On Thursday, 5/2024 we had another early start. We woke well before 5 am at Kerry Sherman’s basement in Santa Clara, and saw that we had been joined during the night by Max Simmons. Max had flown into Las Vegas and then taken a shuttle up to Saint George, arriving after midnight. We packed up gear for the next phase of the adventure, and started on our way to Escalante and the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. The plan was for them to hike down to the Escalante River, spend a couple of days exploring slot canyons, and then inflate their pack rafts and float down the Escalante River for a couple of days. My role was to drop them off and then fetch them four days later.
When we got to Cedar City we had a choice. There is a mountain range between Cedar City and Escalante. There are three routes, two which bypass the range on the north and south. We opted for the more scenic route that goes over the top even though it is marginally slower. The summit of the mountain range is over 11,350 feet, and we got to see some snow on the way across.
Just after 11 am we arrived at the Escalante Visitor Center to get the necessary permits and information about the state of the river. The rangers indicated that the river flow was kind of low, and while it is possible to float some sections of the river there would be a lot of places where the rafts would need to be dragged or portaged.
The next stop was Escalante Outfitters, which is my favorite hangout in this area. They have coffee, great sandwiches, and really good pizzas. The lads bought sandwiches and a couple of pizzas, some of which they ate then, and the rest they packed along for later. We then headed down the Hole In The Rock road for the 28 mile drive to the Egypt 1 trailhead.
At the trailhead we met up with friends Bobby and Audrey. After some clowning around and organization of packs the sojourners were off just before 1:30 pm. The plan was to make the 4.7 mile hike down to the Escalante River, cross the river to Neon Canyon, and hike up the canyon to the Golden Cathedral. They would set up a camp at the GC, and then hike up out of the canyon and upstream to a drop in place for the slot portion of the canyon.
The hike down to the river went quickly, and just after 3 pm they entered the lower portion of Neon Canyon and started to make their way up to the Golden Cathedral (GC) which they reached just before 4 pm. The Golden Cathedral is a rock formation about half way up the canyon. There is a hole in the ceiling of the formation that is at the end of the technical slot portion of the canyon. The highlight of a Neon Canyon excursion is to rappel through the hole after descending the technical portion.
When they began to set up their campsite they discovered a possible problem. Chris Hardwick had a two person tent, and Max Simmons had rented a three person tent. When assembling gear at Kerry Sherman’s house that morning a decision had been made to cut down on weight by not bringing along rainflys for the tents. Chris had left his back there and had his tent sans rainfly. Max, however, not being familiar with his gear, had inadvertently brought along the rainfly and had left his tent in Saint George.
Just before 5 pm they made their way up to the canyon rim and headed up canyon to a point where they could drop into the technical portion of the canyon. That’s where the real fun begins!!
There are a number of factors that make a slot canyon technical. They are very narrow, prone to flash floods, and are often choked with debris like entire trees that have been washed down. There are places where the canyon descends abruptly and ropes are required to rappel down. Sections may be flooded and require swimming to get through them. Neon has all of those features and you can see some in the slideshow below.
Sometimes there are faster methods than a rappel to get down…
Just before 7:30 pm they reached the final rappel down into the Golden Cathedral.
Once they reached the Golden Cathedral there was enough open sky that Kerry could get a message out to me. He said that they were making a change in the plan. Instead of rafting down the Escalante they were going to do ChopRock canyon the next day and then come back out to the Egypt 1 trailhead. Kerry Sherman had taken a small group up to float the San Rafael River earlier that day, and there had been discussion of doing that instead of the Escalante. The lack of flow, combined with the lack of tent capacity had tilted the scales in that direction. The new plan was for me to pick them up the next evening (Friday) and then make a 4.5 hour drive up to the Swinging Bridge on the San Rafael River where we would post up for the night and put in the river Saturday morning.
Captain Univac 