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| Volcano and Red Breaks, UT | |
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| | Volcano and Red Breaks, UT | | | |
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Volcano and Red Breaks, UT
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| Hiking | 14.12 Miles |
1,488 AEG |
| | Hiking | 14.12 Miles | 8 Hrs 3 Mns | | 2.25 mph |
| 1,488 ft AEG | 1 Hour 46 Mns Break | | | |
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| partners | | Our original plans for Memorial Day fell through so Joel suggested we go to Escalante National Monument. At first we were thought of doing a backpack in Coyote Gulch but after I talked to the ranger the idea of spending several days with a crowd made me do further research. I found the Volcano/Cosmic Ashtray/Cosmic Navel/Islomanic Dome while I was googling and I was hooked. The good thing was that it wasn't a slot so it was a great rainy day destination. I continued googling until I found a full day's agenda by adding Red Breaks canyon. I couldn't find any GPS tracks on line so I made my own based on some waypoints and away we went.
Luckily. the crew (Karl, Kathy, Josh, Carole, Scott, Chris, Joel, and I) had built up our hobo camp the night before so we had a dry place to eat breakfast before we headed out for the day. The 70% rain forecast was already a reality. We didn't let it stop us and around 8 AM we were off on our hike.
We made our way to the Volcano, which in my opinion is an incredible site to see. I can see why it has so many names! I figure we were lucky to be there on a rainy day - we didn't have to battle the shadows cast by the sun to get some fabulous photos because the rain stopped for a bit. We had our lunch out of the wind behind a irony formation.
From there we headed to one of the many arms of Red Breaks. We had a lot of conversations about hiking in a canyon during the rain. We knew Red Breaks had some slots but we decided that based on the weather radio's forecasted low flash flood potential that we could go ahead with our plans.
As we headed down the arm, we watched the water flowing along the slick rock; the water was gathering a bit of momentum and volume. It was an amazing site to see. We walked by potholes in the slabs that seemed really deep and had an aquamarine cast to them. So far the canyon was wide and there was no concern with the rains. At one point we managed to reach the beginning of the downward flow and we were mesmerized!
Soon we ran into some slots that were completely avoidable by staying high. Josh and I checked them out for a ways but a pool caused us to scramble out. Had we had wetsuits it probably wouldn't have been a problem (but then again who knows what we would have encountered lower down). We reached the others and they were wandering around looking down at cliffs blocking their way. After some discussion we decided to retrace our steps and get up on one of the mesas.
The mesa was pretty cool but it was covered in sand and crypto. We tried to avoid the crypto the best we could which took us to another drainage down into yet another arm of Red Breaks. We didn't know if we'd encounter anything technical or pools but we continued down anyway. The joke was that Karl had to get his steps for his work team so we could always retrace our steps.
Suddenly, the canyon slotted up and several of us had fun practicing our bridges, stemming, and other canyoneering moves. When things got more serious, Kathy and Karl decided to head up on a shelf. Chris had ended up on an opposite shelf. The rest of us continued down canyon. At some point it all came together and there was a very steep yet awesome slide into a narrow section. Kathy and Karl decided to continue along their shelf while the rest of us tried out the slide. The canyoneering crew knew exactly how to handle the slide so we talked the others through the motions and gave them a partner assists at the bottom. Then we continued with stemming, elevators, and other moves to get down. Finally, it opened up again and we were all united.
From there we hiked back to our hobo camp and had a great happy hour and group meal. We had defeated the rain and had an amazing time! |
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