Spring Break 2014: Fence Canyon to Harris Wash, Utah

Ellen and Bei exiting Harris Wash on slickrock at the end of our hike.

I remember how excited I was about backpacking as a youngster growing up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington D.C.  I went on trips with my scout troop, which was remarkably active, and before very long I was hiking with friends and even alone.  In retrospect, it seems incredible (but great) that my parents let me out for a week by myself when I was not much older than Bei, now 12.  Once, in the mid-70s not long after the Watergate scandal, I hiked alone on the Appalachian Trail for a week, carrying a very lightweight, bright yellow, aluminum frame pack, covering 10-20 miles a day, and then settling into camp to read Woodward and Bernstein’s book, All the President’s Men.

Early in my backpacking career my parents gave me a SVEA 123 stove, a Swedish contraption, heavy but functional.  It looked like a shiny perforated brass cylinder with a windscreen, also brass, that twisted off and on, unlike today’s lightweight aluminum foil windscreens that fold up to be inelegantly stuffed into a sack.  I loved the whole idea of that stove and everything about backpacking. I devoured Colin Fletcher’s The Complete Walker but lingered over his advice about how to traverse the backcountry more effectively. I told friends how great it was to be so untethered, with everything you needed right on your back(!!).

Later, when I became a rock climber, backpacking became an unpleasant means to an end—the painful part of getting to a remote climb, less enjoyable than in my youth, in no small part because of the weight of rope and gear and the need to go fast when big climbs were squeezed into weekends. I scoffed at backpacking for its own sake, wondering why anyone would carry all of that weight around without the reward of a wilderness climb at the end of the trek.

Now, at age 55, backpacking is regaining its appeal.  I’m less ambitious, and it’s just nice to be out.  And I have enough money to invest in ultralight gear, the newest thing. Sleeping bags are no longer giant and heavy. Tents are wispy. Empty packs don’t weigh 10 pounds. I can walk with my family and enjoy not carrying 30 pounds of climbing gear.  And I’m not in a hurry. I’m not so fascinated by the gear anymore, and I like relaxing and exploring. Plus, I’m not nearly as hungry as I was when I was a teenager, so food doesn’t weigh so heavily on my mind when I have only a limited amount. 

For our spring break this year, Ellen, Bei, and I walked a lovely loop in the Escalante drainage of SW Utah.  We left our car at the Egypt trailhead, hiked down to the Escalante river, and explored downstream to Neon Canyon and the Golden Cathedral before carrying our nice little ultralight loads upstream to Harris Wash.  Eventually, we scrambled out of Harris on slabs (scary for Bei) and returned to our truck. Along the way, we camped in perfect spots—at the mouth of Fence Canyon where a clear spring kept my half-and-half cold long enough to enjoy a few cups of creamy coffee before switching to powdered milk; at the mouth of Choprock Canyon where moqui steps provided an unlikely path to the canyon rim; at the mouth of Harris Wash where a perfect sandy bench allowed me to be barefoot while my shoes dried after multiple river crossings; and finally, on slickrock above Harris Wash where we enjoyed a little campfire under a full moon. 

Bei doesn’t share my love of being out, and she would never admit it even if she did have fun with a pack on her back, but  I think she enjoyed the trip despite herself, and it was more fun goofing around with her in camp than trying to compete with electronics at home. I’m grateful that when I was her age, compact little brass stoves were the most exciting thing around. But I’m also grateful that I can spend a week with Bei and Ellen wading across rivers, gnawing on bagels, bushwhacking through tamarisk, and reading by headlamp in our cozy little tent.

Ellen and Bei, hiking off of the Egypt Plateau towards Fence Canyon and the Escalante River.

Descending into Fence Canyon.

Bei, sleeping late in Fence Canyon.

Heading for Neon and wading the Escalante.

One day we crossed the river 14 times.

Petroglyphs and cowboy graffiti near Neon Canyon.

Bei leaving the Golden Cathedral in Neon.

Mud flakes near the mouth of Neon.

Bei and tamarisk, along the Escalante.

A gift to me from Ellen--an ultralight coffee filter.  At the mouth of Choprock Canyon.

Lunch between Choprock and Harris.

Lower Harris Wash.

Moqui steps near the climb-out from lower Harris.  There is an easier exit a little farther upstream

Me and Bei after the exit climb.

Ellen and Bei at our slickrock camp above Harris Wash.

A campfire (later erased!) on the slickrock.

Road Canyon on Cedar Mesa, Utah

Fallen Roof Ruin, Road Canyon, Cedar Mesa, Utah.  March 2013.

(Click images to view larger)

Sometimes I miss the most obvious photo opportunities.  I didn't think to re-photograph Bei at the Fallen Roof Ruin in Road Canyon, a place we visited in 2007 when she was five-years-old and returned to this March during our spring break.  Somehow I also returned to Laramie without a single picture of our friend Dave Fay with his bourbon collection, which he spread lovingly across the picnic table in our campsite every evening.  

Maybe it's because of Dave's bourbon collection that I never photographed Dave with his bourbon collection.  

I did get a photo of Dave and Amy's daughter, Eliza, at Fallen Roof.  She's a year older than Bei was in 2007.  It  feels like a long time ago that Bei was that age and that it has passed in an instant. 

Road Canyon, like most on Cedar Mesa, is peppered with ruins, and Fallen Roof is a favorite.  Named for the thin layer of sandstone that exfoliated and dropped onto the floor of the alcove sheltering the dwellings, the site is decorated with the hand prints of someone who once lived there, before there was even such a thing as a "road," at least in southern Utah (there's still no road in this canyon, and I don't know why it's named after one). 

What must it have been like to raise your children in this beautiful place, waking each day to look out on the canyon before hiking up to the rim to tend the corn. People lived here perhaps a thousand years ago and then disappeared.  When you stand in these ruins and look at their hand prints, that can seem like an instant.    

Bei at the Fallen Roof Ruin, March 2007.

Eliza Fay at Fallen Roof, March 2013.

Petroglyphs on an enormous boulder facing up towards the sky, Road Canyon.

Dave, Eliza, Sam, Bei, Ellen, and Amy, descending into Road Canyon.

Bei at age 11, scrambling into the canyon.

The Fallen Roof Ruin.

Fallen Roof Ruin, with ancient hand prints.

Dave and Sam hiking out a side canyon off the main trail in Road Canyon. 

Spring break: Natural Bridges National Monument

Owachomo Bridge at sunrise, Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah.

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I have a love-hate relationship with National Monuments.  Maybe that’s too strong; it’s more love—feel-a-little-trapped.  I appreciate them and am grateful that they exist, buy my favorite places to camp and explore are at the ends of two-track roads or long walks, with no picnic tables, no scenic overlooks, no stinky outhouses, and no handrails protecting you from yourself.  But we promised Bei that this year we would have a more leisurely spring break, with no backpacks.  So we combined forces with our Laramie friends, Dave Fay and Amy Fluet, their kids Sam and Eliza, and Dave's Scotch collection that I augmented with a fancy bottle of Irish Whiskey. We found a nice site in the campground and set up a temporary village around the metal table (chained to the ground) and the double-walled steel fire pit (no wood gathering allowed). 

Natural Bridges National Monument, NBNM for short, occupies the northwest corner of Cedar Mesa, a misnomer because it’s covered in juniper.  But that’s splitting hairs.  If you haven’t been there, the mesa occupies a large chunk of Utah between Blanding and Hanksville, south of the Abajo Mountains and north of the San Juan River, which flows into Lake Powell from the east.  It's almost as high as Laramie, so nights in March are chilly, but the days warm nicely, and soon it will be too hot for humans.  

More important than the “cedars” are the canyons that cut through them and drain either directly into the San Juan or first into Grand Gulch or Comb Wash and then into the San Juan.  The canyons are beautiful and full of Anasazi ruins, pictographs, petroglyphs, and other archaeological debris, which pot robbers have meticulously scavenged.  They are deep, complicated, rugged, increasingly popular, and fun to explore. 

The Monument itself protects several spectacular sandstone bridges that span White Canyon and a tributary, Armstrong Canyon, both of which contain ruins and surprisingly nice hikes with surprisingly few people, at least in March.  It’s worth a stop despite all of the infrastructure.  We camped there all week, using the campground as a base for more remote adventures outside the Monument, where we collected firewood each night before returning to Site #4.   I’ll post images from some of those explorations when I get them organized. 

For now, here are a few pictures taken in NBNM during a hike through a short section of White Canyon and in our camp.

Bei and Eliza looking into White Canyon.

Sam Fay, descending a simulated Anasazi ladder on the way to Supapu Bridge.

Dave Fay at Sipapu Bridge. 

Ellen being protected from herself by a metal railing.

A Puebloan ruin in White Canyon.

Bei and Dave, White Canyon.

Ruin, White Canyon, NBNM.

Double walled fire pit, NBNM.  Scotch not shown.

Ellen and Bei, downclimbing from a ruin, White Canyon.

Handprints near Kachina Bridge.

Sunrise, Owachomo Bridge.