Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Green River & Capitol Reef - Sept 19
We spent three days in Green River, UT, and did a hike each day. The first one we was a relatively easy hike in Black Dragon Wash, about 15 miles west of GR up in BLM land. There's lots of BLM land in UT!!! There was a really good panel of pictographs near the mouth of the canyon, and then we hiked on up the canyon for about 2 miles. It was beautiful red entrada sandstone and quite deserted. We did run into an older woman hiking, who lived somewhere nearby out in the country and had hiked this area for years. She was sort of a gentle "Ed Abbey" type -- really loved this country and hiked every chance she could get. She told us about LOTS of other places to hike, so now we have a new "list".The second hike was into Horseshoe Canyon to see four panels of pictographs, the most famous of these being the "Great Gallery", also known as the Louvre of SW rock art. Horseshoe Canyon is a separate piece of Canyonlands NP, directly south of GR and a little east of Goblin Valley SP. It was a fairly strenuous hike of 6 1/2 miles rt, with a 800 ft descent into the canyon. And the walking was part on slickrock and part on sand. It was over 90 that day, and we just barely had enough water. The hike was absolutely lovely. The rock was red, the sky was the bluest you can imagine, and the rock art was spectacular.
The third hike was into Little Wild Horse Canyon. This is in the San Rafael Reef part of the San Rafael Swell. The way this area was formed caused the canyons to be forming while the swell was uplifting, so they became quite narrow. We had another absolutely clear day, so no danger of flash floods. We hiked in about 2 miles and then turned around and came back out. The nice thing about canyon hiking is that it always looks different on the way back out, because of the different directions and lighting. This was one of those REALLY narrow slot canyons that you could just barely squeeze through at times, so it was quite lovely.We're currently wrapping up a week in Torrey, near Capitol Reef NP. We arrived fairly early Thursday, and had time to set up, drive back to the Visitor Center, discuss various hikes with the ranger, and take the Scenic Drive up Capitol Gulch. We took two short hikes to Goosenecks Overlook and Sunset Point, which was at its best since it was late in the day. When we returned to our (now full) campground, we noticed a large orange bus-like vehicle two sites down from us, which we found out is called a Ro-Tel (roving hotel). The front half is seating for up to 24 people, and the back has little bed cubbies -- not much larger than coffins with a window at one end. Included in storage are picnic tables and cooking gear. They're apparently quite popular in Europe, and becoming popular in Alaska; then they come to the Western US for fall and Mexico for winter.
Our first day hike was down Grand Wash, which was only 12 ft wide in the Narrows. While not as narrow as Little Wild Horse, the walls were nearly 1000 ft high on either side. Quite stunning. It was also almost 100 that day, so we weren't up for more. The next day, another hot one, we took a scenic drive, down a long dirt road towards Bullfrog Marina, then up some narrow switchbacks back into Capitol Reef, out of CR into Grand-Staircase Escalante NM, just created as a NM in 1966, where the road became paved and ended up in Boulder, UT. We took a side trip to Escalante via UT 12, a VERY scenic road with breathtaking dropoffs on both sides of the road. We will be going back to Escalante later this week with the trailer to stay several days and do some more hiking.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 6:14 PM 
