Sand Hollow to its south, and followed it downstream to Sand Creek – or rather to the point at which it plunges 80-some feet to Sand Creek. Dinner was a semi-potluck, with all of our leftovers on the table, combined with macaroni and cheese and beef chili, more than enough for our capstone dinner. We finished the evening as we finished every evening with Bill reading from our camp book, Sean Prentiss’ Finding Abbey, about Prentiss’ search for Edward Abbey’s grave. We didn’t finish it but came close – 30 pages from the end.

 
The whole party, starting their hike on the last day
 
The week’s sunny weather ended that Friday with a few sprinkles, with the cloud cover making for pleasant hiking across the open slickrock. Clouds increased towards evening, with a neighboring camp reporting a recent prediction of 20% chance of rain. Everyone but I buttoned down into their tents. I figured that I had succeeded in sleeping under the stars for five nights so far, and might just stretch it to a sixth. I made it to 7 AM before waking to raindrops on my face.
 

 
Slickrock ladies
 
The hike out was cool and cloudy, with a subtle light on cottonwoods turning their fall colors, and on the red/white sandstone, a light that is rare in the harsh desert. Four of us started at 10 AM to finish the car shuttle, as soon as the panniers were loaded, while the other four waited for BJ, Abby, and the llamas, setting out at 11:50 AM, just as the first four reached the highway.  Highpoints on the way out were the Bowington Arch, the dead-level Escalante Natural Bridge, and a north-facing ruin perched above a seemingly impassable cliff. Karen was chilled by a fall into the Escalante, pulled in by a llama, and shivered through the last half of the hike. We were out just in time, with real rain starting as the first party reached the trailhead, and dampening most of the hike for the second party. The car shuttle and the remaining hikers reached the trailhead at about 1:15 PM, and on to Pole’s Place Motel in Boulder, showers, calls home, and Bill’s birthday dinner at Burr Trail Grill, complete with (temporary) tattooing of Bill by all.
 

 
Bill below Escalante Natural Bridge, heading out before the rain
 
We had planned to drive the Burr Trail to catch the 9 AM Bullfrog ferry, but hard rain had us worried about the dirt section. We thus drove back the way we came,  leaving Boulder at 7 AM, breakfasting at Blondie’s in Hanksville, a Subway Sandwich at the peepee teepees, and home a little after PM. Trip number 107 was just as satisfying as the earlier ones – spectacular country, fine company, and new nooks and crannies to explore even in places we had trod before.

 
Llama packer BJ Orozco went to great efforts to make the trip - a "Plan B" - a success