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Sandstone Sojourn: Ladder Canyon & Milagro Passage

Canyons of the Escalante | Tuesday, October 13, 2026

We woke up on Tuesday morning with high hopes of driving down towards the far end of the Hole-in-the-Rock Road, but then we checked the latest weather forecast and saw that there was yet another full day of rain in store for us, so we made the reluctant decision to stay closer to town for one more day. All this rain was really beginning to put a damper on our trip and I was getting anxious to get back to our regularly scheduled program! The weather for the rest of the week was looking dry, so we were pretty sure that we would be heading out first thing on Wednesday morning. Until then we needed to find another hike for today. We wanted to do something a little longer this time, so we went on another sandstone sojourn- this time from the end of the Old Sheffield Road to the Escalante River following the rim of Spencer Canyon to Ladder Canyon. Then we were thinking about hiking up and through the Milagro Passage, depending on how our legs were feeling by then…

Sandstone Sojourn: Concretion Wash to the Zebra Slot

Canyons of the Escalante | Friday – Saturday, October 9-10, 2026

Aside from a brief visit in November of 2024 so I could drive The V Road before it was supposed to be closed by the BLM, I have been wanting to get back to the Canyons of the Escalante since 2022 when that year’s trip with Jared was cut short after I got sick and headed home early. I finally made plans to go back last October, but then Diane’s brain surgery prevented me from going on our annual Southern Utah Wanderings trip for the first time in 14 years, and even though we tried to squeeze in an abbreviated trip later in the year a few times, we were never able to pull it off. After all of these delays, I suppose you could say I was very anxious to get back this year and had been looking forward to this trip for quite some time. Unfortunately, our timing couldn’t have been worse since we would be arriving at about the same time that the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel would also be getting to the area which meant we would need to change our plans to work around the excessive rainfall and stay out of narrow canyons to avoid possible flash flooding.

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Canyons of the Escalante: Phipps Wash & Deer Canyon

Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Friday & Saturday, September 27-28, 2019

Back in early October of 2010, Jared and I started our annual tradition of going on a week-long trip to different parts of the Colorado Plateau together. That first trip started out along the Hole-In-The-Rock Road in the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument, so we decided to return to where it all began this year and planned to spend an entire week hiking around the Canyons of the Escalante. I was really looking forward to our trip this year since it seems like I’ve been neglecting the Escalante area for a couple of years and I felt that I was overdue to return! This year we planned to hike a few of the more popular routes in the area that we have skipped over the years and I wanted to try to stay away from the Hole-In-The-Rock Road. We were also going to try to take advantage of having both our vehicles there by doing hikes that we could shuttle ourselves.

Red Breaks to the Escalante Volcano

Southern Utah Wanderings
Saturday, October 11, 2014

On Saturday morning we woke up before the sun came up and were able to watch the sunrise as we drove down the Old Sheffield Road to it’s end near the Red Breaks. Today we would be hiking to the unusual sandstone formation known as the Escalante Volcano. This interesting landform is known by many names including the Red Breaks Crater, Cosmic Ashtray, Cosmic Navel and Islomania Dome, but I’m just going to stick to simply calling it the Volcano.

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Tag: big spencer flats

Sandstone Sojourn: Ladder Canyon & Milagro Passage

Sandstone Sojourn: Concretion Wash to the Zebra Slot

Canyons of the Escalante: Phipps Wash & Deer Canyon

Red Breaks to the Escalante Volcano