I started the trip in Albuquerque, where Andreas met me for the weekend. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Albuquerque is a really cool city. We really liked Nob Hill and the University district, where there were lots of coffee shops, restaurants, and tons of people out and about. Specifically we had chosen Albuquerque to attend the Gathering of the Nations Powwow. This is an annual powwow attended by thousands of people from all different American Indian tribes across the United States and Canada. It was being held in the UNM football stadium, if that gives you an idea of the scale of this thing. Dancers from the different tribes were wearing the most elaborate of their respective traditional dress. Most were brightly colored and fully decorated and adorned with beads, feathers, bells, and fringe. The men from one tribe had huge feather headdresses, feather shields on each arm, and two large feather rings across their shoulders and low back. When they danced, it created a fury of flying colors and bobbing feathers.
On Saturday we drove out to Acoma Pueblo, or “Sky City,” as their casino is named. This is a mud-stone pueblo village that sits on top of a mesa and doesn’t have running water or electricity. It claims itself as the oldest continuously-inhabited pueblo in the United States, and the Acoma tribal leadership continues to live there today. They have a visitor center and give guided tours.
My first stop after Andreas left me on Sunday night was Mesa Verde, Colorado, the national park that has the largest collection of Anasazi (or “ancestral puebloans” as they are now being called) cliff dwelling ruins. There I got to take a tour of Cliff Palace and Balcony House ruins, ancient communities nestled into shallow sandstone alcoves in the cliffs on the sides of the mesas. This is pretty close to Durango, and there are beautiful snow-capped mountain peaks not too far away as well. I seriously doubt that these people wore nothing but loin cloths, as they are usually depicted because I bet it gets really cold in the winter there. It wasn’t even close to loincloth weather in late April either.
Next I camped at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. This is an area with a huge concentration of sandstone arches which form naturally as the sandstone erodes, and there are dozens there, each a little different in size in shape. The scenery was beautiful, and I took a nice hike through the “Devil’s Garden,” a place where tons of weird sandstone formations have formed very close together.
I had to drive through Capitol Reef National Park to get to Bryce, and I chose to take a scenic road there which turned into a dirt road and eventually connected me (at the top of a switchback ascent up a near-cliff) to the paved scenic Burr Trail in Staircase-Escalante National Monument. This drive was unbelievable. First you drive alongside Strike Valley, where it looks like the earth’s crust was literally just pushed up in a big line. Then on the Burr Trail you drive through a twisting red-rock canyon and then up into some white sandstone badlands.
In Staircase-Escalante park I decided to stop to explore some slot canyons that I had heard about. This was made more interesting by the fact that today the wind was blowing 60+ mph, and the canyons had loose sandy bottoms. Yes, it was basically a sandstorm. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much sand on me or in me. I’m pretty sure I inadvertently swallowed a bunch (maybe that cleans out the intestines?) and clumps of it kept coming out my eyes the whole next day (that can’t be good for the corneas). Fortunately I found a good shower that night to wash the pound of sand off of me. Staircase-Escalante is almost all backcountry and much less developed than the national parks, meaning that there were some trail directions that started from the “trailhead,” which per directions could be found at the end of a turnoff 26 miles down a dirt road. There was a sign at 26 miles on the dirt road indicating the trail, but after that despite there being multiple dirt roads traced through the desert, there were no further signs. From my map it appeared that the road curved left, and that it would be obvious because if you stayed straight and didn't make the curve you would be on a "jeep trail" instead of a road. I thought that I had found that point when I dropped the civic over a 2-foot drop-off in the road and nearly got stuck (this is the day I tried to test the high-clearance offroading abilities of the civic. I tried to kill it, but it fortunately survived the test.) Once I got back up the small cliff I had driven down, I curved left like the map indicated and found a bunch of cars parked and some tents pitched and figured that must be the trailhead. No one was around to ask, so I figured everyone was on the trail and I tried to follow the directions (“follow the rock cairns from the trailhead…”). However there were no rock cairns in sight. Since I was looking for a descent into a canyon (obviously), I did a little route-finding and found a way down, eventually finding some of the promised rock cairns that I was able to follow the rest of the way into the canyon. I couldn’t find Peekaboo, the first slot (which was supposed to have a difficult-to-spot entrance 12 feet off the ground), but I found another canyon that seemed a perfect match for Spooky's description (started in a wide sandy wash, narrowed to a slot, and ended with a big choke stone and another wide wash). It was super-cool to be in a slot canyon where you were squeezing between narrow rock curves and touching both sides to get through. Since it was still early, I decided to walk on toward Brimstone slot, which was supposed to be a bit further and longer than the other two. After a long and windy walk through really loose sand, I found Brimstone for another fun slot exploration. This one didn’t end, but you basically couldn’t go any further without spiderman climbing skills because the ground level became too narrow to pass. In there I found a teenage boy and his grandfather (first people I'd seen), who marveled at how fast I had been able to explore the 2 canyons so far (I didn't feel like I was moving that fast, but I was walking a lot faster than the grandfather who was an older gentleman and I passed them on my way back out). They told me they were camping at the trailhead and confirmed their tent was set up there. They also told me I couldn’t miss Peekaboo, so I headed back the way I came past Spooky and started looking very closely above my head for Peekaboo. However, I found nothing, and turned back to look for the grandfather/son again to try to get them to point it out to me. When I found them resting near the entrance to Spooky, they looked confused. I pulled out my photocopied trailmap which the visitor center had provided. Well apparently they were confused because I was coming back toward them from a part of the canyon that wasn’t actually on the trail, and I hadn’t explored Spooky after all because somehow I had started the canyon in the middle instead of at the end. That's why I was going so "fast!" My “Spooky” was just the narrow part of the main canyon which I was supposed to cross when walking between the real Spooky and Brimstone. That explained why I never got to some narrow part of the canyon with a difficult-to-negotiate choke stone when walking to Brimstone… So I went back through my fake “Spooky” to look for the real Spooky. I found it (it was much longer than the narrow part of the main canyon I had explored before), and required some minor climbing to get through some narrow spots. So cool. I then turned around, retraced my steps to the (real) main canyon, and walked further up looking again for Peekaboo. Still no luck. I followed a trail with tons of footprints which led to rock cairns that I followed up over a ridge and out of the canyon. I decided it was getting late and I should forget about Peekaboo and just go back to the car, assuming I was now on the proper trail back to the trailhead that I couldn’t find the first time. I kept following the cairns until they suddenly ended. Hmm. I thought I recognized some landmarks near where I had parked the car so I decided to just continue walking toward those (ok, that was kind of dumb). After about 45 minutes of wandering about, I realized that I had not found my car after all, started to get nervous that I might get lost out here alone, and had to retrace my steps back to the end of the rock cairns, figuring I should just go all the way back to the way I came in and exit the way I knew, even though it was apparently not the correct trail. On the way however I found more footprints and rock cairns following a streambed wash, and decided to give those a try since obviously lots of feet had trekked through there, which ostensibly would indicate a proper route (although I'm now learning that it also means that lots of people have thought the same as me and made the same wrong turns). Suddenly I found myself in another slot canyon. I went through this one with a little less gusto since I was now unsure where I was and annoyed at the crappy trail directions, but at the other end I found myself 12 feet up a canyon wall…somehow I had entered the backside of Peekaboo. I now came down into the (real) main canyon again and followed it to some seemingly more reliable rock cairns all the way up and out…to a trailhead with an actual sign and lots of cars...that weren’t mine. Hmm again. Fortunately that grandpa/son were up there camping out at this real trailhead, and kindly took me in their car to find my car. It turns out my car was up what was marked on the map (but not the road) as a “jeep trail.” Way to go little civic. Now the people who were camped up there were back to their tents, and had been wondering where the heck my car had come from since apparently they realized that they were camping in the backcountry away from the trailhead and didn't expect anyone else to be there. In summary, a near disaster, but still a fun introduction to slot canyons. I was going to drive up to camp at Bryce National Park that night, but I met some people in a gas station in Escalante who told me they had been there and it was too cold to camp so they’d come back down to Escalante. On their advice, I spent the night in Escalante and drove up to Bryce first thing the next morning. Turns out this was good advice, because close to Bryce there was a lot of snow on the ground. The farms had their irrigation wheels running, and the wheels and surrounding fields were covered with icicles. Bryce has a dense population of red sandstone “hoodoos” or little rock towers. There are observation points where you can look out over huge fields of them. I put on my warmest clothes and went on the figure 8 hike down between the hoodoos. Snow tends to make everything seem peaceful and mystical anyway, but the snow on the red stone hoodoos made the hike absolutely magical.
Finally I went to Zion National Park to spend my last weekend. This park is absolutely breathtaking as well. It’s called “zion” and lots of the mountains in it have religious names (like Abraham, Jacob, the organ, and the great throne) because they were named by preachers passing through the area. Looking at the magnificent landscape with its sandstone mountains towering around the canyon, it’s easy to see how these religious men would have seen it as a gift from God.
On my second day here, I decided to sign up for a canyoneering trip. Canyoneering is an adventure sport that involves setting up ropes to rappel down mountains/cliffs that are too steep and/or long to climb down, usually down into canyons. Canyoneering is really, really fun, and maybe a little addicting. I definitely want to do it again. So, if anyone would be interested, it’s better done in a group so that people can spot one another, and I really want to find canyoning partners for some future canyon explorations.On the long drive back to Chinle on Sunday I noticed that I had reentered the southern side of Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and couldn’t resist stopping to do one more quick hike. The toadstools took me to sandstone towers (like hoodoos) which are topped with balancing granite stones (hence “toadstools”). This happens because the sandstone erodes away faster than the granite layer on top of it. The return hike once again seemed a little less clear than the way out there. I was following footprints and a potential trail when I came across a foreign couple that didn’t speak very good English. “End,” they said, pointing behind them from the way they came. I looked at them. “Stop.” “Trail End.” I got more confused, since the trail end was behind me and I knew I was now in the trail-middle somewhere. I shrugged and continued on. Half a minute later I arrived at a 10-foot drop-off and realized what they had been talking about. I was apparently not on the right trail, once again following erroneus footprints. It was also really windy there. I am now convinced that the entire (enormous) Staircase-Escalante is a windy black hole. (But a really pretty one.)
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