Just another sandstone canyon

We are camped in a strange place.

A place that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t exist. A place that, if you believe mother nature has a design, this isn’t it. It’s a place that is otherworldly in its juxtaposition of water and the lack thereof. It’s beautiful and disgusting. It’s lush and dead. Its silence is broken only by the abrupt noise that can only be made by that horrible invention, the internal combustion engine.

The tents are tucked at the top of a rock pile that is tucked neatly away in a giant alcove. This alcove is at the junction of where an almost untouched sandstone canyon and perennial stream drain into the completely unnatural Lake Powel. This transition is slow and the point of confluence constantly changing with the level of the lake. The first thing you notice is the silt that has accumulated from earlier levels of the lake. Then the creek bed gets mushy and the water goes from glasslike clear to a murky green. The stream kind of just stops flowing and you are then at the lake.

This transition also changes the flora in the area. Where the sandstone canyon has lush willows and cottonwoods lining its banks, the lake has drowned these out and there is more or less nothing. The canyon walls drop directly into the lake leaving nothing but water and rock. As someone once said, there are two ways to die in the desert, thirst and drowning.

The most notable attribute of our chosen home for the evening is the absolute silence. When the conversation wains and the wind stops, there is nothing. No chirping birds, no flapping leaves, not even the water lapping at the beach disturbs the silence.

This giant alcove at this strange transition from natural to man-made is the closest to absolute silence that I have ever experienced. It was even more still than winter camping. And the only thing that would disrupt our solitude was the occasional breeze and the motor boats that happened into our canyon from some outside place that we knew existed but could hardly fathom from our vantage point.

I’ve spent a decent chunk of my life searching for this.

We turned off the highway and drove 45ish miles down a bumpy, sandy road. Once off the pavement, we passed no other cars. We found a flat spot that we had camped at before overlooking some amazing sandstone where we hoped to have breakfast the next morning. Drank a couple of beers and went to sleep. No one passed during the night.

We awoke to an amazing sunrise that is the norm for this place. Made coffee. Ate breakfast and broke camp. Still no one. We drove to just past the canyon that we hoped to use as our exit and parked the car. With our packs strapped to our backs, we walked right down the middle of the road. 1.5 miles later and without having to get out of the way of any motorized coffins, we simply walk into the mouth of a canyon that we hope is rad.

As we march our way deeper into the canyon walls, we notice that there aren’t any footprints. Well, there aren’t any human prints. There are cat and mountain goat tracks everywhere, but the closest thing to a boot track that we encounter is the indent where one had been several days earlier. This does not change until we get to the lake.

The sun was high and it was time for lunch when we noticed the arch. The arch was something we had hoped to see, not only because arches are bitchin’, but because there we had read that there was a large panel of rock art under this particular arch. We wander over. The arch is beautiful and the panel is amazing. Old enough that many of the pictographs are beginning to be taken back by the desert varnish, the work spans the width of the arch, probably 70-100 feet and goes up the canyon wall in somewhat of a pyramid shape for 30 feet. There are mountain goats, leaves, snakes, just about every type of art you can think of.

The sun was blazing and as I mentioned, it was time for some food. Next to this giant arch was an alcove. We wandered into its depths for some relief from the sun. There was a sand dune at the back and an almost perfectly flat clay floor in the front. The clay looked like someone had laid rocks in the alcove creating a giant patio. We cook up our Ramen, filter some water, notice some artifacts and take a nap in the sand for a couple of hours.

We are still alone.

Seeing that we still had miles to go and plenty of daylight, after our siestas, we repack our bags and dive deeper into the canyon. The walls get higher and narrower. We are forced to walk through clear water that spans the entire base of the canyon. We touch both sides whilst moving through. The sun disappears as the walls almost touch at their pinnacle. This continues for a few miles.

The canyon walls begin to open up. The silt from the lake lines the creek, the flora changes. And then there are footprints. Lots of them. We know we are almost to the lake. And while we know people have been here, it still feels like we are completely alone.

Our boats glide almost effortlessly across the glassy lake. We have exited the main arm of Lake Powel and are making our way back to that transition of lake to stream to walk back up another sandstone canyon to our exit point. There are no boats. The sun is filtered through an overcast sky giving us perfect temperatures. We stop for lunch.

The water is cool but feels like heaven as we dive in to remove the trail grime from the day before. We jump in naked hoping to keep our skivvies dry for the rest of the day. The small ledge we have decided to call home has fish swimming around and a deep green color to the water. Exiting the lake, there is a faint breeze just enough to make the goose bumps pop up on our skin and making the boiling hot Ramen taste that much better.

We have seen people on the lake, and even in the canyon, but it feels like we own this spot. It’s ours. And we sun ourselves drying before repacking the boats and heading what would be upstream. While the lake had seemed so unnatural the night before, it feels like a perfect juxtaposition in this location. Water lapping at the walls of the Escalante Canyon creating the right amount of motion and sound for our mood.

Paddling the boats is like coasting. The flat water and lack of wind make the effort seem almost effortless especially after having to carry the boats on our backs down the first canyon. We glide into alcoves and through the canyons. The water begins to get shallow and turns to a lighter green with a murky overtone. We find a nice beach to deflate our crafts and return to bipedal mode for the last leg of our journey.

We spend another night almost drowning in solitude. Sounds of other humans waft through the air and then disappear leaving us uncertain of what we heard. The night is uneventful and we awake early to beat the heat on our hike out. And just as we think things couldn’t get any better, we see Broken Bow Arch.

It’s perfect.