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Tag: escalante river canyon

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…

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Avoiding Rain Around the Canyons of the Escalante

Canyons of the Escalante | Saturday – Monday, October 10-12, 2026

After spending most of the day exploring the interesting sandstone of Concretion Wash on Saturday, the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel finally arrived and the weather forecast was calling for quite a bit of rain to fall across the landscape over the next few days. We decided that it would probably not be a good idea to drive out to the end of the Hole-in-the-Rock Road until the storm passed, so now we would need to spend the next few days trying to avoid the rain by finding shorter hikes that are closer to good all-weather roads and not located in narrow canyons where flash-flooding is possible. Over the course of the next two days we would stay closer to town and hike a few new trails and routes while also revisiting some places that we hadn’t been back to in quite some time.

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Halls Wagon Road to Halls Crossing, More or Less…

Friday – Sunday, November 1-3, 2024

I started this weekend trip off with two main goals in mind as I headed west into Utah on Friday. The first one was to drive The V Road in the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument before it’s closed to motorized vehicles in December, and the second one was to finally take a ride on the Charles Hall Ferry across Lake Powell while it’s open and there is still enough water for it to be in operation. Although these two goals might seem like they can’t possibly be connected in any way, there is a historic route which was known as the Halls Wagon Road, Hall Road or Halls Trail, that went from Escalante to Halls Crossing and does kind of tie these two areas together. So even though I never followed any part of the actual Halls Wagon Road on this particular trip, I did roughly parallel the route on modern day roads the entire way. Plus, I have already hiked a couple sections of the historic route including Silver Falls Creek, Muley Twist Canyon and Halls Creek, and I hope to do more sections in the future. I had all of this information on my mind as I left from work on Friday and made my way over to the Escalante River Country near Harris Wash.

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Canyons of the Escalante: Silver Falls Creek

Following Another Segment of the Historic Halls Road
Friday – Sunday, May 8-10, 2020

This weekend Diane and I headed into the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area so that we could continue my Canyons of the Escalante series by hiking down Silver Falls Creek to the Escalante River and back. With warmer temperatures in the desert lately, I was looking for an easy overnight backpacking trip where we could camp near water to cool off during the heat of the day. Plus, with seemingly more people out on our public lands right now, I was also looking for a more out-of-the-way location that’s not very popular where we would hopefully not run into many other people in the backcountry. Silver Falls Creek seemed to fit the bill perfectly. I had actually planned on hiking down Silver Falls Creek Canyon last October with Jared after we hiked through Little Death Hollow and Wolverine Canyon, but after that hike we decided to end our week-long trip a day early and instead went on a short hike along Pleasant Creek in Capitol Reef National Park, so I was looking forward to finally visiting this canyon. As an added bonus, this would be another segment of the historic Halls Road that we would be able to check out after hiking down Lower Muley Twist Canyon back in March.

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Coyote Gulch Repeat

Friday & Saturday, October 7-8, 2016

Earlier this year Diane asked me about wanting to go on a backpacking trip into Coyote Gulch after she saw some photos of the area, so we planned to do a repeat of a trip that I did with Jared a few years ago, except we would go for two nights instead of just one. We left home very early on Friday morning and drove straight to the trailhead only stopping to fill up my gas tank in Torrey. Since we left in the morning instead of the previous night like we had originally wanted to, we got a little bit later start on the hike than I would have liked, but we still had plenty of time on the first day.

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