Press "Enter" to skip to content

Tag: mamie creek

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.

1 Comment

The Boulder Mail Trail

Canyons of the Escalante | Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Tuesday, October 1, 2019

The Old Boulder Mail Trail is a 15 mile trail that was originally established in 1902 as a mail route that linked the isolated towns of Escalante and Boulder Town and was traversed by pack mules twice-weekly to carry mail, medicine and occasional travelers. In 1911 a telephone line was strung between trees, rocks and poles along the route by the Forest Service to connect the ranger stations in both towns. The ranger in Boulder even let the townspeople tie in with their own lines. Some of the glass insulators can still be seen in the treetops along the trail today. The line was used until 1955 when a microwave system replaced it. When Utah Highway 12 was completed in 1940 the Boulder Mail Trail fell into disuse.

Leave a Comment

The Upper Escalante River & Lower Death Hollow

Canyons of the Escalante | Southern Utah Wanderings in a Sandstone Wilderness
Sunday & Monday, September 29-30, 2019

After spending Saturday hiking through Phipps Wash and Deer Canyon, we were ready to begin our overnight backpacking trip through the Escalante River Gorge on Sunday morning. The previous night we had found a campsite on Big Spencer Flats and had done our best to prepare for the high winds and storms that were forecasted overnight. It did stay pretty windy out for much of the night and there was a little on and off rain, but not enough that anything was still wet in the morning. It was still pretty windy out when we got up shortly before sunrise, but there were plenty of nice clouds in the sky and the sunrise was looking good, so we grabbed our cameras and took a few photos around camp.

3 Comments