Last week my good friend Nat Smale and I spent 5 days on the Escalante river of utah to descend some of the narrow waterfilled slot canyons which form tributaries of the Escalante river. We had planned this trip since early May, as autumn is a nice time along the Escalante, with cooler temps and infrequent flash floods(compared with july through september), and is at a time when we both have a regular holiday from work. Anticipation for the trip was building as the days approached closer and closer, considering Escalante, individually, is possibly our favorite area of Southern Utah and the Colorado Plateau. It was not obvious beforehand that a 50-100 year storm would inundate Southern Utah with raging torrents. Walking these Southern Utah washes for years shows you how and where water is capable of going … but you are left unprepared for the experience of witnessing it. I was simultaneously filled with horror and excitement—simply an unreal experience.
The Escalante cuts through the structurally weakened spine of an uplift of bowing layers of colorful sedimentary rock, with spectacular side canyons (tributary systems) adorning its entire length, as it makes its way from the highlands of the Aquarius Plateau down to the depths of a section of the Colorado River known as Glen Canyon (Lake Powell). The side canyons meander sinuously as they cut their way through the erosive rock, some wide and deep, some impossibly narrow and beautifully sculpted. Literally, narrow slits in the rock, slot canyons act as constrictive drains for the rain water that falls on the large expanses of mostly barren rock and soil comprising much of this area. Even a short, strong dose of 20min rainfall is capable of causing a deadly flashflood, were one to be caught within one of these slot canyons, many of which have no routes of escape.
The forecast a week before the trip called for relatively good chances for rain, 20-40% as a system would be moving in from the southwest. One of the problems with planning trips like this is the chance for it to get spoiled by a sufficient chance of rain. We kept in mind the possibility of changing the dates; as I was flying in from Boston, Mass. (where I had moved from Salt Lake a year before), this created more difficulties with decisions and timing. We decided to watch the weather and make a decision at the last minute before my flight. The weather seemed to improve, as the National Weather Service began to suggest that the storm would be moving in a more northerly direction, with the brunt of it hitting northern utah. And although there was still some chance of rain, we felt that most of the days would work out and, in Southern Utah, there is always the potential that it’ll eventually turn out to be mostly clear and sunny. However, it was noted that some of the models did, in fact, predict that the storms could hit Southern Utah.
We decided to keep the plans and I arrived in Salt Lake on tuesday night (6 hours later than expected). The weather forecast remained consistent from monday through wednesday and called for partly cloudy through the weekend with … 30% chance on wednesday (oct. 4), 20% chance on thursday, 30% chance on friday, 20% on saturday and sunday. This would be the last point we had any predictive information about the weather. We planned to descend four slot canyons near the Egypt bench along the middle part of the Escalante river, and thursday-sunday would have to boast good weather to feel comfortable entering these canyons. From the Egypt bench we arrived in the late afternoon on wednesday to find quite nice partly cloudy weather, during what carried a 30% chance of rain. We hauled our packs full of food, gear, ropes, and wetsuits down a pair of large sand and rock shelves to the esclante river. The slender river, at the mouth of Neon canyon, is intrenched in the sandy cottonwood- strewn, flood plain of the Escalante river canyon, and, while the water was only calf to knee deep, the slender depression itself was well over our heads. We made our way into familiar Neon canyon (aka, Caverns Hollow) and settled our camp high on a sandstone bench just a shortways upcanyon.
DAY 1 (Thursday Oct. 4)::
We woke up the following morning to a light sprinkling of rain which lasted less than a couple of minutes and added up to no amount of water. Clouds were moving somewhat quickly overhead from the southwest and kept the morning dim, with a few breaks of sunlight. The approach to a neighboring canyon to the north was a moderate distance away, so we figured we would watch the weather develop and make a decision when we were about to drop into the upper reaches of the slot canyon from above. The canyon is a long canyon, with no escapes for much of its length, and would take the better part of a day to descend. It would be hazardous if there was a good chance of rain at any time inside. Nat and I had a close call a few years earlier on a day with ZERO chance of rain. A day which began with dense overcast clouds, turned to bright sunny skies (while in the slot) and, ultimately, developed into a 20 minute blast of rain which, fortuitously, tore though the canyon as a flashflood 20-30 minutes after we had exited the canyon’s final 130′ rappel (from a natural anchor we took 45 minutes to build, prior to descent). I tried to be optimistic for much of the hike up, saying “well, the storm looks like it’s moving northerly, condensing upon the highlands of the Kaiparowitz and Aquarius plateaus. But inside I agreed with Nat, that it really wasn’t looking good. While the clouds above us were thin and hardly filled with water, there was a very dark grey mass of thick clouds <100 miles to the west. Upon arrival to the drop-in point of the slot, we decided that we should NOT enter and, instead, spend the rest of the day scouting out an entrance into upper Neon canyon, above the highest slot. At two points during our exploration, rain fell moderately hard, as wind and lightning flashed across the sky. The storm had shifted from its northerly direction and we watched as the watery shine of wetted rock had approached closer and closer, before encompassing the whole of the Escalante area. It was clear that we made the right decision as the canyon below us had developed a decent flow. Late in the day we returned back to camp, and I quickly jaunted up to the Golden Cathedral in lower Neon Canyon to marvel at the waterfall through the double natural bridge. It was spectacular and dynamic as the rushing volume of water pounded upon the pool and reverberated loudly within the resonating alcove. It is along this waterfall one descends when coming down Neon Canyon. Rain began to sprinkle again, and I made my way back to camp.
After dinner it got dark and coninued to rain lightly/moderately and we decided to see what the whether would be like in the morning. If it rained hard today and it was only 20%, what did 30% have in store for us. I wasn’t quite ready to sleep, so I spent sometime crouching under a very short alcove at the base of a terraced wall behind our camp. Slightly uncomfortable, it was almost completely away from the rain. It was here that I would spend some moments of the following day during the most intense rains. I finally decided to lie down, and got in my sleeping bag, inside a bivy sack. It rained for much of the night and I felt the incessant pitter patter of rain on the sleeping bag and and the rain jacket covering my face. It possibly was due to the superbright and unusally large harvest moon that I couldn’t sleep, but I distinctly remember, for much of the night and early morning, the sound of a rushing torrent of water just below our sandstone bench filling lower Neon Canyon.
DAY 2 (Friday Oct. 5)::
Without getting up, it was simple to deduce that a considerable amount of water was flowing through the canyon and there would be no canyoneering today. At one point in the early morning around 7am there was a momentary surge in rainfall which insisted for about 30 minutes, then relaxed to a moderately strong rain for some time. During the tail end of the pulse of rain and some time thereafter, the terraced sandstone wall behind our camp was cascading with huge muddy, rooster-tailing waterfalls and a torrent moving through the sandstone basin, down to the bottom of neon … absolutely wild. I emerged from the bivy sack when it, finally, turned to light rain, put on my raingear, and walked around the sandstone bench, in awe of the river raging through the water course below, spanning from wall to wall. It was an exhilarating scene to wake up to. The Golden Cathedral must have been quite a vigorous waterfall. At this point I took a number of photos, then sat and talked with Nat a little while getting my food for breakfast. Dark clouds moved in briskly, and ultimately (around 9:30) it started to rain … again. From the slowly but steadily increasing drops of rain, you got the sense that it was about to pour. Nat ducked into his tent, and I grabbed my food and a waterbottle and headed for my dwarvish overhang. Within moments, the rain developed into a second superpulse lasting about 30 minutes, and again the frenetic sandy waterfall enveloped in front of me, pooling into a torrent and rushing down to join the Neon torrent.
Eventually a moderately strong rain ensued and I carried my food and water uphill, to the top of the terraced wall and into another small overhand with a nice view of the sandstone bench we were camped on and the bend in the canyon beyond. Water rushed steadily down the canyon and impressively spanned the widened bend essentially from wall to wall. The sand bar sitting inside the U-shaped bend was completely submerged as well as the limbless section of the trunk of a small cottonwood tree perched upon it. The water reached up to the leafy limbs of the cottonwood, indicating that the water was impressively deep. At this point it was relatively cold and the rain persisted, and I didn’t feel like doing much more than soaking in this rare experience. At some point the rain mostly stopped and dim, moisture-laden clouds continued to pass overhead from the southwest. It was nice to walk around for awhile and at some point Nat joined me on my high-perched ledge above camp. As we sat and talked the flow in Neon had reduced quite a bit and the sand bar in the U-shaped bend emerged some, including the island-like promontory where the submerged cottonwood perched. Strangely, as we continued to talk, the water, at the bend beyond camp, not only rose again to completely submerge the sand bar and trunk of the cottonwood, but in fact almost completely stopped its flow altogether. Something was damming the flow and holding a significant amount of water in what I fondly dubbed “Lake Neon.”
After examining this lake from other vantage points down below we decided to climb up onto the narrow ridge forming the northern west wall extending to the mouth of Neon, separating our camp and the Escalante river itself. As we reached the apex of the ridge, an untamed scene enveloped before our eyes. The entire Escalante flood plain at the base of the canyon was filled, from wall to wall within the wingate (bottom) layer. The raging water formed rapids over the sand bars, bushes and trees below, as well as whirlpools and wakes in its flow about the many cottonwood trees scattered around the floodplain. The entire canyon resounded with the crashing water of this impressive deluge. Occasionally large thickets of tree snags were carried afloat and often approached the wading cottowoods. Some were capable of bending tall but slender cottonwoods to completely submerge them as they passed over. Others were caught momentarily or permanently on the upflow side of the trunk … something you often see sometimes perched high on the trunks of trees while walking along the Escalante or other canyons on the Colorado Plateau. Occasionally, we even saw cottonwoods crack under the drag force these clusters of tree branches/trunks thrust upon them. For awhile we stood speechless at the astounding sight, and it was clear what precisely had dammed the flow in Neon canyon. Though clouds continued to rush across the sky, pockets of sunlight shone through, enlightening the canyon and the swirling, twisting water. For quite some time we sat and talked profoundly with our gazes glued to the river from our lofty vantage point a couple hundred feet above. There was no way to cross the river even if we had wanted to. Who knows how deep it was, at its deepest point … possibly 3,4 or 5 times overhead? None of the underbrush (on the sand bars) and short trees was even visible, and it was clear the flow was a marked distance up the sandstone canyon walls. Nat suggested that this was quite possibly the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen outdoors … I had to agree.
Essentially the entire Escalante canyon system and its profusion of tributaries ALL were massively flooded and raging.
At some point the sun was going down, with darker clouds rolling in, and we decided to go back to camp. Nat had prepared a beverage and I was in the process of preparing mine, rushing to gather food and some of my clothing I had scattered about to dry; more dark clouds were coming and I was worried about more rain. Nat responded with a hilariously ironic comment, that it was not as if any more rain was needed. A light sprinkle intensified and the same scenario played itself out again. Nat ducked into the tent, and I ran, with my beverage in hand, back to my dwarvish alcove. As rapidly as before, the rain developed into another superpulse lasting about 30 minutes, as I sipped my drink and watched, yet another, muddy waterfall and torrent appear directly in front of me. After the superpulse a moderate/strong rain persisted for another hour, after which the rain finally stopped. I had no idea how much time had passed, but Nat had been monitoring the length of the intense rains. Neon was raging again (no longer a lake), and it was finally calm enough to enjoy our dinner. Fortunately this last superpulse was the finale of a stupefying storm. I took comfort in sleeping in the tent, with deep hopes and crossed fingers that the weather would clear for us to safely do some canyons during the following days. Moderate rain fell during the early part of the night and it seemed that the storm was letting up some.