TS came out for a visit and, with Catie, we drove south to Escalante. Since I've lived in Utah, I haven't gotten down to crazy landscapes of the south much, but in college I found myself there fairly often--a couple of spring breaks or long weekends, a training trip when I lead backpacking trips for kids. The last, and only, time I'd been to Escalante was for spring break of my senior year of college. I went with two friends. Apparently I laughed in my sleep on that trip.
The road to our chosen trail was washed out, but the ranger recommended another one, which was actually much closer.
We spent a lot of time looking for the trail, which kept disappearing. In the end, the river was the trail. We wore sandals the whole time, leaving our boots swinging from our packs. The water was mostly shallow, and not very cold.
We saw strange birds and a coyote, and lots of little footprints in the sand--maybe otter prints. We did not see any rattlesnakes. We were often surprised by patches of quicksand.
By far, the greatest challenge came in swarms of vicious mosquitoes.
We slept on an anthill-really, the entire hill was their home and all night we slid downhill. The "2-3 person" tent was really more of a 2.25 person tent. Catie was the hero, finally giving up and crawling out of the tent to wrap herself in the unused rainfly as defense against the insects. Maybe we all slept for a couple of hours after that. But I think we'd all do it again.
TS came out for a visit and, with Catie, we drove south to Escalante. Since I've lived in Utah, I haven't gotten down to crazy landscapes of the south much, but in college I found myself there fairly often--a couple of spring breaks or long weekends, a training trip when I lead backpacking trips for kids. The last, and only, time I'd been to Escalante was for spring break of my senior year of college. I went with two friends. Apparently I laughed in my sleep on that trip.
The road to our chosen trail was washed out, but the ranger recommended another one, which was actually much closer.
We spent a lot of time looking for the trail, which kept disappearing. In the end, the river was the trail. We wore sandals the whole time, leaving our boots swinging from our packs. The water was mostly shallow, and not very cold.
We saw strange birds and a coyote, and lots of little footprints in the sand--maybe otter prints. We did not see any rattlesnakes. We were often surprised by patches of quicksand.
By far, the greatest challenge came in swarms of vicious mosquitoes.
We slept on an anthill-really, the entire hill was their home and all night we slid downhill. The "2-3 person" tent was really more of a 2.25 person tent. Catie was the hero, finally giving up and crawling out of the tent to wrap herself in the unused rainfly as defense against the insects. Maybe we all slept for a couple of hours after that. But I think we'd all do it again.
1 comment:
quicksand!
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