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West Canyon Hike – Take 2

I received several questions on my Lake Powell blog  so I figured I needed to follow it up with more details on the one aspect people seemed most interested in – our West Canyon hike. Lucky enough, my friends were up for the challenge again this year! Note that more pictures from this hike are in the West Canyon Hike Gallery. I’ve intentionally loaded low-res images on this blog so if you wants prints, pop me an email – don’t try printing from these please. 

So, without further ado, here’s where we  start from the main channel of Lake Powell (left). From here it’s a good 20-30 mins to the back of the canyon where you eventually park the boat. Of course this all depends on how high the water is, this year the water was pretty high. A couple years ago when we first did this hike, we had to park much further back and the hill at the end of the picture on the right was quite a climb. This year it was a piece of cake. Sign of things to come? Ahhhh, no – not really.

 

I said the water level was higher than normal and it showed from the beginning to the end of the hike. We had to wade and swim much more than a few years ago. Back then,

the initial hike was all sand and none of us remember this much vegitation. Still though, with the temperature around 90 degrees at the beginning of Sep, the water was welcome and refreshing.

Here’s the first hint of what’s to come though. The first entrance into a slot. By the way, at this point I should mention that there are four of us on the expedition. I’m Chris, then there’s CBart, Vach and Dave. Our other regular participant on these trips is Schreck but he couldn’t make it this year. He was with us the first time we made this hike. You’ll be seeing a lot of us for the next several minutes. The last time we ventured here, we didn’t take a camera. I vowed then that if we ever convinced ourselves to try this again, I’d definitely take a camera. I wasn’t able to take my Canon 7D but I was able to take our point and shoot which takes pretty nice pictures for a small camera. I had it in a waterproof case to protect it from the water and other hazards on that will soon become obvious.

Going through the first slots you find one of those hazards early on – algae covered rocks. With the water that doesn’t move much when it gets this low, algae grows and it’s tough to walk on but with a little care it doesn’t present much of a problem.

The pools in these canyons are sometimes deep but few were over our heads so again, with a little care they’re not a danger. You can walk around some of them but not all – some you have to wade or swim across. SO, let’s talk about the temperature of that water. How cold can it be when the air temperature has been 90s plus for months?

Luckily though, with good friends along for support, you can get through these feeling great about yourself. Supposedly, I uttered some high-pitched, not so manly curses as I crossed the pool. Clearly this is glacier melt although I’m not sure how the glaciers stay intact so close to Lake Powell. Oh, and check the other pictures in the gallery. They will show that my manly buddies here didn’t exactly enjoy this crossing either :).

 After navigating this icy pool, all’s well because there are more slot canyons to see! Honestly, when you see the other pictures in this series, there are some risky spots but even if you just go to Mushroom Rock (soon to come) it’s a great hike. It’s about 1 mile we guessed from where we park the boat to Mushroom Rock. The only real difficulties in this part of the hike are the freaking cold pools and slippery rocks. Sometime the path in narrows to form a “V” at the bottom which makes the hiking a little tougher here (yeah, this is the case in the picture on the right).

The first mile into Mushroom takes about an hour if you take your time which we did. You could do it faster but not if you want to appreciate the awesome scenery which I highly recommend. While you see all this water, I’ll say that I doubt any of it’s safe to drink. Make sure if you take this hike, you bring lots of water to drink. You’ll need it. We didn’t take enough last time and it got close to being dangerous as a few of our group were severely dehydrated by the end. This time we hauled a couple packs that we shared carrying that were filled with bottled water and snacks. BIG improvement.

This is Mushroom Rock (modelled by Dave and Vach) which marks the starting point in the circle. You take a right from here and you’ll come back to this spot (via a 10 foot drop off). You could concievably go left I guess but I think it would be harder going that direction.

After heading right, the going gets more difficult. This starts pretty quickly with my favorite part of the whole trip – the swim channel. It’s hard to describe this and taking pictures is tough because it’s so dark. There also aren’t many places to rest as the water is very deep here. This section is so cool though. The start is pictured in the image to the right.  The walls are narrow enough to touch both sides at the same time and the passage is filled with twists and turns. The water inside the slot is frigid (again!) but once you get in and start swimming, you get used to it. It’s probably around 100 yards in length but even so you’ll want to take advantage of the rocks that provide the rest areas because you’ll want to admire the environment. Those are nice places to take pictures too but the results will be mixed at best so take a lot of shots and expect to throw most away. Here are a few that were at least viewable.

I’ve occasionally tried to touch the bottom in this slot but have never been able to. Last year going through this section of the hike we found a large scorpion in the water. He’d obviously drowned fairly recently because his body was compeltely intact. Makes you think about where you put your hands!

As I said, I love this part of the trip. For some reason the combination of swimming and a beautiful slot canyon hits me just right. I wish I could show it better than this.

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Lake Powell with The Guys

Back in 1989 (I think) my best friends and I had the idea for a summer guy’s trip, It needed to be out there though – wild and away from others. Some place where we could be completely selfish, eat what we want, drink what we want, sleep when we want, etc, etc. Since that time, through weddings, the births of seven children, and various other life events we’ve only missed this trip one year. We started in the mountains outside of Missoula, Montana, then to the mountains close to Gunnison, CO and lately we’ve been going to Lake Powell in southern Utah. All of these areas are amazing in their own right but for me, Lake Powell is at the top of this very prestigious list :).

We’ve had many memorable adventures on Lake Powell. We always put in at Bullfrog Marina because it’s closest to our homes in northern Colorado. We’ve gone north all the way to the Colorado river and we’ve gone all the way south to the dam and Wahweap Marina (see my Antelope Canyon post). My favorite location is the Escalante. I love slot canyons, love ’em! Having them filled with water and slowly (carefully!) navigating through them on my friend’s ski boat is the pinnacle for me in a general sense and the Escalante is full of these amazing canyons. But honestly, anywhere you go on this magnificent lake will take your breath away.

The story I’m going to start with is from our 2009 trip. I’ll see how long this gets and then add to it if there’s room. This story is about our hike through West Canyon toward the southern end of the lake. We heard this was a moderately challenging 3-4 hours hike. As it turns out, it’s a moderately challenging hike for 20 year old young men who must also have a little Spiderman in them. Not quite the same for five middle-aged engineers, the youngest of whom was 42 and are just a tad past their prime athletic physiques of a couple decades ago. We should have known something was amiss when we were told we needed to borrow a rope ladder – right there a loud alarm should have gone off.

The trip started off innocently enough. We all had very light breakfasts because A) we didn’t want to have full stomachs on a relatively strenuous hike and B) we <ahem> generally aren’t feeling much like eating in the mornings during our guys trips, ’nuff said. We filled our packs with some water, a few snacks and headed out. Driving the boat through West Canyon is awesome on it’s own. It’s a long winding canyon that gets pretty narrow by the end with very high walls. Once you anchor the boat as the canyon finally closes up, you start off wading through the water at the end to a pretty high sand berm that takes a little effort to get up and over. No problemo though for men like us. Then you have an awesome, leisurely stroll for about a mile through the first canyon. Along the way is a little stream with several pools filled with six – seven feet of water that are nice for cooling off but are unexpectedly frigid! I should mention here that there’s no way to avoid getting wet on this hike, so dress appropriately if you choose to see if I’m exaggerating any part of this for yourself :). The end of this phase of the hike comes at a point we called Mushroom Rock. Not sure if this a widely known name or if it’s a local thing. At this point you can continue to the right along the canyon or you can climb up about a 12-foot high sheer drop if you can find a way up. Whichever path you choose, the other path is your exit – the trail from here is one big circuit back to this point. We chose to go right which is typical for most West Canyon hikers. In a brilliant bit of hiking strategy here, we decided that since we were an hour or so into the hike, we were only probably two hours from being back to this point so we decided to leave the pack filled with most of the water so we wouldn’t have to carry it all. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking…

The next section of the hike is AMAZING, at least it was for me. Imagine a water filled slot canyon (I tried to touch the bottom and never came close) that’s about four or five feet wide, twists and turns for about 100 yards and has canyon walls that jut straight up from the water for about 100 feet. It’s SOOO cool. I wish so much that we’d taken a waterproof camera for this part of the hike because it would be great to see this place again. So, we worked our way through this waterway, not really swimming, more like treading water in a certain direction because we were in no hurry to get through this part. A dead scorpion floating on the water was an interesting sight along the way. After climbing out at the other end you start up for the first time right though the type of terrain that we’d all imagined for this hike – very narrow, sandstone-lined slot canyon. Beautiful.

At this point, I need to describe what these slot canyons are like. Pretty narrow the entire way, walls that rose 50 – 100 feet or more straight up and filled with a multitude of small to very large boulders that have fallen from the tops of the canyons over the years. Many of the slots had “V” shaped floors as well which made walking tenuous through most of the hike.

This is how we spent the next two hours or so. Climbing up through these slots, using the rope ladder as needed three or four times as one or more of us found a particular boulder angled in such a way to make the climb beyond our abilities in one way or another. These were rarely high, most of the time six to eight feet or so but they bulged out in such a way that we couldn’t always get all five over the top without a little extra help. We were very glad we brought the rope ladder at these points. During this part of the hike we came to a wash out point where the trail widened. This is also one of the turn points that we had a description of but that description turned out to not match what we saw. The sun was brutally hot at this point and we wasted about 30 mins down the wrong path before getting reset up the correct slot. Could have been worse for sure.

At this point, about three hours into the hike we didn’t feel like we were heading in the direction back to Mushroom Rock yet and we were starting to get thirsty and tired. One of the group had a quad muscle that was starting to spasm a bit as well so there was a little concern. We started to take a little more care with the water we had and all took a bit to eat something even though we didn’t have much with us. One other little nugget that was in our minds was the main reason we’d heard that we needed the rope ladder. A supposed 20-foot “cliff” that we’d have to get up at some point to continue along the path. While we’d heard it was 20 feet, the person describing it also said that it could be climbed without too much difficulty without a ladder but taking the ladder would be good just in case. No biggie, we can handle that, but we were a little anxious to see the problem and make sure we could handle it, especially now as we began to get a little winded. Injuries also started to worry us because a twisted/broken ankle/knee/back here was reasonably likely and would have been catastrophic being this far from the starting point of the hike and who knew how far to the end.

The one thing that kept us moving forward was how spectacular the environment was that we were traversing. So while I’ve said there was a little concern, no one was complaining because the hike was so amazing. So we continued on for another hour of this, using the rope ladder as needed a few more times but still climbing up. It was at this point that the trail ended in a great big sandstone bowl filled about 20% of the way up with three to eight foot diameter boulders, many of which were cracked and broken. Keep in mind that we still weren’t 100% confident that we had guessed right earlier at the washout. Now with the trail ending in the bowl we were seriously concerned. Were we even on the right path? At this point, one of our group noticed a tiny little water spillway chute *at least* 20 feet up at the top of the bowl. Could this possibly be the “20 foot, climbable cliff”? Really? How anyone could climb up there on their own seemed (and still seems) impossible to me. Yes, as it turns out, we were in the right place. The question in our minds though was: “now what do we do?” We were  four hours or more from the start of the hike if we turned around now but we had no idea how to go forward. We talked about it and finally the biggest one of us walked to the wall, laid his hands against the wall and said “Chris, crawl up on my shoulders and see if you can get up”. My first thought was “So you still have some of last night’s beer working through your veins I see”, but he was serious. I could tell there was no way this would get me to the top. At about 15 feet, the wall rounded a tiny little bit so at some point before the very top, one could possibly find some purchase and climb the rest of the way. I knew there was no way this would work but he was adamant so I figured I’d climb up there and at least see if I could figure out some alternative. With help from the other guys, I climbed my friend (also named Chris) and found just what I thought. I wasn’t even close and now, looking down I saw the bowl of sharp, broken boulders that was my landing area if I fell or if the other Chris found he couldn’t hold me anymore. Peachy. Then the second brilliant idea pops out of the “crowd’ at the bottom. “Dave, crawl up on Chris’s shoulders and see if you can make it”. “Ha, ha, very freakin’ funny” I thought, eyes growing wide as the other two guys started helping Dave crawl up the other (bottom) Chris. This is how I know there’s a God and it just wasn’t my time to go that day. Dave actually made it up onto my shoulders believe it or not, and somehow the bottom Chris didn’t seem to be in bad shape with now around 400 pounds on his shoulders (he’s a MONSTER!!). The bad news is that Dave still couldn’t find enough purchase to make it the final distance. He was angled a little bit though so I had him get on my hands and I pushed him as high as I possibly could get him, even angling my fingers to get that last fraction of an inch. The bottom Chris was also straining to be as tall as he could be. Dave was saying “no, no, no I can’t make it….” and then I felt one foot lift off my shoulders. He stayed like this for a few seconds as a test and then slowly and carefully inched the rest of his body a little further up. If he’d fallen, at least two of us and probably more would have been seriously injured and a LONG way from help. After gaining a little confidence though, he s-l-o-w-l-y edged the other foot off my shoulders. It still was touch and go and everyone was quiet as inch by inch to keep from sliding back down, Dave slowly got to the point where he could finally get to his knees and then to his feet at the top.

At this point we all almost exploded. We were so pumped and full of ourselves. But the bottom Chris brought us back to earth after a while noting that his shoulders were starting to hurt since I, of course, was still standing on them. We handed up the rope ladder with me having to toss it the last 10 feet or so to Dave. He caught it, anchored it well and then held on while I climbed up. We then teamed up to get the rest of the guys to the top and had another manliness party at the top. The only thing better would have been if we’d had Flight of the Valkyries or something playing through that canyon while we owned this trivial hurdle (yeah, right :)). All our fatigue and worry had undergone an adrenaline beat-down so we started up the next slot eager and ready to work.

The next obstacle for us was the second and final turn point. Again, we had a description of what the turn looked like but it turned out to not be the image we had in our heads. We missed it again and this time we lost probably an hour or more heading up another slot canyon instead of finally exiting and heading back down towards the boat.  We all had the sinking feeling that we were heading in the wrong direction again though so we turned around, climbed a small hill and we were out of the canyon. Our view at this point , while we were drinking the last of our water, was high above the lake looking down on what could have been West Canyon but could have been another arm as well. At least it was down though, and towards the water so we decided to go for it. It “felt” better to all of us although I was still worried. The climb down was as treacherous as the climb up and there were a couple places where all of us wondered how we were going to get down through what we saw. Luckily there was always a pathway, we just had to find it and take it slow. On one occasion we had to slide down under a 5-ton boulder that had fallen and landed atop two other boulders creating a 4-foot wide by 2-foot tall chute that angled down pretty severely. We used the rope ladder to inch down through the “tunnel” on our backs, the last person (me) getting assistance from the others since I couldn’t use the ladder. After working our way down through several similar hurdles the terrain flattened out into more of a sand plateau. We continued forward a short distance and finally after approximately 6 or so hours after leaving Mushroom Rock (and our pack with water and snacks) we arrived at the top of the 12-foot high drop which was much easier to get down that we imagined it would be getting up our first time through. Our first order of business was to rehydrate of course and have something to eat since we hadn’t really eaten much that entire day that was now getting close to night.

There were still a few other roadblocks to navigate on the way out. A 3-4 hour hike had turned into an eight hour excursion for us but we’d made it, tired and still hungry for some real food but knowing that we’d remember this hike for the rest our lives. Thanks much for reading about it.

If you liked the story, I think you’ll like taking a few more minutes to check out the rest of the images in the Lake Powell gallery.

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The Magical Halls of Antelope Canyon

Hi all, as my first blog entry ever, I wanted to write about one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. In Aug 2009, my buddies and I completed an adventure that we’d wanted to take ever since hearing about it several years before. One of our favorite “guy trip” destinations is Lake Powell in Southern Utah. I’ll post about some of those adventures later, rest assured. On this trip we decided to venture to the far southern end of the enormous lake from our entry at Bullfrog Marina. We’d never been that far south, but needed to for this trip because we had to be within easy reach of Wahweap Marina and the tour bus that would take us from there into Page, Arizona.

Antelope Canyon is located on Navajo land just outside of Page so to visit this amazing place you must take a tour from one of several companies located in this small town. We used the Antelope Canyon Tours by Roger Ekis company and were happy with our choice. We paid a little extra for the Photography Tour and were very glad we did as the photography tour grants you more time in the slot canyon and also includes guide assistance as crowd control to get images that don’t include some of the many tourists that will be joining you in the canyon.

Be prepared for a bit of a thrill ride as you travel from the tour headquarters out to the canyon. One of the most notable features of Antelope Canyon is the powder fine dust that’s created from the natural wear of the sandstone that forms the canyon. Think orange powdered sugar here. It gets everywhere (more about this later) and on the occassions when the canyon is flooded, a bunch of this sand flows out into the washway at the lower end. This riverbed is your driveway to the entrance of the canyon so the trucks that take you there are equipped with large tires and momentum must be maintained over the sand or they’ll bog down. So, hang on tight and keep your loose items secure.

The entrance of the canyone is pretty unassuming. It looks like what you’d expect, a washed out riverbed with very high walls. It’s only when you get inside that the magic starts. The lightbeams that you see in the images are only visible on bright sunny days and then only as the sun passes directly overhead of the small gaps in the tops of the canyon. They are not viewable year-round either so check with your guide company to ensure the time is right before you finalize your plans. Your guide knows the schedule and when lightbeams occur in each “room” of the canyon so listen close. They’re only visible for 15 minutes or so and then vanish for the day. We were lucky enough to have ideal conditions on our visit and were thus able to see the beams in a variety of different areas.

From my single experience, it seemed to me that there were two very different ways to view the canyon. One as a photographer and one as a tourist. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the tourist version results in many fewer sore muscles from crouching, kneeling and bending your body into unusual positions that are required to get the best shots. Believe me, my 44 year old body paid a dear price the following day! But it was entirely worth the pain :).
 For those considering a trip, the equipment I bought into the canyon included the following.

  • Two Canon bodies, one with the Canon 10-22mm lens and one with the Canon 17-85mm lens. I used the 10-22mm almost exclusively.
  • Sturdy tripod
  • Remote shutter as you’ll be taking multi-second images
  • Blower to remove fine dust from the lenses and equipment

One very important note on the dust (I told you I’d come back to this). The only reason you can see the lightbeam is because there’s dust in the air for the light to reflect off of. Without the dust, no lightbeams. The downside on this is that it get *everywhere*. I covered my camera in a plastic rain shield that one of my friends loaned me (thanks Schreck!). but few others went this far to be sure. The one critical recommendation that I have though is do not change lenses in the canyon. You’ll almost certainly be sending your camera in for a factory cleaning if you do.

Alright, into the canyon…

You might be surprised to find that Antelope Canyon is only about 1/4 of a mile long, I was. I think the tourist view of Antelope Canyon would be much different from the photographer view. As someone very excited about seeing what kind of images I could get from this beautiful place, I spent most of my time listening to the guide and then waiting my turn to crouch down to take my shot. The difficulty here is that every turn yields a different view and virtually every step creates a whole new environments to consider for including in your gallery. It’s very exciting but extremely stressfull. By the time our 2 hours was finished, I felt like I’d just finished a football game.

Another amazing little jewel inside the cave, similar to the lightbeams, are the sandfalls. The sandfalls occur when the powder fine sand is blown from the top of the canyon. It’s so fine that as it falls it “flows” like water down the many ledges inside. While there are many places to see this, there are a few choice areas that your guide will direct you to as part of the tour. He or she will ensure that you’re able to take back this memory are part of your experience. The trick is making sure you’re ready to catch it when the there’s enough sand flowing to simulate these little waterfalls.

Once you find yourself at the end of the canyon, don’t make the mistake of calling it quits. As I said before different perspectives reveal a gigantic variety of new views and perspectives. You probably missed thousands of stunning opportunities to capture the canyon in all it’s glory. Turn back around and head back in! You paid for the time, so using it seems like the wise thing to do anyway, right? 🙂

Antelope Canyone is a huge pain-in-the-neck place to get to. There’s not much to do in Page other than this type of thing so you have to really want to be there. I hope these images demonstrate the splendor that is this canyon but for my $.02, it’s worth the cost and effort to get there yourself. Oh, and there is at least a golf course in Page so that gives you something to do between tours.

There are several other images of Antelope Canyon in the gallery. Don’t miss those as well.

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