Backpacking: Collins Spring to Slickhorn Canyon #1

 

Larry and Ellen at the lip of the pour-over in lower Grand Gulch, with the dirt-traverse behind them.

(Click images for larger view)

Every outing, whether rock climbing, packrafting, canyoneering, or even backpacking, has a crux, usually generating at least a little pre-trip anxiety. This makes trips feel more adventurous even though the anxiety is relative and usually unfounded. Climber and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard famously said, “for me, when everything goes wrong – that’s when adventure starts.” 

 

I’m lucky in that I can have adventures just imagining a few things going wrong or sometimes, only one thing. 

 

In Utah’s lower Grand Gulch, the pre-trip anxiety-producer is the pour-over low in the canyon just above where it meets the San Juan River. Pour-overs are common on the Colorado Plateau where sedimentary bedding planes meet headward erosion, sometimes undercutting them and leaving a drop into the canyon below. These can often be bypassed on one side or the other by side-hilling and scrambling, but sometimes they are impassable except by technical means (rappelling, downclimbing, handlining, etc.). 

The pour-over in lower Grand Gulch was once easily bypassed, but a rockslide obliterated the trail, leaving a nearly vertical mess of dirt and loose rock that according to descriptions and videos that I nervously watched before we set out, could be traversed sketchily by scrambling across the exposed dirt cliff, a no-fall situation. According to trip accounts, hikers often lowered (or hoisted) their packs over the lip of the pour-over with rope to improve their odds and their balance on the traverse. On the other hand, the route from Collins Spring to the river is a common timed-challenge for long distance runners, who don't ever mention the pour-over in their accounts, presumably racing over it with enough momentum to avoid gravitational danger, like Basilisk lizards (aka Jesus Christ lizards) that can run across the surface of lakes.

 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For years, I kept a mental list of trips to do when freed from spring and fall teaching—prime time in the desert since summers are too hot and winters too cold. One of them was a hike down Grand Gulch to the San Juan, then upriver to the mouth of Slickhorn Canyon, and finally up Slickhorn to its head. Cedar Mesa (aka Bear’s Ears) is famously packed with archaeology and rock art, and it’s beautiful.

 

I’d originally imagined a longer hike starting at the Kane Gulch Ranger Station but having already hiked upper Grand Gulch (and many of its side canyons; (e.g., blog posts here, here), I instead planned a five-day post-retirement hike with Ellen, Bay Roberts, and Larry Scritchfield in April 2022 starting at Collins and exiting at Slickhorn #1 (one of the upper Slickhorn trailheads). I’d met a canyoneer the previous spring at the Collins trailhead who was starting this route by himself, and he mentioned carrying a rope for the pour-over, so I did my anxiety-producing due diligence and made a plan to carry a harness, rappel device, and 65’ of supertape (lightweight climber’s webbing) just in case. We’d hike down Grand Gulch first (rather than starting at Slickhorn) so that the drop could be descended with the webbing rather than ascended via the death-choss.

 

It all worked out as it almost always does. The webbing rappel off the pour-over from a large cottonwood tree growing conveniently at the lip was fast and easy, and the rest of the hike was interesting and enjoyable with lots of fascinating rock art, great ancestral Puebloan structures, perfect campsites, and lovely weather. We saw few people, except for a large NOLS group camped just above the pour-over having survived the mandatory (since they were traveling up-canyon) dirt-traverse the previous afternoon. I would not have wanted to be responsible for (or have watched) that mission, but the group seemed unphased as they lounged in folding chairs cooking biscuits in oil, surrounded by a vast scatter of heavy gear that they had carried for a week or more and were destined to carry for weeks to come. 

Towards the end of the hike, we scrambled high up a talus slope into the arc of an abandoned river bend (rincon). Pictographs of birds and other figures adorned the orange sandstone cliff from where we sat all the way around to the other side of the rincon where they were painted in impossibly precarious sites. Below us, the broad canyon offered appealing campsites with pools of water glinting in spring sunshine. Trip anxieties dissolve quickly.

 

Photos of the hike are below and a little info on logistics with a link to a more detailed trip description is included below the photos. Much of the archaeology is oft-visited and well-known, but I won’t provide specific locations. 

 

Ellen, Bay, and Larry hiking down lower Grand Gulch below Collins Spring and the Narrows.

The 100-hands panel.

Larry in lower Grand Gulch. I'm never fast enough to take photos of my friends hiking toward me.

Larry approaching a pictograph panel to get a closer look.

Pictographs at the anthropomorph panel.

Ellen and Larry enjoying rock art.

Pictographs.

Bird tracks leading to a bird! 

Ellen and Bay enjoying camp.

Lower Grand Gulch.

Spring cottonwood leaves.

Ellen, Larry, and Bay in lower Grand Gulch.

Hand prints.

Puzzling over petroglyphs on a boulder.

Lower Grand Gulch below one of our campsites.

Larry rappelling off the pour-over on our third  day out with Ellen and Bay waiting above. This was safer and easier than exposed dirt traversing.

L to R: Ellen, Bay, and Larry at the beginning of the straightforward but arduous traverse along the San Juan River from Grand Gulch to Slickhorn Canyon.

Resting in the hot sun mid-traverse.

Enjoying lower Slickhorn on the fourth day.

Ellen and Bay in Slickhorn Canyon.

Granaries.

Bird pictographs.

Ellen on the easy bypass around an even larger pour-over near the head of Slickhorn Canyon on our last day. 

Logistics: Permits are required for backpacking in Grand Gulch and Slickhorn. We left a car at the Slickhorn #1 trailhead and drove a second car to the Collins Spring trailhead to start the hike. There’s dispersed camping along the road into Collins Spring and near the Slickhorn trailhead (and all over Cedar Mesa) or you can stay at the paid campground at Natural Bridges National Monument (first come first served). 

The hike itself took us 5 days and 4 nights, enough time (but more is always better) for exploring ruins and art—we camped twice in lower Grand Gulch and twice in Slickhorn Canyon, finding ample water flowing in the main drainage in Grand Gulch and good water at all of our camps (spring 2022) in Slickhorn as well. 

 

The main technical obstacle is the pour-over near the bottom of Grand Gulch, not far upcanyon from the San Juan River and described above. We carried a 65’ length of 9/16” climbing webbing (lighter than rope), one harness, and one rappel device and rappelled off a large cottonwood tree on the left side of the pour-off looking down canyon, passing the gear up for each person. That worked great, wasn’t scary, and was probably faster than lowering packs and sketching across the dirt cliff one-by-one. 

 

The traverse from Grand Gulch to the mouth of Slickhorn is arduous but not technical--stay high on a bench coming out of Grand Gulch. There is a mile or so of boulder field side-hilling where we found an intermittent trail before gaining a nice bench that makes for easier hiking (though with some talus sections) and eventually wraps into Slickhorn. There is no water on the traverse (you are high above the river). Continue along the bench into Slickhorn. We camped in a small side drainage a mile or so up Slickhorn that was beautiful and running with clear water. The hike up Slickhorn from there to the trailhead was straightforward. 

There is a very detailed trip description at this website.

Green River, Utah

Frank's Pizza. Green River, Utah.

(Click on images to view larger)

Last May (2022), Ellen and I rode (I did a lot of pushing) our mountain bikes with five friends for 170 miles down the spine of the San Rafael Swell to Capitol Reef. We convened before the trip in Green River, Utah and camped north of town at Swasey’s Beach, a sandy strand where the river exits Gray Canyon. The wind sandblasted the campground the night before our friends arrived, but we spent time in town before the windstorm buying food at the Melon Vine Food Store, visiting the John Wesley Powell Museum, looking for a good milkshake, and wandering through wide, mostly empty streets in stark sunshine.

Our camp at Swasey's Beach Campground as the sandstorm gathered.

Green River was originally a ferry crossing, but now it is known for it's melons, a minor hub for river runners, and a gas stop for people passing by on I-70. While not necessarily depressed, the town isn't thriving. Many older buildings are closed up and vintage hotels are shuttered and posted with no trespassing signs, having lost their business to chain lodging closer to the freeway. 

 

After grocery shopping, I enjoyed photographing nearby in the bright sun, usually less appealing to me than gentler light, but somehow fitting in a stark, scrappy, overexposed desert town. The scenes reminded me of photographers whose work I come back to again and again, Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, pioneers of color images, often of mundane sites, captured in ways that infuse them with meaning. Eudora Welty said of Eggleston’s work that “no subject is fuller of implications than the mundane world,” and perhaps there is truth to that. Shore’s images have been described as “bleak but lyrical” and his style as laconic even though it has a lot to say. Sally Mann, another photographer, says in her excellent memoir "Hold Still", "It is easier for me to take ten good pictures in an airplane bathroom than in the gardens at Versailles."

 

Photographs draw attention to places that might otherwise be overlooked . 

Book Cliff Lodge. Green River, Utah.

World Peace.

Beer.

Hotel.

Cut and Curl.

Bar.

Green River and the San Rafael Swell.

 

Packrafting: Boquillas Canyon in Big Bend National Park

Texas Highway 2627 heading south to the Heath Ranch.

(Click images to view larger)

In February (2022), well into a long drought, the Rio Grande trickled through Boquillas Canyon, the limestone defile defining the U.S.-Mexico border and the southeast boundary of Big Bend National Park; later in the year it dried up altogether. The river emerges from the deep canyon into dry scrubby ranchland, eventually passing under a barricaded bridge blocking passage between the Heath Ranch, where Ellen and I took-out at the end of a three-day packraft trip, and the abandoned town of La Linda in Mexico, where a few deteriorating homes and a church remain. Russell Johnson, whose parents own the ranch, told me that as a kid he often crossed the bridge with friends to explore La Linda, but these days the Mexican Federales are too scary, so he stays on the U.S side, driving river shuttles for people like us and working to make the ranch into a destination for river runners. 

Ellen in her packraft after exiting Boquillas Canyon. The metal fire pan is required by the park service even if you don't intend to have fires.

 

We’d launched our packrafts about 35 miles upstream at the Rio Grande Village, a tourist enclave in the park, battling a ferocious headwind with a handful of other boaters, all clinging to vegetation to keep from being blown back to the put-in. Flowing at about 70 cfs, less than half of the recommended minimum of 150, the current was too sluggish to overcome the gale, and it was all we could do to paddle the first few miles past the Mexican village of Boquillas Del Carmen to the mouth of the canyon where we’d hoped that the limestone cliffs would provide some shelter; instead, the wind blew harder, funneling through the gap. We huddled there for an hour or so, hiding from the wind in the tamarisk and checking out the collection of items left on the ground for sale by Mexican villagers from Boquillas, relying on the honor system for payment. The blowing sand stung our faces when the wind gusted, and eventually we convinced ourselves that we could make progress. Back in our boats paddling frantically between gusts, we fought our way to a cold windy campsite among thorny sweet acacia trees thick with their puffy orange flowers. 

Packing for the trip at our campsite in Rio Grande Village.

Rigging boats at the put-in. Dog in stroller is someone else's interested observer.

Ellen briefly enjoying relatively calm paddling before the maelstrom hit.

Other paddlers hoping for strength in numbers against the wind near the mouth of the canyon.

Items for sale by villagers from Boquillas del Carmen. 

The canyon mouth where limestone cliffs funneled the wind.

Ellen feeling excited about camping in a thorny, windy, cold place.

 

The rest of the trip was warmer, calmer, and less eventful. The few rapids were inconsequential in low flow, and the challenge was butt-scooting our rafts across shallows rather than negotiating rapids, minimal even at normal flows. Boquillas Canyon is spectacular. Limestone walls rise hundreds of feet above the river, riddled with inaccessible alcoves. Side canyons invite exploration and towers beg to be climbed, though rock quality is rumored to be poor. 

Heading downriver on day 2.

Ellen on day 2.

Boquillas Canyon on day 2.

Big Bend Sliders (turtles). We saw lots of these sunning themselves along the river.

Rabbit Ears Spire in the lower part of the canyon. Climbed? Unclimbed?

 

We camped the second night where we could scramble up a steep sandy bank and find our way through thorny riparian vegetation to a broad bench grazed by Mexican horses and cattle. Two caballeros, smiling and waving, had splashed their horses across the Rio Grande in front of us earlier that day, unconcerned about the international border. At camp, a horse nibbled at our tent and spooked, surprised by the feel of lightweight fabric on its tongue.

Setting up our second camp.

Curious horses wondering if tents might be good to eat.

Low water boating has been the theme of our nascent packrafting experiences. On the John Day in Oregon in 2021 (earlier blog post), there was enough water to float lazily along, but the small rapids were reduced to riffles, and route-finding was more of a challenge than pushy water. Later in the spring (April 2022) after Big Bend, we floated the Escalante from Fence Canyon to Coyote Gulch (blog post to come) at very low water and exhausted our already fading core muscles scooching the boats across gravel bars. While persistent drought in the southwest has more serious consequences than inconveniencing packrafters, one worries that the already small windows for floating desert rivers could close altogether.

Does the river end here? Not yet, but finding shallow passages around gravel bars was challenging.

Ellen paddling in flat water after leaving the canyon. 

Lunch on the last day.

Still water.

It was hot as I walked the two-track from the take-out, climbing over a locked gate and continuing up a long driveway to the Heath ranch to retrieve our van and borrow the gate key. Ellen stayed behind deflating rafts and organizing gear while a large group took-out and set up camp by the river. After an enthusiastic greeting by their friendly ranch dog, Russell and his mother offered us camping at the end of the seldom-used asphalt runway that extended from just north of their house up and over a hill and back down to a private level spot out of view of the ranch. Having chosen privacy over the river camp, we drove the runway to this surprisingly peaceful camp with views south into Mexico and north into Texas. After spreading our gear on the tarmac to dry, we cleaned up, cooked dinner, and enjoyed the warmth and fading light of a South Texas February day. 

Drying gear on the Heath Ranch runway.

Memories of trips evolve until all that’s left are a few defining moments, sometimes surprisingly mundane compared to the adventure. That evening on the runway after the float is one of these for me. We sat in our camp chairs as the sun sank behind the ridge to our west and the air cooled. Mountain peaks in Mexico lit up for a few minutes against a darkening sky and a few stars appeared. It’s seldom the paddling or the hiking you think most about months after an adventure. 

Our camp at the end of the trip.

The runway leading back to the Heath Ranch house.

 

Logistics: A permit is required from the Park Service for the float. You must carry a metal fire pan and an extra paddle and life preserver, even if you aren’t building fires. Put-in just upstream from Rio Grande Village in the park and take-out at Heath Ranch about 10 miles east of the park—call the ranch for permission; they are very friendly and offer camping. Charge is $10/night for parking your vehicle at the ranch. Russell Johnson or his mother will probably do the shuttle—you pick them up at the ranch and drive back to the put-in with them. Then they drive your car back to the ranch, so plan on that time and gasoline for the shuttle (you can get gas in the park but it’s expensive). We bought a river guidebook from the Big Bend Natural History Association but didn’t find it that helpful. There are two named rapids, both of which can be portaged. Camping isn’t too hard to find though as I said, the banks can be scrappy. You are asked to camp on the U.S. side. There’s more info from the park service at this link.