Greenshit 2012, July 11-22

Danny, Greg, Joey, Morrie

Notes to self: For track, log and photo times: GPS track in BaseCamp times are +3 hours off from PDT and +2 off MDT when viewed on Mac in eastern time zone (doesn’t vary depending on daylight time). PhotoLinker times should be set to GMT-7 for PDT and GMT-6 for MST. Camera times and voice recorder times (when viewed during EST) all adjusted to local (PDT or MDT).

Wed Jul 11 Morrie and Danny’s flight into John Wayne went smoothly, even though the airline’s change of stopover from Houston to San Francisco cost us an extra 70 minutes of travel time. We arrived in Huntington Beach at noon, did perishable and ice shopping, and were completely packed up at 6pm, with the only chore left to get gas. We had a nice dinner at Joey’s and got to bed between 9:00 and 10:00. The ongoing joke was whether Joey would wake me up an hour early because he took wiggly before bedtime.

Thu Jul 12 We were up at 2:00am and out of the house by 3:00am. We stopped at the Chevron at Cajon Junction at 4:30 but the McDonald’s next to it wasn’t open yet. At 5:44am, on I-15 a few minutes past Barstow, 60 miles before Baker, the left front tire of my jeep blew out, completely shredding it. Despite this happening at 60mph, Danny was easily able to pull off on the shoulder. We removed the spare to find it had hardly any air in it, so we spent another 10 minutes unpacking everything in back of the jeep to get to the compressor. It turned out the valve stem was busted: the rubber was split as you bent the stem. Another thing to check before a trip. We had a very difficult time getting my jack to work. It had not been used in so long (in fact, never since I owned the jeep) the mechanism did not latch and was not easily raising and lowering the jeep, but eventually we got it working with lots of WD-40. We changed the tire and pumped it back up. This whole process took 45 minutes, and it was now 6:30am.

We needed a new tire, but it was too early to get one back in Barstow, so we decided to keep driving and look for one in Baker. We got there an hour later at 7:30. We had breakfast at Denny’s and by 8:30 were looking for tires. We stopped at 4 or 5 tire dealers, but didn't find any that had a replacement. So we called ahead to Discount Tire in Las Vegas, and they had one, which we reserved. We left Baker at 8:55am.

We got to the tire dealer in southern Las Vegas at 10:15am. They had a very nice waiting room with free coffee, but the whole process took an hour. We were back on the highway at 11:15. By noon the temperature was 105º, which was certainly hot driving in an un-air conditioned jeep, but not intolerable. For the next 2 hours we continued on I-15 across Nevada and the NW corner of Arizona and into Utah, where we reset our clocks to MDT and instantly lost yet another hour.

Five miles into Utah, now 2:30pm, we got off the highway at Brigham Rd. in St. George (or maybe it was the suburb before, Bloomington) to have lunch at a Subway. Service at Subways is often slow, as they are chronically understaffed, but this one was laughably so. We weren’t out of there till 3:30pm, making for a 1-hour stop.

At 5:00pm got off of I-15 onto Utah 20 and then U.S. 89. All of the drive after leaving the interstate was very scenic, passing over the mountains, along high plateaus, and through beautiful Grass Valley. Unfortunately there is no gas for 60 miles after Parowan on I-15, Utah 20 or U.S. 89, despite several “towns” on the map, and we were running very low. Near desperate, we finally found a gas station at 6:00pm in Junction, just 1½ miles out of our way, north of where Utah 62 branches off U.S. 89. It’s worth noting for the future that this is a 24-hour station.

For the next 3 hours we drove through more very scenic countryside, through Capitol Reef as it was getting dark, and reached the Whispering Sands Motel in Hanksville just before 9:00pm. The 658-mile drive took us 16h44m elapsed time, which included 3½ hours dealing with the tire, 2 hours for breakfast and the too-long lunch, and gas stops totaling about 20 minutes. We can therefore use 13h15m as a safe estimate of travel time that allows plenty of time for food and gas, but no flat tires. Of course, we have to add an hour for the time zone change. If we hadn’t departed as early as 3:00am, it would have been a very late night.

The rooms at the motel were very nice, but Joey complained of a mildew smell in his. We got 10% off coupons for dinner at Stan’s Burger Shack, next door to the motel. The food was very good, and they had buffalo burgers.

Fri Jul 13 We got up at 6am and had continental breakfast at Burger Shack, which includes bagels and cream cheese, pastries and fruit. I asked the motel manager whether I could store the front top to my jeep while we were away, and she gladly let me do that, offering me a spot outside behind a wall. The ability to leave this top behind was crucial, as there was no room in Joey’s jeep to put it.

By 8am, we finished disconnecting my sway bar and were ready to deflate. I called ahead to the Hans Flat ranger station to make arrangements to pick up our permits in case we got there after they closed at 4:30pm. The ranger said that he could direct us a campground closer to the ranger station if we got there too late, as Panorama Point that we had reserved was still quite a drive. But I said that I wanted to go to Panorama Point as I had never been there. I didn't think it would take that long, considering it’s only 10 miles from the station.

At 9:30am we started driving north on the highway, less than 5 miles to the dirt road. The normal way to the ranger station that I always took before is down the 46-mile Hans Flat Rd (also called the Lower San Rafael Rd), which is a pretty good 2wd dirt road that branches off from the highway 16 miles further north from here. But this time, armed with more maps and a GPS, I decided to try a more direct route that could cut off a big corner. I didn't expect it to be any faster, as it was surely 4wd, going through some questionable terrain, including washes and sand, and in some places I could not find any indication of a road on a map or even in Google Earth. But it skirted the heads of several canyons in the Robbers Roost area, which are known for canyoneering, and I had never seen much of Robbers Roost. These canyons all drain into the Dirty Devil River.

The road started out surprisingly smooth and fast, with no washboard. At 10am we tried to take Well Draw Rd. to save 5 miles by cutting off a big corner in the route. We drove down it for 2 minutes and saw that as this road crosses the upper reaches of Blackburn Draw it goes down a very steep, sandy slope. Then it looked better up ahead across Little Antelope Valley, but I was worried we couldn’t get back up this if we have to turn around. We walked down the road a bit and it looked like it got into sand again later on, but we couldn’t see beyond that. We decided to take the main way around rather than risk getting trapped this early in the trip. We had to back up this road to get out of it. The long way around was about 8.5 miles and took 40 minutes.

At 11:45 we got to the upper end of Buck Canyon, where I originally wanted to find a good place to hike. But I decided we had time to hike only one canyon, so instead we went to the next canyon, a north fork of Pasture Canyon, which we reached in another ½ hour. It was just a gully where we started hiking but it rapidly got deeper and wider, and it became nearly a slot canyon in spots. Along the way there were a dozen or so mysterious rectangular chunks carved out of the sandstone wall with a circular saw, shaped like a 3x4 tick-tack-toe board several inches deep, spaced out over several hundred feet. At 1:17 we intersected the main arm of Pasture Canyon, went up it a very brief bit and then down just 5 more minutes, where it got very narrow and high. We were stopped by a knee-deep pool of water and mud. Greg did cross it doing an impossible climb jump chimney, but we decided to turn around at that point. We were back at the jeeps by 2:30 and soon headed onward.

A half hour later we got to a point on the map that showed a jeep road going west, which I was hoping would be a shortcut to save 15 miles (and also be more interesting), but as we drove slowly I could not find any signs of it. Anyway, it was too late to risk a serious challenge. So were forced to drive due north (opposite the direction we wanted to go) and eventually intersected the Hans Flat Rd. at 3:20. As we continued on toward the main part of Antelope Valley we stopped for a brief walk in the sand dunes off the south side of the road, just before the head of Middle Canyon.

It took us 2¼ hours to go the 40 miles from Pasture Canyon to the ranger station at a pretty good average speed of 20 mph. We got there at 4:50pm, 20 minutes after closing, but the ranger was still there waiting for us. The ranger was a very nice guy. He gave us a permit and we talked to him a bit. He said the Dirty Devil is easily crossable, though I thought it would be a long shot that we would return that way. We continued on for 10 minutes and stopped for photos at Millard Canyon Overlook at 5:05. The “short” 10-mile drive from there to Panorama Point, though level, was frustrating, as parts were 2 high and parts were 4 low, due to rocks, ledges and frequent gullies breaking up stretches of good flat road, but you never knew when the rough parts were coming or how long the smooth parts would be, so it was hard to decide when to switch gears. It took nearly 2 hours, till 6:45, to reach camp, averaging a mere 5 mph.

The Panorama Point campsite was right on the edge of the cliff facing SE, overlooking the huge Horse Canyon, the Chocolate Drops and the rest of the Maze, and the Abajo Mountains in the distance. We could see the road to the Maze Overlook where we were headed tomorrow, and the road around Horse Canyon that we would be driving in 2 days. That road was just a little over ½ mile away in a straight line distance from us, but 1300’ below. At the same time, the bitter end of Panorama Point (which truly ends at a point) was easily visible to the NE, making for an all-around spectacular view.

As he would every evening, Joey quickly took charge of the margaritas. Meanwhile we brought out the shrimp cocktail appetizer. The meal was hamburgers cooked on Joey's new portable charcoal grill, with plenty of condiments like onions, lettuce, jalapenos, etc. and salad made of packaged greens. After dinner, as it was already 9:30, we took just a short 15-minute hike a few hundred yards back up the road, cigar in hand. Back at camp, after another cigar, Lagavulin and dark chocolate, we were in bed around 11:00pm.

Sat Jul 14 We were up at various times between 6:00am and 7:00am. At 6:20am, it was 64º, which is very warm for this early in the morning, even by Death Valley standards. We had breakfast at 7:30, consisting of bagels, cream cheese and a very large amount of lox. It was so much, we saved one of the 3 packages for later.

This morning we used our new toilet for the first time, with WAG bags containing a chemical that supposedly renders the poop harmless and odor-free. It seemed to work like a charm, and each bag is plenty big to hold whatever the four of us could fill it with in a morning. The bag seemed to seal up very tight, in its own double bag, and we tossed it into the garbage with our other trash. We had 10 bags, but only expected to use 1 per day.

After breakfast we had our lime and tequila eye openers, and then took a short hike to the end of Panorama Point, a little over ½ mile away. We got to where the point was only about 50’ across, but we could not actually get to the end of the point, as there was a collapsed section of the wall that would have required technical climbing (if possible at all). The views were spectacular as we could see both sides of the point at the same time and of course, many miles around. The round trip with lots of sightseeing took 1 hour and 40 minutes. Greg demonstrated an overhang climbing move on a flake that was 3’ above the ground.

When we got back to camp a little after 11:00am, we started packing up for the ride to the Maze. As we took the bikini top off my jeep, we didn't realize it was full of water, which got all over the front seats and possibly some camera equipment, though nothing was hurt. We were on the road at 11:40.

At 12:45 it started raining, so we put on our bikini top, and by 1:00 we got to the intersection with the Hans Flat Road. The rain never came down really hard, but it was very stormy and windy, and there was lots of water on the road, and remained that way for the 1-hour drive to the top of the Flint Trail, the only way down to the base of the Orange Cliffs that defined the plateau we had been on since we left Hanksville.

The weather reminded me of the time we descended the Flint Trail in a thunderstorm, but thankfully this time it never rained very hard. A concern though, because of the wet road, was slippery mud, particularly in a stretch between the bottom of the Flint switchbacks and descent into the bottom of Big Water Canyon. At one point I was worried as the jeep slid sideways with a drop-off to our right. But thankfully, Big Water Canyon itself was dry.

We got to the wonderful overhangs at Horse Canyon at 4:45, about 2.5 hours after the bottom of the Flint switchbacks, and spent about 25 minutes dangling legs off cliffs and taking pictures. We reached the campsite, Maze Overlook #1, in just another 15 minutes at 5:08pm. The total drive was clocked at 33.6 miles in 6¼ hours.

It was nice to be at camp 1½ hours earlier than last night. This gave us plenty of time to set up a real home for the next 3 nights. From the campsite we had a commanding view of the entire Maze all the way to the Land of Standing Rocks where we would be going in 3 days, with Elaterite Butte and the Orange Cliffs behind us, and Panorama Point above.

Every pre-dinner appetizer of the rest of the trip was of either a jar of something like stuffed olives (garlic or jalapeno), asparagus spears, or canned fish or oysters ("fishy fuckers"), washed down of course with margaritas. For dinner we had steak & baked potatoes cooked on the coals.

At night we hiked south along the rim to the other campsite, #2 and then a little beyond. It started to get windy, cool, and threatened rain, and when we felt a drop or two, we turned back. But it never rained and we got to bed around 10:30pm.

Sun Jul 15 We got up at 5:15am, even though there was barely a glimmer of light in the sky, because it was starting to drizzle again. But as we began to pack up it stopped, so we went back to sleep for another hour. By 6:30 it was a beautiful day, 63º, with a lot of blue sky and sun, and just a few clouds.

By 8:00am it warmed to 78º. Breakfast was an omelet with Swiss cheese, onions, tomatoes and jalapenos. Greg washed the dishes at 8:30am, and by 10:00am we were ready for our hike into the Maze to see the Harvest Scene Pictographs, I think the second most extensive set of pictographs in Canyonlands, down in the second canyon at the bottom. I had been there 3 times before and was more than happy to do it a 4th.

The Maze Overlook Trail begins near the campsite and immediately descends over the edge by skirting around a peninsula with balanced rocks called Brimhall Point. Beginning at 5100’ elevation, it is a 500’ descent to the bottom of the Maze. It’s somewhat challenging and even dangerous in spots, with some people usually needing assistance to find the foot holds. It took us 1.5 hours to reach the bottom, a broad flat sandy canyon with a fairly wide main wash channel. There we immediately turned right, a few dozen yards south, where I knew there was a permanent spring. Here we could cool off in the shade of an the overhang by an extensive spring among the tall grass, and most importantly, place 4 beers in the pool to stay cool for the return trip. This arm of the Maze (which is actually the South Fork of Horse Canyon), was lush with vegetation by the springs, and about 30’ wide with level sand. We spent 20 minutes here, turned back around to the north to where we entered the bottom, and hiked for 2 miles, another hour, on the mostly level wash bottom. This included a brief stop on the way to see a natural bridge high up in the north wall, though you wouldn’t know it was a natural bridge unless you were really looking for it.

We reached the pictographs at 1:30pm. We spent 20 minutes looking at them and then returned, arriving back at the springs in 70 minutes, at 3:00pm. But we were horrified to find our beers in direct sun, with only ¼” of hot water left in the pool. Maybe the spring never dries up, but today the water was nearly gone. But we drank the hot beers anyway.

We then climbed back up, which was easier than going down because you could see the footholds and Moki steps. It took us only 1 hour to get up (compared to 1.5 coming down). We arrived at our campsite at 4:20pm, covering 7.5 miles in 6½ hours, for an average speed a bit over 1 mph.

We immediately started with the margaritas and preparing dinner. Tonight we had Jambalaya, a Greenshit first, with shrimp and Andouille sausage. Like all dinners, it was very good.

At 10pm, while having our Lagavulin and chocolate, we watched a fantastic lightning storm to our south, in the direction where Joey, Henry and I cowered under a rock in a storm 29 years ago on Greenshit #1. Because it was threatening rain, Greg took it upon himself to set up the tent just in case we had to use it in the middle of the night.

Mon Jul 16 Thankfully it didn't rain at night, and at 6:30am it was 61º and sunny. We laughed when we found out that Greg had set up the tent with the rain fly on sideways, so it would have been impossible to get into it. For breakfast we had pancakes, and by then the sky had gotten almost completely overcast. However the weather was not threatening.

The plan for today was to drive most of the long road north to Millard Canyon, stopping just a few miles before the end at a slot canyon that we could hike to Anderson Bottom. This road ends at the remotest spot in all of Canyon Country—103 miles to the nearest paved road and 121 from a gas station—so getting there requires some strategic gas rationing: we had planned to take just one jeep there, but I was still a bit worried, as just getting to the Maze Overlook, with the side trip to Panorama Point, had used more gas than I expected. But we did have an extra 15 gallons per jeep, so in the worst case we could send one jeep back to Hanksville fill up the cans (though this would waste a whole day). We removed the whole hardtop from Joey’s Jeep, all packed in, and headed out at 9:00am, Greg driving. For the first half of the 25-mile drive the road skirts around Horse Canyon and directly beneath Panorama Point. Then it goes around Ekker Butte and onto the Millard Canyon Benches. One of the more impressive canyon overhangs is an unnamed canyon by Ekker Butte. Of course, all the canyons drain into the Colorado River just to our east, but the river was never visible from points along the road. The road was basically level, always on the white sandstone layer, losing only 700’ very gradually in 25 miles, but it was very rough, with a vast number of gullies and rocky areas making it impossible to get up speed more than 15 mph for brief periods. While extraordinarily scenic, Greg thought it frustrating to drive.

We reached our stopping point in 3 hours and 15 minutes, for an average speed of 8 mph, although this included many stops for pictures and cliff hanging. Looking in our cooler, we found 4 beer casualties due to the bumpy road, where the cans punctured and mixed beer with cooler water. I don’t think I ever had a Canyonlands trip where we didn't lose beers this way, no matter how careful we were, while this rarely happened in Death Valley. Danny tried to crush two of those punctured cans at once with both feet, but almost missed one of them completely.

By 11:30 we were ready to start hiking into the slot canyon to Anderson Bottom, hoping to reach the Colorado River. The first part of the hike is on fairly flat white sandstone, the same level as the road, in a tiny gully, but very soon the gully widens and drops down into a nice little slot canyon, perhaps 20’ deep. I had only been here once before and remembered the canyon being a fairly easy hike with just a few small climbs, but within 15 minutes we came to a dropoff with a pool of water at the bottom, of unknown depth, that I didn't remember. Greg was able to climb around it, but the rest of us took a high level bypass.

Back in the canyon, which got depeer and deeper, we soon came to another pool of water that we had to skirt around, and then another and another. Joey, Danny and Morrie decided at different times to give up trying to get around the pools and eventually just plunged in up to knee deep in water and mud, but Greg managed to stay dry by bouncing back and forth between the walls like a mountain goat. I was worried that the water was going to stop us eventually, and we’d be forced to go back up some of the somewhat difficult climbs, as I had never done this canyon in the reverse direction. It was not a fear of getting trapped though, as I was sure we could always get at least one person up the climbs and then use our rope to help the others.

The canyon ended in a long slot full of water with smooth walls that all of us just walked through except Greg, who continued to try to stay dry by hopping along the walls. But within 5’ of the very end, he slipped off the wall and landed in the water. He was bummed, finally getting his feet wet so close to the end.

Popping out of the canyon, we reached the broad, flat Anderson Bottom, with the river still a mile to the east. My last time here we didn't attempt to get to the river, but this time I was determined. The walking here was easy and we covered the mile in 24 minutes, but we weren’t quite at the river yet. The last few feet to the river was covered in dense vegetation. We tried several directions of attack through the thickets, but each time it became impenetrable. After 20 minutes fighting the weeds, we had to admit defeat. We never even saw the river, but I knew we were very close. (Later, plotting our track on Google Earth, I learned we were within 47’. Worse, there was an obvious people or animal trail to the river that we missed, just a few feet from where we turned around.)

At 2:45 we reluctantly turned around. Eighteen minutes later, a couple 10ths of a mile before the slot canyon, we found the old caved-in road (possibly once used for getting cattle down to graze on the bottom) that took us to the upper level above the slot canyon, so we could bypass the canyon by walking on the flats. The very top of that “road” ended in a little climb. Once we got to the top of that road, it took us 40 minutes to cover the 0.8 miles on rolling white slickrock back to the jeeps, where we arrived at 4:55pm.

The round trip hike was 3.9 miles and took us 3 hours and 15 minutes, exactly the same time we spent driving to get here. Our average speed on this hike was once again a little over 1 mph.

The 25-mile drive back to the campsite, this time with no sightseeing stops, took 2 hours and 45 minutes, 30 minutes faster than going out, and we were back to camp at 6:45pm.

We had asparagus and garlic stuffed olives for appetizers, lubricated with margaritas, and dinner of hot dogs and beans, onion, cheddar cheese and jalapenos, flushed down with red wine. We were done with dinner around 8:30pm.

While sitting around that evening we saw a lot of very threatening lightning storms all around us, but it was pretty clear directly above, as if the Maze is in a weather hole. None of the storms was moving toward us. But it was very windy and the big tent, still set up from the night before but not yet used, was flapping wildly. As usual, it never rained on us.

Tue Jul 17 At 6:50am it was 60º, with a perfectly clear sky and perfectly calm. For this, our last morning at the Maze Overlook, we had French toast for breakfast. The plan today was simply to get to our campsite for our final three nights, at the Doll House.

Having done this route at least three times before, I expected it would be about a full day, 8-hour drive, even though it was only 39 miles away. In fact the Doll House is right across the Maze, between the Maze and the Colorado River, a mere 5 miles as the crow flies. Even though the Maze Overlook is at the same elevation as the Doll House, the circuitous road between rises 1100’ up the side of the Orange Cliffs as it skirts around the Maze below, and loops and around a very long peninsula off the Orange Cliffs called China Neck.

We departed our campsite at 9:30am, a relatively early start for us, and drove slowly, but nonstop, except for another brief look at the Horse Canyon overhangs. The road backtracks up Big Water Canyon and reaches the fork with the Flint Trail, near 6000’ elevation, where we went straight instead of right, on to the traverse of the Orange Cliffs.

It was obvious, soon after departing the campsite with the garbage bags in the jeeps, that the poop bags were not as smell-free as expected. We had a total of 4 of them now, in a couple of garbage bags, and we were constantly getting whiffs of them as we drove. I reasoned that no matter how tight the bags were, methane gas still escapes, and it doesn’t take much to smell.

At 11:30am, near our highest point of the traverse, we could see the famous Teapot Rock jutting out from the cliffs, whose summit was only a couple hundred feet higher than us. The road wraps around the back of this butte and then descends to a major intersection in the sandy Waterhole Flat where we would begin our final push to the Land of Standing Rocks. But a mile before the intersection we saw a side road that, on the map, looked like it would let us cut off that last mile, thus saving 2 miles of driving. The road was open, to my surprise, as Canyonlands almost never has open side roads. It was in great condition and and it took us just 7 minutes to drive this half-mile cutoff.

Now came the “worst road in the park” according to the NPS, the 1.5-mile stretch around the head of Teapot Canyon, right below Teapot Rock. It is not technically challenging – you just drive where everyone else drives, but the road is sometimes hard to make out on the hard white sandstone and it is so bumpy, with huge ledges gullies and steps, that this section takes a full hour.

By 2pm we rounded the Mother and Child formation, an outcropping that indicates the final push to the Land of Standing Rocks 4 miles away. But the road is still very slow past this point and it took over an hour to reach the first “standing rock,” The Wall. Here we noticed a hole clear through The Wall, about ¼ way up, so we stopped for about 10 minutes while Greg found a way to climb up into it from the back and pose for a picture. The Wall is about 175’ high and 300’ long, and so straight that from the end it looks like a pinnacle.

Immediately beyond is Lizard Rock, also a wall, but with some curves in it and much less regular. It is over 200’ high and a half mile long. Next came The Plug and then Standing Rock, one of my favorites because it truly is a pinnacle no more than 30’ wide and roughly 150’ high. We spent about 15 minutes here to get out and walk around the rock.

The last rock was Chimney Rock, followed by the final 3-mile push to the Doll House. We reached our campsite at 5pm, making for a 7.5-hour drive, which the GPS clocked at 38.1 miles. This was very close in time to my previous trips. The 1.5 mile shortcut by Waterhole Flat was probably the reason it didn't take us 8 hours.

Due to confusing notes in Pelcil from previous trips, I was a little worried whether the campsite I reserved, #1, was the one I wanted, but when I got there it was clear that this was it. The site is nestled in between two huge walls on the east and west over 100’ high, making for nearly full shade all day except mid-day when we would be out hiking anyway. The ground is perfectly flat and solid, in a circular area probably 80’ across. The walls and rest of the Doll House all around us is a catacomb of slots and passages at multiple levels that can be explored for days.

The only problem with the site is that it is packed sand, and therefore finding ant-free zones for sleeping on the ground is an issue. But we had plenty of Raid that took care of all the colonies we saw, and which we sprayed around the perimeters of our ground cloths.

Before even beginning to unpack, we decided to hike into one of the slots at the far left end of the campsite. This involved a small climb and then kept going with multiple branches. We kept going for about a half hour and eventually popped out by the road, a 10-minute walk from the campsite.

Amazingly, we were able to get cell phone reception right in our campsite. The opening between the walls to our northwest faced directly to the La Sal mountains, 40 miles away, and I suspect we were connecting with a tower on one of the summits. Many years ago I was also able to get reception on the top of the Orange Cliffs, likely from the same tower.

We had some fishy appetizer with margaritas, and for dinner we had tuna or salmon salad with onions, jalapenos, cheese, celery and bread.

We had a couple of incidents this evening. First, Greg tried to play a trick on Joey by replacing the contents of his beer can with wine, just prior to our night hike. When he poured the wine into the can, some of it ended up around the rim of the can. So it wouldn’t show, he tried to lick it off, in the process catching his tongue inside the sharp opening of the can. He got such a bad gash in his tongue it bled profusely for a long time.

Later after our hike, while sitting around in my reclining lounge chair smoking a cigar (from which it is very hard to get out) a large burning ash fell off the end of my cigar right into the leg of my shorts, burning me in my butt. I thought at first I was being bit by a fire ant. Screaming in agony, every time I tried to lean forward to get up, I pressed the ash harder into my skin. I finally stood up and it fell out, still lit.

At 8pm it was still 83º. The breeze made it quite comfortable for walking, although you needed a light shirt if just sitting around. We decided to take a short excursion between the rocks in the direction of the Colorado River. In 20 minutes we reached an overlook where we could see the river at the bottom of the canyon, 1100’ below. The round trip was 1.1 miles and took about an hour, and we were back to camp at 9:15, ready for our daily Lagavulin, cigars and chocolate.

We didn't get to bed until after 11pm. Just before I went to sleep I set up my camera on a tripod for some 20-second time exposures of the Milky Way to our south over the Doll House. I learned that focusing my camera at infinity at night, when there is nothing bright enough to see in the viewfinder, is near impossible. Still the photos came out pretty good even if a little blurry. The Milky Way, after all, is a fuzzy object.

Wed Jul 18 The next morning around 8am it was 71º, clear, with no wind. Breakfast was eggs and bacon.

On all 3 of my previous trips to the Doll House we spent a day hiking down the Spanish Trail to Spanish Bottom, and trying to get wet in the river (which requires tying yourself to a rope due to the swift current). This time, I wanted to do something different.

The destinations I chose for today were The Granary, a small Indian ruin, and Surprise Valley, a large graben (a flat-bottomed valley formed by collapsing earth rather than erosion) between us and the Colorado River. Surprise Valley had always intrigued me, ever since my first trip here, because of how neat it looked on the maps, and I only learned about the nearby Granary after looking up Surprise Valley on the Internet. I knew that on the way to the Granary we would be able to see Surprise Valley from above, but I didn't know whether it would be possible to get into it, and even if we did, I wasn’t sure which way we could get out. The valley is a trench 400’ deep, a mile long, and, like most grabens, has near-vertical walls. The only obvious way into most grabens is from the ends, but both ends of Surprise Valley dropped off at cliffs into Cataract Canyon of the Colorado River. Using Google Earth I saw obvious foot trails in the bottom of the valley so I knew people had been there, but I couldn’t tell which way they got in, as it was hard to distinguish the squiggly animal trails and washes from people trails. I saw only one possible way in, down a collapse in the wall that may have been eroded by water, that ends in a steep breakdown slope.

We started hiking at 10:20 on the Spanish Trail, which eventually goes down dozens of steep switchbacks to Spanish Bottom at the Colorado River, but turned off to the right within a minute or two. At this point it looked like an established trail, but it soon became hard to follow. But we knew pretty much were to go, staying fairly level, winding our between the pinnacles of the Doll House, through some cool narrow joints, and then breaking out into the relatively open area of the plateau above Surprise Valley. The Granary was our first stop, but on the way we walked along the edge of the cliff and got our first great views of Surprise Valley. What a sight it was. Well, it actually looked exactly like it did on Google Earth, but it felt a lot different being right there.

I didn't know exactly where the Granary was, but we found it fairly easily in an hour, 1.4 miles from the campsite.

The Granary is a small grain storage area. It is protected by an overhang, which helped preserve the primitive structures: one set of bins 3-4’ high and 10’ wide with 3 compartments and another larger bin, made of mud and stones. After looking at these for 10 minutes we backtracked a bit and then continued in the other direction to the potential way into Surprise Valley that I saw on the map.

It was a little tricky to get to the start of the descent. While I knew the way down was just a couple hundred feet to our west, there was a high wall in our way, and it wasn’t clear whether we should climb over it or look for a way through. But with some winding around we found a passage through the wall, a very tall smooth-walled 5’ wide slot, 100’ long. It was one of several parallel slots, I think. Because it was so nice and cool here, and it was noon, we stopped for lunch, before venturing out into the hot sun.

Lunch took only 8 minutes, and breaking out of the slot, we headed south, directly opposite the direction we had been going to get to the slot, and in 8 minutes we found the climb down into the valley, fairly easy at first, scrambling over and between large sandstone boulders. It kept getting steeper and the rocks became smaller and looser, and I was in constant fear that the climb would become too treacherous. It was indeed very steep in spots, but it never got out of hand, and we were down at the bottom of the valley within 30 minutes.

Surprise Valley is as beautiful from inside as it looked from above. The floor is as flat as a playa, yet it’s not a lake and has only a faint water channel down the length of it that hardly even makes a depression. We decided to walk about ¼ mile south to the valley’s intersection with a perpendicular valley that went another ½ mile west to the cilff at the edge of Cataract Canyon overlooking the Colorado River, which we reached in ½ hour. During our hike in Surprise Valley we made it a point to stay on an existing worn path, to avoid making additional tracks in the fragile surface.

We got to the edge of the cliff at 1:00pm and spent 10 minutes admiring the view of the river 800’ below. From here we could see boaters and people camped in tents on the sandy shore almost directly below us.

We then retraced our steps in almost exactly the same track, back to the spot where we first entered the valley. Now we had a choice: go back up the climb the way we came, or continue going straight to the north end of the valley where it drops off steeply down to Spanish Bottom, on the hopes that it was possible to traverse the scary slopes roughly at our level and intersect the Spanish Trail that switchbacks down from the Doll House to Spanish Bottom. I had good reason to believe this was possible to do, because there was clearly a worn path from here going in that direction, but that doesn’t mean people didn't just use it to get to the end of the valley and then turn around. Since it was only 1:45, we did have the time to walk the additional .4 miles to the north end and turn back if it was impassable, so we chose that option.

The beaten path, easy to follow at first, started to break up as the grass got thicker at the end of the valley. At times it wasn’t clear whether we were on a foot trail or on an animal trail (not that there is an official designated trail in this valley). Eventually it became so obscure we just walked wherever it was easiest. As we approached the very end of the valley the ground became large rocks, and eventually we were at the edge, where we could see a rocky slope drop getting steeper and steeper with loose rocks eventually dropping off into nothingness, with Spanish Bottom somewhere 800’ below.

The way out, I expected, would be to traverse to the left as level as possible until we intersected the Spanish Trail somewhere among it switchbacks, which I knew would get us safely back back to the campsite. But it was not clear exactly where to traverse, and in many spots the footing was too treacherous to risk going on. Slowly we made our way across, trying to walk in places that looked solid and avoiding loose rocks. A slip could result in a tumble down the slope to our death. Occasionally we saw signs of people having walked there, but it was inconsistent and likely they were winging it just like we were.

I didn't know exactly where we would hit the Spanish Trail and I was a little worried it might be so obscure we would miss it. But in 15 minutes, after 1000’ of the treacherous traverse, we found it. At this point Greg really wanted to go down to the river, especially after having missed the river the day before. Knowing it would be an incredibly hot 800’ hike back up to here, and facing another 500’ hike up switchbacks back to camp, I didn't want to do it. I was supportive of Greg going it alone, and I thought he was going to do it, but he decided to go back up with us.

With the sun blazing down on, it took us a half hour to hike up the next 150’ of switchbacks, covering only 0.1 mile, including a stop at every little bit of shade. After experiencing this little climb, Greg was very happy he chose not to go down to the bottom. At this, the 4800’ level, the trail leveled off, and we did the next 350’ of ascent, a distance of 0.5 mile, in the next half hour. This brought us back to the place where we first turned off the Spanish Trail to go to Surprise Valley, and in another 10 minutes, at 3:20pm, we were back at camp. The total hiking distance was 5.6 miles, which we covered in 5 hours, with a total of 900’ ascent. As the crow files, we were never more than 1¼ miles from camp. Yet again, our average speed was a little over 1 mph.

The garbage bags containing the poop were starting to smell even at camp, and we surely didn't think we would be able to tolerate driving with them in the jeeps, so we decided to sacrifice one small cooler to the poop. We opened up the garbage bags, removed 4 or 5 poop bags (which were completely intact, but inflated like they were about to explode. We put them in the cooler, which filled it completely, duct-taped the cooler closed with multiple layers of tape, and put it far from our kitchen and sleeping area. This worked well, and we didn't have any smell thereafter. However we still would have 2 or 3 more poop bags to deal with for the rest of the trip.

For dinner we had angel hair pasta with pesto, capers, mushrooms, parmesan cheese and canned corn.

In the evening, a little after 7pm, I suggested a hike to see Doll House campsite #3, which I had never seen. It was a considerable distance down the road, so I figured it would make a nice easy hike. It was a 25-minute, 1-mile walk. From here there was an expansive view of the flats and much of pinnacles of the Doll House, but the campsite did not look nearly as attractive as ours for the middle of summer, because it was out in the open, not surrounded by nice, cool rock walls.

At 8:30pm we were back at camp. As there was still a little light in the ski, I suggested to Greg that he climb up into a high keyhole slot near the camp so that I could take his picture silhouetted in the slot, duplicating what I did in 1995. Soon after, Greg must have stepped on something that bloodied his foot, because I have a picture of him taken at 8:48 with a bandage wrapped around his foot.

When it got dark, we had a great game of illuminated Frisbee in the campsite, which was just about the right size for this game except for the jeeps in the way.

Thu Jul 19 At 6:30am it was 75º. We had eggs and sausage for breakfast. At 9:00am, because we seemed to have so much of it left, we switched to top shelf Don Julio tequila for our morning eye opener. It was now 88º. This morning we decided to empty our gas cans into the jeeps, as we didn't want to do it tonight and tomorrow morning we needed to get out early.

Today’s activity was to be another first for me, a hike to an overlook of the Confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. I expected the round trip to be about 10 miles. If we continued with the pattern of averaging only a little over 1 mph, this would take 8 or 9 hours, but I was hoping it would be less as it involved no climbing like all the other hikes did, with the whole route between 5100’ and 5200’ elevation. The only obstacle would be the heat, I reasoned.

We were worried about small animals getting into our several large hefty bags of smelly garbage while we were away. I wanted to put them inside Joey’s jeep, but he decided instead to put them on top of his jeep. I guessed this probably would keep critters out, as they don’t usually climb up jeeps.

We left camp at 9:50am. The first challenge of the hike is to find our way out of the Doll House through joints between the rocks. It wasn’t hard and it was nice to walk in the cool canyons. Then, breaking out into the open countryside, within the first mile we came to the well-known Beehive Arch. I had been this far twice before, but never beyond. The arch can be entered with a little climb, but only Greg did that. After spending a few minutes in the shade of the arch, we continued over fairly level terrain, with the Doll House receding behind us, past some of the most impressive cryptobiotic soil in the area. Twenty minutes from Beehive Arch we descended into very nice small canyon, one of several forks of a drainage that drops into Spanish Bottom.

Soon after beginning our descent into the canyon I realized I didn't have my hiking pole. This was probably the 3^rd time this trip that I left my pole somewhere. But I remembered I had it at the arch, so I took a GPS reading here and decided to look for the pole on my way back.

For the next hour we remained relatively level, on a windy path mostly on slickrock as we rounded some bends. At 12:40pm we came out into the side of an utterly flat, sandy valley, a half mile wide, and 1.3 miles long, with small brush and grass covering most of the gound. I reasoned the going now would be very quick, as there were no obstacles in sight, although the heat certainly slowed us down. In fact, for the first half mile, which took us almost to the dead center of the flats, we averaged a blistering 2.2 mph. The trail was very easy to follow through the grass and shrubs, and Greg led the way. Suddenly I saw Greg in front of me acting confused: the trail made an acute left turn, more than 90º, going in apparently the wrong direction. We were walking east, but the trail suddenly turned to the northwest. This didn't make a lot of sense, because if it was going that way, why did it bother to go this far out first? But I thought maybe the trail was going to hug the opposite side of the valley, so we forged ahead.

The longer we walked, the farther we were getting from the direction I wanted to go, but after 10 minutes it seemed like we were close enough to rocks up ahead, that we might as well see where it went. In another 10 minutes we got to the head of a canyon dropping down from this valley, and the trail continued down into it. We climbed only a little down—it was actually a very beautiful spot—but surely this was not the way. We had to retrace our steps, and somehow find our way to the Confluence trail again. So we decided to go back to that sharp turn to see if we missed anything.

On the way back we looked very hard in the grass for a side trail, but saw nothing until we got back to that sharp turn. Here I decided to keep walking straight through the brush, even though there was no obvious trail, and within a few seconds I found the trail again, going exactly in the direction we wanted to go. Somehow the grass and brush completely obscured the trail for just long enough that you had to guess where it was. I felt pretty dumb wasting 40 minutes on a wild goose chase, as nice as it was, when we so much wanted to see the Confluence overlook. I violated my own rule: when in doubt, go straight.

In another 25 minutes we walked another mile to the end of the flats, and then turned left slightly around the rocks bordering the valley onto slickrock again. Jumping across several very deep joints in the slickrock, we reached the lip of the Colorado River canyon. This was a dramatic spot, but it was not the Confluence overlook, which was another half mile or mile away, depending on how far one could walk out on the broad point we were on. The point was ¼ mile wide where we were, but it rapidly got just a few feet wide, according to the maps.

It was now 2:00pm, 4 hours after we left camp. I figured it would take us 3 hours to get back if we turned around now, without long stops or detours, making for a 5:00pm arrival. I didn't think this allowed enough time to hike to the overlook and back at our current pace, which would surely take another hour, so I suggested that Greg and Danny, faster hikers than Joey and me, should go see the Confluence while Joey and I slowly walked back. I was also concerned about the weather in more ways than one: it was the hottest part of the day now, and we had over a mile of that very hot prairie to walk, but also there were threatening clouds in a number of directions, and I didn't want to be caught in a lightning storm while on that prairie.

So Greg and Danny forged ahead while Joey and I slowly walked back. I was sure they would catch up with us well before we made it back to camp. I found out later from their pictures that the trail they were on made a turn to the north for only about another ¼ mile, ending at north end of the point, rather than directly out to the east tip of the point. From that vantage point they could see both the Colorado and Green Rivers (as I could tell from their photos), but the actual intersection of the rivers was just hidden around the end of the point.

Sure enough, Greg and Danny caught up with us in not too long (I don’t remember where). The clouds came in and the hike across the prairie was not nearly as hot as I dreaded. There were storms around but none landed on us. When we got back to the GPS marker for my pole, we started looking for it, and sure enough we found it still stuck in the ground soon after.

We got back to the Doll House area at 4:50, within 10 minutes of my prediction. However we made a wrong turn trying to find our way through the pinnacles and ended up on top of the rocks with a treacherous 15’ down climb to get back to the road to our campsite, which we could see immediately below us. Greg chose the climb but because Joey didn't want to do it, the rest of us decided to backtrack around the rocks. This took another 10 minutes, ½ mile of extra walking, to get back to camp. Because of this detour, it did take us 3 hours to get back after all.

When we got to camp Greg was all upset and the sight was awful. When Greg arrived, he found crows on top of Joey’s jeep feasting on our garbage. The hefty bags were ripped apart and garbage was strewn all over the campsite. By the time we got there he had already put most of the garbage in other bags, but there was still plenty of disgusting cleanup to do. What’s worse, we were very low on bags, and we still had poop to take back with us that would not fit into the small cooler. We did manage to clean up pretty well, but it used all the rest of our bags, leaving barely enough space for trash for one more night and morning of camping.

At 6:00pm we were preparing fishy fuckers and dinner, Hormel chili with beans, canned corn, cheddar cheese, onions and jalapenos.

While preparing dinner a huge flying red and black insect, which Joey said had a 5” wingspan, landed on Greg’s shoulder. It was so big it looked like it could kill him, but he wasn’t about to try to swat such a large bug. Later analysis indicates that this might be a Sphecius speciosus, or western cicada killer. This type of wasp is actually 2” long, but with wings spread, could be twice that across. According to Wikipedia:

Although cicada killers are large, female cicada killer wasps are not aggressive and rarely sting unless they are grasped roughly, stepped upon with bare feet, or caught in clothing, etc. One author who has been stung indicates that, for him, the stings are not much more than a "pinprick".[2] Males aggressively defend their perching areas on nesting sites against rival males but they have no sting. Although they appear to attack anything that moves near their territories, male cicada killers are actually investigating anything that might be a female cicada killer ready to mate. Such close inspection appears to many people to be an attack, but male and female cicada killers do not land on people and attempt to sting. If handled roughly, females will sting, and males will jab with a sharp spine on the tip of their abdomen. Both sexes are well equipped to bite, as they have large jaws; however, they do not appear to grasp human skin and bite. They are generally non-aggressive towards humans and usually fly away when swatted at, instead of attacking.

Another item of bug note: the huge seemingly bottomless ant hills are great repositories for various liquids you don’t want to take home.

While igniting a cigar after dinner, Joey got a 2^nd degree burn, which makes for smoking burn #2 on this trip.

In the evening we took the lighted Frisbee with us and had some great fun “caving” in the passages and joints of the Doll House near camp. In one slot that was about 30’ long and less than 3’ wide we had good luck with several perfectly straight Frisbee tosses. We also all climbed up behind the keyhole to look through it from above. The whole hike was just under an hour. After the hike while having our scotch and chocolate, with the lantern on the table, we were able to make very huge clear shadow figures on the walls around us.

Fri Jul 20 This morning I noticed that my wind tent got slightly ripped due to yesterday’s high winds. Cooler management seems to have been perfect: there was one small sliver of ice left. Given we had such great shade at this campsite, we would not have managed keeping ice this long in a sunnier place.

Our last breakfast consumed the second half of the box of pancakes. We were packed up and on the road a few minutes before 9:00am, on the way to Hite. Driving nonstop, it took a half hour to cover the first 3.9 miles to Chimney Rock, where we stopped for 12 minutes to have a beer, while Greg climbed a little up the rock for pictures.

Continuing nonstop, we covered the next 7.4 miles to Mother and Child in an hour, where we again had a 12-minute beer stop. It took us 1½ hours to go the next 6.4 miles, which included the worst part of the road around Teapot Canyon, that ends right below Teapot Rock. Soon after rounding Teapot Rock we saw our first vehicle, an SUV parked on the side of the road, with nobody in it.

The next 10 miles were pretty fast, taking only 45 minutes. At this point, our closest approach to the Colorado River, opposite Red Point, I spotted a spur road on the map that appeared to end at a lookout. Since I had never been down this way despite at least 4 prior trips on this road, and it was only 1:00pm, I thought we should check it out. The road ended in 0.8 miles, so we got out and walked, beers in hand, the last 1/10th mile to the edge of a short side canyon that emptied into Cataract Canyon, 1800’ deep at this point. Here we could easily see the river, while staring directly into the mouth of the huge Bowdie Canyon on the opposite shore. The total round trip hike took 15 minutes, and we were back to the main road 35 minutes after when we left it.

The rest of the drive to the Utah 95 was on 24 miles of 2wd dirt road, although there were a few rough spots around the heads of washes. We covered this in 1 hour and 23 minutes. We reached the highway at 3:00pm, where our first order of business was to go south on Utah 95 for a couple of miles to Hite for gas. We spent 50 minutes at the Hite store, which included gassing up, airing up, reinserting the sway bar, and dumping all our trash and the poop cooler in a dumpster.

On our way back to Hanksville, I wanted to stop at the Hite Overlook, about 10 miles from Hite and less than a mile out of our way. There we spent 15 minutes at the lookout, about 600’ above the river (here referred to as Lake Powell), and probably having our last beer of the drive. The remaining 42 (very scenic) miles to Hanksville took us an hour, and we were back to our motel at 5:20pm. We had dinner once again at Stan’s Burger Shack and beers in the room, cooled off by ice from the ice machine and in-room refrigerators.

Sat Jul 21 Breakfast was again at Stan’s Burger Shack.

We left Hanksville at 7:50am. While passing through Capitol Reef, we made a 13-minute stop at Panorama Point just off the highway (we decided not to drive the 1 mile down a dirt road to Goosenecks Overlook). At 11am, at a high point on Utah 20 where a forest road branched off to the right near Burnt Peak, we had a 15-minute beer stop.

An hour later we experienced the only significant delay of the trip home, a stop for food and gas at Love’s in Cedar City. Here the pumps were all faulty, taking several minutes to pump one gallon. When we finally filled up a half hour later, a school bus full of high school cheerleaders went in for lunch at Subway and Carl’s Jr., so we had yet another long wait to buy food at Subway. That whole stop cost us over an hour.

Driving through southern Utah, and then a piece of Arizona and Nevada, we experienced a long stretch of 114º (possibly higher—we can’t quite remember), driving with the jeep top off. It was quite a “treat” to feel the heat gun blast in our faces, but it wasn't intolerable. For dinner we stopped at Los Domingo’s Mexican restaurant in the Quality Inn in Barstow (as we did on a previous trip to Death Valley) for a very nice meal, which took 1½ hours.

The entire 652-mile return drive, including 3h05m stopping, took 14h20m, making for an 11¼-hour drive, within 15 minutes of the outbound driving time. Shockingly, this is exactly the same as the Google time and within 2 miles of the Google distance. But because we gained an hour crossing the time zone, we were in Huntington Beach at 9:10pm, enough time to relax in the Jacuzzi with one last beer.

It’s also interesting to note that we arrived in HB at the same clock time we arrived in Hanksville. This was a coincidence, of course, as the actual travel times were wildly different.

Sun Jul 22 We left all our unpacking for the morning, as Danny and I had plenty of time to catch a 1:34pm flight out of John Wayne. Cleaning out the jeeps and packing up the luggage always seems daunting at first but takes probably under 2 hours. Joey and Greg dropped us off at the airport, where we said good-bye as they drove off, and Danny and I headed into the terminal. Just after we checked our bags, Greg suddenly came running in, and handed me my phone charger cord that I left in Joey’s jeep. To come here they had to drive around the airport another time. But Greg didn't realize that I also left my phone in his jeep, plugged into the end of the cord. So Joey drove around the airport yet another time and we went back to the car to find the phone stuck between the seats.

Danny and I had lunch in the airport before the flight, and then a quick bite at our plane change in Chicago. We arrived in Boston without incident and were home around 1:30am Monday morning.