Canyoneering Expedition

Well, we made it back to Boulder once again, but this time with a whole new crew to accompany us on our adventure. Elise, Ryan, Jake & Chelsea all came along. Luckily, Jake & Chelsea were kind enough to bring their Ford Explorer which allowed us to get to trailheads that would be completely inaccessible to my little Pontiac.

We stopped in at Capitol Reef National Park on our way down so everyone could see it. That's where these pics are from, including this one, with only Elise posing, as well as this fascinating shot of Ryan trying to take a picture of himself on his phone.

The group wasn't too impressed with the petroglyphs left my the ancient inhabitants. In fact, Elise is still skeptical of their authentic origin, since the National Park Service just left them on the cliffs rather than putting the images behind glass. We also checked out Hickman Bridge, a large natural arch within the Park. We tried scrambling up some boulders to get on top, only to be hindered by a large drop off that prevented us from getting right on top of the arch. But it did make for some sweet pictures (which are, unfortunately, on someone else's camera).

The next day was the trips real adventrue. We hiked a two different slot canyons off of the Hole-in-th-Rock road near Escalante--Spooky and Peek-a-Boo canyons. Round trip it was probably 10 to 12 miles, which took most of the days. We wente down Spooky first. After hiking through a gorge with for a while, we had to bust out the rope and repel down a 20 foot drop to get into the actual slot canyon.

Like the guidebook said, this was definitely not a canyon for the claustrophobic or obese. There were a lot of tight squeezes and technical parts in which you had to stem, or in other words, jam your body between the cliff walls and move forward while suspended in the air. There were even a few drop offs with some rank pools of water waiting for you at the bottom. I tried stemming across one in particular, but after realizing the the walls were two far apart, I just dropped in. It was in this same pool that our hiking mate Elise slid right down in. Unfortunately, she panicked and didn't realize that it was only waist deep until she was swimming up to her neck.Like I was saying though, this slot definetly wasn't for those with extra poundage. And Jack, if you read this, I would have to say, you would probably excel in these parts of the canyon.

And here, Tiffani stemmed up above us to take a cool shot.

As we got close to the end of Spooky canyon, the slot got windy, which created some exquisite rock formations in the red sandstone.

Unfortunately, after we hiked down one canyon, we had to go back up the other in order to get back to the car. We were almost out of water, even though most of us brough three liters a person, but we made it up okay. We realized later though that we took a wrong turn heading back to the car and ended up hiking in between the two canyons, but we made it back fine all the same. If you're looking for a cool, short hike, you can just do the bottom ends of both of these canyons and you'll still have a lot of fun.

The next day, we were all pretty wiped out from Friday's hike, so we took it easy. We went on a 1 mile hike to the beautiful Upper Calf Creek Falls. It's nice because its less well-known than the Lower Falls, and has a couple pools of water above the falls that you can jump into and swim in.

After the falls, we, like all manly man, got some testosterone pumping by pushing a 400 lb. rock down a mountain. Man must move rock... grunt.

Finally we took a trip down the Burr Trail to play around in a large crevice in the canyon wall. there we climbed on rocks, posed for pictures, and practiced slack-lining. For those of you who aren't familiar with said sport, its like tightrope walking on a piece of webbing (and its really hard at first like I found out).


After all was said and done that, we have another cool story to add to our increasing collection of summer adventures.

And P.S.

Make sure when you wear Chaco's or any other sandal, use sunblock, otherwise your feet will end up looking like mine!