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Tag: ferry swale

Ferry Swale to Wiregrass Canyon and the White Rocks

Friday – Saturday, May 8-9, 2026

After spending the previous week at the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs and Grand Staircase in Kanab, I left right after the conference wrapped up on Friday afternoon and drove east to Page where I grabbed an early dinner in town. Then I topped off my gas tank and then headed west again to explore a few roads in the Ferry Swale as I made my way over to the trailhead for Wiregrass Canyon in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area so I could go on a short evening hike when the temperature started to cool down. Initially, I drove into the Ferry Swale because I was thinking about either hiking to the Thousand Pockets or Dominguez Pass, but it was just too hot for me to want to do any open desert hiking this afternoon, so instead I just kept driving until the road ended at the Lees Ferry Overlook above Paria Canyon and I took in the views from there.

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Paria Canyon: White House to Lees Ferry

Canyons of the Paria | Tuesday – Sunday, March 18-23, 2025

Backpacking along the Paria River through the tight narrows and massive gorge of the lower Paria Canyon across the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument has been on my to-do list for well over a decade now, and even though I’ve tried to schedule this hike a number of times in the past it seems that something has always come up causing a change of plans- most notably on our last attempt about two years ago when cold temperatures, flash flooding and multiple deaths in the canyon made us change our minds about the hike at the very last minute. This year I wanted to take another gamble on the weather in middle-to-late March and grabbed a permit back on December 1st while Diane and I were driving home from a long weekend in the Bears Ears for Thanksgiving and hoped that I would be able to use it this time.

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