Rachel Grindlay

Tom & I spent four weeks in south-western USA primarily Utah, Colorado & Arizona. The main goal was canyoning but we ended up with quite a bit of hiking as well and even some via ferrata!

• Part 1: Zion & San Rafael Swell, Utah (Days 1 – 6)
• Part 2: North Wash, Utah  (Days 7 – 9)
• Part 3: Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP & Ouray, Colorado (Days 10 – 14)
• Part 4: Mesa Verde NP, Canyoning around Page, Colorato/Utah/Arizona (Days 15 – 18)
• Part 5: Buckskin Gulch, Utah (Days 19-20)
• Part 6: Arizona canyoning (Days 21 – 23)
• Part 7: Desert & Cacti, Arizona/California (Days 24 – 29)

I have a list of things we learnt from across our 3 trips (2013/2017/2024) which might be helpful to any Australians planning a canyoning trip to Utah.

Total – approx 5,150km

Continued from Part 5

We briefly stopped in at Lone Rock – in Lake Powell – before retracing our drive up and out of Page from a couple of days earlier. I can’t remember what letter of the alphabet the music was up to but it wasn’t enough to keep Tom alert and I got to take over driving duties much earlier than I expected.

That meant Tom was on accommodation booking and we ended up at a Motel 6 for a bargain basement price of US$50 for the night (the nearest camping was close to US$40). Tom did warn me it was close to the Interstate but as we drove in I thought it didn’t seem too bad. Except we soon discovered our room, understandably at the price, was round the back of the complex, with nothing but a couple of hundred metres separating us from the traffic. Neither of us slept particularly well, and so when the alarm went off pretty early, there was a brief conversation about ditching our ambitious plan for the day. But, with the amount of traffic noise, I figured we weren’t going back to sleep, so we may as well get up and go.

We headed to Illusions Canyon, a tributary of the West Fork of Oak Creek. We had finished our last US trip in Sedona and driven past this area. On that trip, we hadn’t given any thought to hiking Oak Creek – even though it’s apparently one of the most popular trails in the area – and definitely had no thoughts of canyons in the area.

Illusions is considered one of the best canyons in Arizona, by many people on the interwebs, and had come highly recommended to us by a friend. But it also comes with a myriad of warnings about a possible keeper pothole at the very end. In easy mode it’s simply a pool which you swim across after the last abseil, but in hard mode it’s a 19 foot deep pothole that many of the usual pothole escape methods don’t work on. We don’t have much (any) need for pothole escapes in Blue Mountains canyons and so we don’t own pothole escape tools, let alone have the experience for a challenging escape (I have stood on Tom’s head once to get out of an easy-ish pothole…). So there was no way we were going to attempt this canyon if we thought there was even a chance it wasn’t in easy mode. The Arizona Canyoneering Facebook group and conditions reports on RopeWiki assured me it had been in easy mode the week before.

The other big decision was whether to do the traditional approach and exit, which involved hiking up the AB Young Trail – a 500m ascent, and then descending the West Fork of Oak Creek at the end. The alternative is a much shorter ‘sneak’ approach which involves about an hour of driving on forest roads to get to the top.

Given my well-known love of dirt roads, we (I) figured we’d rather ascend 500m on foot! Plus West Fork of Oak Creek is supposed to be a worthwhile objective in its own right. With the decision made, an early start was definitely in order, which is why we were at the trailhead not long after 7am. The hike up AB Young wasn’t too bad, as it is a series of many (33) switchbacks and we were early enough that the temperature was quite pleasant.

Tom most of the way up the AB Young trail

From the top we took a somewhat circuitous route on the plateau to the Illusions drainage. If we were to ever do it again (unlikely – because we live in Australia, and we’d likely do the sneak route) we’d probably contour across the plateau to save some walking. I hadn’t packed the compass which I was somewhat regretting as we were trying to follow the instructions to get in. We had various electronic navigation devices, but nothing beats having a compass when you’re just trying to head in a particular direction.

We found ourselves in the drainage and got our first introduction to Arizona bushwhacking. I’d heard enough about it from friends, but you never know what other people’s scrub thresholds are. And as it was neighbouring largely vegetation-free Utah I had thought the scrub might be over-hyped. I like to think my scrub threshold is pretty high – but being surrounded by unfamiliar plants made it a lot more challenging. Turns out lots of the Arizona plants were spikey – like blackberry spikey. I was also a bit surprised that for what I thought was a pretty popular canyon there didn’t seem to be much of a route. We likely dropped in slightly early and we did find ourselves on a social trail after a few minutes.

Bush-whacking – Arizona style

The vegetation didn’t really ease off, but at least I started to work out which plants really needed to be avoided! Eventually we got to the sign warning us of all the dangers of canyoneering and soon after that the creek turned into a canyon – one that wouldn’t have been out of place in the Blue Mountains.

Out of the vegetation and into the canyon

We could be in the Blue Mountains

The upper section very much could have been the Blue Mountains but soon we got to features and downclimbs that were not at all Blue Mountains-esque. Twisting corkscrew downclimbs, climbing through arches, abseiling through arches all wonderful features of this canyon.

Wonderful arch feature

Corkscrew downclimb

Abseiling through an arch (though afterwards we realised for the sake of rope groves we should’ve gone over it)

Tom on the other side of a swim

Tom on a tricky downclimb – I got down in a different spot

Besides the pothole, our main concern with this canyon was the temperature. We only own 3mm and 3/4mm wetsuits – which seemed to be on the light end of what was ever recommended at any time of year. We were hoping with it being autumn that we’d get through ok. By the time we got three-quarters of the way through we were definitely feeling the cold. We got to a drop which our beta said was a downclimb, but Tom didn’t like the look of it. As were both shivering we just needed to make a quick decision. I meat-anchored Tom down and then he partner-assisted me. While we could see where a skilled person could downclimb it was above our comfort level that day.

Tom abseiling

Tom below a beautiful section of canyon we’ve just abseiled down

We were glad to get to the final section of narrows as it promised warmth wasn’t too far away. Other trip reports I’d read had made me think the final narrows were going to be a bit longer – but the two raps were right on top of each other and with only the two of us we made pretty quick work of them. Tom was wondering whether to prepare for needing to escape the final pothole – but I was like “just assume it’s going to be a swim and get on with it!” Fortunately that was the case and it was just a swim across the pothole.

Tom abseiling again

Tom on the final abseil – can’t see the pool/pothole from the top

The pool/pothole – hard to imagine it empty!

After Tom hauled me out I got to have a look at the pothole. It is amazing what difficulties can be hidden! It was such a nondescript pool. It made me wonder how many Blue Mountains canyons hide similar problems – but the pools just never empty so we don’t have to deal with them.

I assured Tom I’d read two trips reports that said there was another abseil further down the creek. We were cold enough (and weary of the vegetation) that we left our wetsuits on. After quite a way he was definitely sceptical that the abseil existed. But we did eventually hit the final rappel. From there it wasn’t far to the West Fork of Oak Creek proper. Time for a late lunch!

Lunch on the West Fork of Oak Creek

Great rock colourings

From there Tom had suggested it was only 3km or so to the car park so I was expecting an hour at most. We started bumping into people once there was a track (rather than wading) and a couple of ladies asked how far it was back – of course we hadn’t done it but I suggested 2 miles, and they said ‘no way, we’ve walked way more than that’. Tom… what haven’t you told me?

Tom on the walk down West Fork of Oak Creek

Once we’d walked the trail of indeterminate length (3km / 3 miles / who knows?), at least one of us needed to retrieve the car from the car park 3km down the road. Tom had unfortunately rolled his ankle as we had been descending the tributary. He suggested I should push on quickly and then go retrieve the car. So I set off at a brisk pace, with my very heavy pack (I had the wet 60m rope in addition to all my wet personal gear). The trail was lovely but it did take a lot longer than I had been expecting.

Once at the Call of the Canyon car park I “just” had to get back to the Bootleggers Picnic Area where we’d left our car in the morning. Before we’d separated Tom had tried to point out some tracks that ran parallel to the road on OpenStreetMap, but I hadn’t thought walking along the road had looked too bad. Not sure which section of road I’d been looking at to think it wasn’t too bad!

There was basically no shoulder for lots of it, so my early technique was to jog the bits with no shoulder, walk the sections which did. I got lucky early on that the breaks in traffic coincided with my no shoulder sections. However 2km down I hit a section with much longer no shoulder sections, and a lot more cars. Eventually I gave up on that and was, fortunately, past the private properties, so I cut down to the creek and picked up the track on the other side. Eventually I was back at the bottom of the AB Young trail and could clamber back to our car – 5:30pm, only 10 hours after we’d left it. The walk along the road was the scariest part of the day – in retrospect I should have tried to get someone leaving the car park to give me a lift down the road.

Luckily the lady on the car park booth didn’t make me pay to stop and pick up Tom, and so we were soon on our way back to Flagstaff. I was feeling pretty smug as I’d decided we needed to book accommodation the night before as I had an inkling it would be a long day. We’d largely avoided being in towns on Friday & Saturday nights – but there was no avoiding this. The whole area is a popular spot to visit and the change in price for the weekends was significant. The basic room we’d had at Motel 6 the night before for $50 on a Thursday night was $180 on Friday night. Needless to say we didn’t head back to Motel 6. I’d found us a lovely Air BnB for the weekend, and we were delighted to have a well-appointed kitchen and the opportunity to eat some fresh produce (and no traffic noise).

Two of the three previous days had been up there with the hardest on the trip, and we had been on the go for almost three weeks. We were both ready for a day off, and what better location than Flagstaff. At 2,100m it was sort of escaping the heatwave. Our sole excursion for the day was to a bakery/café, where I got a surprisingly good coffee (US trips are generally coffee free for me). Otherwise we read, rested and ate good food.

Enjoying our rest day

The next morning we were refreshed and ready to go again. Arizona canyons have a short season as most of them are fed by snow melt, so by the time autumn rolls round there’s little to no flowing water. Christopher Creek was the main suggestion from the locals for the time of year, unless we wanted to find ourselves in stagnant disgusting water. So, Christopher Creek was our next stop.

After securing a campsite we drove a short way down the interstate and strolled the 15 minutes in to the creek. Christopher Creek is a more open creek, rather than slot canyon, the main attraction is jumps. I’m not really a jumper unless I have to, but even if I was, I don’t think the water levels were high enough to do much jumping.

Tom sliding in Christopher Creek

Tom abseiling

Tom abseiling

Another abseil

Tom downclimbing

We did quite a lot of swimming though and sadly my camera didn’t survive. Well, the camera survived, but the screen did not and as there is no view finder I was taking photos in the dark so to speak.

We encountered a couple of climbers part way down. And then a whole lot of climbing hardware – via ferrata style lines set up so they could get upstream to climbs avoiding the canyon, and many bolted routes.

Sadly we didn’t take lunch in as the exit point would have been a great place to eat it.

Relaxing at Christopher Creek campground

Back at camp we enjoyed the pleasant conditions in the shady campsite, particularly knowing this was the last time we were likely to be cool for a while!

Continued in Part 7

Continued from Part 4

The decision to stay indoors meant we had a quick, easy departure the next morning to meet our car shuttle operator. When I’d booked our shuttle for 7:30am I hadn’t looked at the sunrise times. Sunrise was only at 7:15am. Once I’d realised I almost made it later – turns out it was a good thing I didn’t. We also had to make sure we were talking Utah times as Arizona doesn’t observe daylight saving and had an hour time difference – tricky when the border was only 20 minutes from where we were meeting!

Our shuttle operator was waiting for us at the White House Trailhead well in advance, and we were on our way to Wire Pass Trailhead exactly on time despite our faffing. The trip to Wire Pass went twice as fast as it would have had we been driving! Yermo had clearly driven the road many, many times previously, had a 4WD and was completely comfortable. Perhaps too comfortable, as he pulled out his phone, while driving, to show us photos of Antelope Ridge Canyon – apparently going to be the next big thing in the area.

Early start at Wire Pass Trailhead

I didn’t really know what to expect from our overnight trip through Buckskin Gulch. Even though I’d read that it was claimed to be the “longest slot canyon in the world”, I hadn’t really thought about what that would mean. After the first half hour approach, we were walking down a slot canyon for the entirety of the day. It wasn’t always super narrow, and to be honest those wider sections were something of a relief, but a good proportion of it was 2m wide. There is only one escape, the ‘middle exit’, and so it’s not a location to be walking if rain is forecast.

Unfortunately the area had got decent rain in early September which had filled up the canyon. The water had been draining (or evaporating) slowly but apparently even the week before we would have been doing chest-deep wades.

Early on – still have dry feet!

As it was we hit our first knee deep pools (and of course mud) quite early on. It didn’t detract from the canyon – though Tom was apparently expecting a more spectacular canyon. I think his expectations were too high!

The notes we had suggested 3 hours from when we entered the slot to reach the middle exit. But every time I looked at something promising it didn’t go… and we kept going, and then hitting more mud and deeper pools. I had now been in up to my upper thighs, and in danger of getting wet shorts (which had been hitched up as high as they could go). The mud and pools made things very slow as it was so slippery you inch through the pools trying to ensure you don’t fall over and end up saturated and stinky.

Beautiful sculpted walls – but we’re concentrating on not falling over

Amazing colours

Enjoying a more open section

Tom admiring the canyon formation

Somewhat dried out mud

Tom enjoying the mud…

A not very happy mouse

Yay, more wading

It’s getting deeper

Eventually we reached middle exit – it had taken us closer to 5 hours rather than the expected 3. Subsequently it was a very late lunch! We bumped into 3 others at the base of middle exit. Two who’d walked up from Lees Ferry over a couple of days, and the third appeared to be a guide to get them out middle exit. It became clear while we were eating lunch why they needed the guide. Middle exit seemed to be a slickrock ramp that just needed to be walked up – easy if you’re used to friction walking in that environment. Not so easy if you’re not used to it – they were still getting up the ramp as we finished our lunch.

We were somewhat buoyed by the news from the other walkers that there wasn’t really any water downstream. They had been covered in mud so we weren’t getting too hopeful though! Thankfully it was largely dry for the next hour and we were happy to be able to march down the canyon without much thought to foot placement.

Happy to be in faster moving terrain

The canyon formation just keeps going

We were also waiting for the crux of the day to arrive, which according to the notes we had, was about an hour downstream from middle exit. So every indication of rockfall we thought – this must be it! But no… however, we did get to a mud pool. The description from the other couple made sense once we hit it – they’d said no water but just mud you keep sinking into. It was basically knee-deep liquid mud. We came out of with a slick layer of mud over anything that went into the pool.

Now onto the liquid mud section

Mud socks

Look at those walls!

Of course, feet covered in the mud, was when we eventually, about 2 hours downstream hit the crux.

The crux is a pile of large boulders. Sometimes you can go through a hole at the base, but other times that hole is blocked up and you need to downclimb a boulder which has had steps carved in it. Both options were available to us, though Tom left his pack behind when he went to investigate the low route, so had to climb up the boulder to get back to his pack. I guess he got the full experience.

Tom climbing up the crux… to get back to his bag

Which he’d left behind when he’d taken the low option (though that is my pack where I’d left it to go back and help him get down)

More spectacular formation

We were hoping this later section was going to be ‘on time’ and not an extra two hours because we were already looking at a 5pm arrival at camp. Fortunately it was. We actually walked past the campsites initially – it was only when we arrived at the confluence of the Paria River and Buckskin Gulch that we realised our mistake. We were a bit grumpy about it as it had been a long day and we didn’t want to have to do unnecessary extra walking – but too late! As it turned out it really wasn’t that far back upstream to the campsites. We’d both been expecting that the canyon would widen out for where we camped – but having seen the sites it was then abundantly clear why you were required to carry your poo out (remember the wag bags). We were literally camping in the canyon – just on a couple of well-entrenched sandbanks.

Tired, after what was by far our longest day, we quickly devoured snacks, soup and dinner and were in bed pretty early. Before we could leave the next morning we got to have our first use of a wag bag. I’d done a bit of research before we left but I hadn’t appreciated that we would be needing to poo into a bag (as opposed to onto a flat sheet). I’m quite used to digging holes in the bush but the set-up for the bag required a bit more coordination. I’m sure after a few uses you get it sorted but I wouldn’t say it was the most user-friendly experience I’ve ever had.

Camp in the canyon

From there we headed back to the junction with the Paria River, which we would exit up. We had been surprised how few people we had seen in the canyon – a few at the start near the car park but otherwise we’d largely been on our own. So it was a bit jarring to bump into 3 people and 2 dogs, coming from downstream, first thing that morning. We recognised the group as they had set off from White House Trailhead when we’d been camped there two nights earlier. The smaller of the two dogs had a much harder time of it – lots of pools it had to swim! Another thing about the USA which just feels weird to me – dogs being allowed in so many more places than they are in Australia.

The section of the Paria was quite stunning and we enjoyed the morning’s walk. There were lots of people (and horses) heading in as we walked out. The closer we got to the car the sooner we needed to start making some decisions.

Paria Canyon – also spectacular

Arch in Paria Canyon

Amazing rock strata

This was meant to be the end of the canyoning section of the trip, and from here on we were heading to Arizona for desert hiking and cactus viewing. However Tom had looked at the forecast a couple of nights earlier only to find ‘extreme heat warnings’ issued over almost the entirety of Arizona and California for the next week. Did we really want to head into that? And if not, what were our alternatives?

We needed to make a decision before we drove anywhere, so we settled in under the picnic shelter at the Paria Contact Station with our maps of Utah and Arizona, phones at the ready, to try and work out a plan for the rest of a trip.

Because the heat was so widespread there wasn’t really anywhere that close to escape from it. If we opted to do some more canyoning in the Paria area (which had been skipped in favour of Colorado) we would be doing it in 30°C+ heat. That wasn’t likely to be that much fun – so perhaps we should just suck up the 40°C+ heat further south?

With that solid reasoning behind us we set off for Flagstaff – which at least at its higher altitude wasn’t setting daily record temperatures for that time of year (unlike Phoenix).

Continued in Part 6

Continued from Part 3

I was keen to drive the “Million Dollar Highway” while it was dry so we made sure we got an early start. The highway was a treat with many Aspens turning to their fall colours. We stopped a few times to take in the views.

Fall colours on the Million Dollar Highway

From Molas Pass we did a few kilometres of the Colorado Trail to Little Molas Lake and then part way up the Twin Sisters Trail section. We hadn’t intended to go far and so hadn’t taken anything (e.g. raincoats) with us. However, we’d kept walking – just to get to ‘that’ spot, or that next view, and next thing we knew we’d were over an hour from the car and the weather had packed it in and was snowing on us. Dropping down a few contours back into the trees got us to drier climes and we got back to the car without getting drenched!

Little Molas Lake in the background, along with the brewing storm

We also got lucky as shortly after we’d stopped for lunch at James Ranch, a massive hailstorm came through. There were piles of hail all over the yard. We were lucky to be ensconced in the dining room eating burgers and not on the road. With the weather as it was we were very glad to be staying with Rachel who we’d met at Poison Springs the previous weekend. At our trip halfway point it was great to be staying in a home, with the opportunity to get some washing done.

Remnants of the hailstorm during lunch

Mule deer eating its way through the flowers in Durango Botanic Gardens

We got away relatively early the next morning heading to Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is famous for cliff dwellings that the Ancestral Pueblo people occupied until around 1200AD. We were booked on a guided tour to Balcony House – involving ladders and crawling through narrow access points. The cliff dwellings are very impressive and the thought of trying to access them without modern ladders makes the mind boggle.

Modern day access to Balcony House

Tom in Balcony House

Exit for Balcony House!

We hadn’t appreciated how much there was to see at Mesa Verde, and also how much driving was involved. Despite getting to the park at 10am we didn’t make it back to the campground much before sunset – to think we’d originally had ideas of then pushing on to somewhere else (mainly because the campground is extortionately priced).

The perfectly lovely, but very expensive, Morefield Campground

The drive to Page the next day was one of our longer driving days. It was brought to us by songs beginning with I, J, and K. When Tom had been connecting his phone up to the car he’d had some difficulty getting his music to play. When it finally did start working it was playing his collection in alphabetical order – not daring to touch it in case it broke, that was how it stayed for the whole trip. Perhaps unsurprisingly there are a lot of songs beginning with I.

Things on the schedule were a bit vague from here as we were constrained by the dates of our Buckskin Gulch permit and how to work other activities around it. In retrospect the order we did things was likely inefficient, but at the time it seemed sensible. After finding a delightful green-grass covered park in Page for lunch, we headed out to the Paria Contact Station to pick up our permits and WAG bags (more on this later!) for Buckskin Gulch two days later. While there we checked out the White House Trailhead and decided to secure a campsite for the night. Catstair Canyon was just a few minutes up the road, so that was the next stop.

Catstair Canyon has a unique feature of many old cars stacked up, presumably as surety for the wall of the road? Otherwise it’s a pretty brief canyon ending at a petroglyph wall. A good way to stretch out the legs after a long morning in the car though! And another opportunity for me to meat-anchor Tom/him to partner-assist me down.

Unusual canyon feature! (A major road runs parallel with canyon left)

Abseiling in Catstair Canyon

Abseiling again in Catstair

I had thought we’d do something else but it was a very hot afternoon, and the other canyons on our hit list weren’t particularly close. Instead we settled for the shade, behind the car, back at the campsite. Though later that afternoon I used my spare pair of gloves to clear the tumbleweed (yes, literally, aka Russian Thistle) which had taken over the marked tent area of our campsite.

Camping at White House Trailhead – I cleared the entire tent ‘platform’ which you can barely see for the Russian Thistle in this shot

The next morning we set off for Blue Pool Wash, another canyon that was very close to Highway 89, and also contained random car parts in it. We hadn’t dressed for down-climbing (my poor bare knees) so we made things a bit trickier than they should have been. However, a good canyon, and well worth the stop.

Tom trying to remember how to downclimb at the start of Blue Pool Wash

He’s remembered!

But not so much that we didn’t abseil

Another rap

Beautiful sculpting

If Lake Powell was full the area this area in the background would be underwater (would make for an interesting exit!)

From there we stopped in Page for Tom to check out the Glen Canyon Dam while I tried to book us some accom for the night. We’d agreed it would be better to stay in a motel so that we didn’t have to pack our gear up for our 7:30am shuttle pickup. Unfortunately, unlike earlier in the trip where leaving bookings to the last minute had resulted in cheap prices, the opposite occurred in Page. In the half hour I was searching the prices increased, agh! I ended up booking a motel I’d looked at the previous day but at a 50% higher price.

With logistics sorted we had a long drive around to the Lees Ferry Road. Tom was enamoured with abseiling to the Colorado River, even if it was a pretty contrived route. We set out for 2.8 Mile Wash in sweltering temperatures in the early afternoon – no relief was provided in the wash as it was very wide.

In 2.8 Mile Wash. Mountains behind are much higher than they look

Tom, in particular, then had a long time in the sun as he very carefully set up a retrievable anchor for the 50m abseil to the Colorado. Our pull cord was only 35m so we’d tied our handline on to it and hoped that would make it long enough – we’d only know once I’d got to the bottom.

We can see the Colorado…

Just need to get down this drop

Well, I’m down! Tom’s head sticking up at the top

Fortunately, the handline/pull cord combo was long enough, so that meant we could use the retrievable anchor and not need to leave a sling behind. Nothing like using a fiddlestick for the first time in the field, with just the two of us, on a 50m drop! The moment of truth – the pull – and it came away perfectly.

Tom almost at the bottom, pull cord (handline!) well out of the way

It was a relief to get down next to the Colorado with some breeze in the shade. It wasn’t long before we made it to Cathedral Wash (which is normally done as an out and back) and proceeded to scramble our way back up and cross-country to the car. Despite being somewhat less enthused for this outing compared to Tom, having done it I can see the attraction, particularly for out-of-towners.

Making our way up Cathedral Wash

Tom had wanted to go to Horseshoe Bend for sunset but that just made logistics difficult so he conceded and we paid our $10 parking fee and went in the late afternoon. We seemed to have hit a slightly less busy period – most people had headed off to start winding down for the day, and the sunset crowd hadn’t yet arrived. By the time we left new tides of people were arriving by the minute. Despite the crowds it is a very impressive view, and there are plenty of vantage points along the clifflines.

Horseshoe Bend & Tom

Finally, not long before sunset, we made it to our motel. As it turned out our expensive room meant we had a seat out the back with extensive views over the desert as the sun set – lovely. If you could ignore the odd dude who was digging in the gravel of the car park until it got dark. Packing for our only overnight walk (canyon) of the trip – not so much fun, but as we’d ended up with a two-roomed apartment we had plenty of room to explode our gear everywhere.

Continue to Part 5

Continued from Part 2

One of the issues with canyoning around Hanksville is the general isolation, and lack of mobile reception. When we’d headed into Maidenwater Canyon three days earlier the forecast had been for rain to come through on Monday. Without reception we didn’t know if that was going to come earlier/later/not at all until we got out late Sunday afternoon. I’d had some slightly nervous moments on Saturday night watching lightning in the distance and wondering if a storm was going to come through that night.

Regardless of weather, we needed to head to some form of civilisation because we needed to fill up water, and restock a few lunch supplies.

As it turned out the unstable weather, which had been due to come through on Monday would bypass the Hanksville area, and wouldn’t hit until late Monday. It looked like our new plan had us driving straight into it – but not wanting to make yet another plan we stuck with the new plan. And so we headed to Colorado – somewhere that hadn’t been on the itinerary at all – and my first time there.

It was a bit of culture shock to go from rural Utah towns to the slightly up-market foodie destination of Palisade! We had a lovely lunch at Carboy Winery with views out to Mt Garfield before doing the Palisade Rim (Lower) Hike. The second winery visit was slightly less relaxing as the wind battered the exposed deck we were sitting on and the rain snuck in the small gaps. We didn’t linger.

Mt Garfield views from Carboy Winery, Palisade

Palisade Rim Hike (Lower section) – views over the Colorado River, Book Cliffs, Mt Garfield

Palisade Plunge – look out! (mountain biking track)

A saturated car park and heavy grey skies greeted us the next morning and made us feel good about the decision to stay in a motel. We sat around waiting for the weather and eventually headed off towards the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park – ever heard of it? No, neither had we until a couple of days earlier. The name apparently comes from the narrowness of the canyon – some points in the gorge only receive half an hour of sun a day.

Right on forecast the weather cleared in the early afternoon, just as we arrived at the park. So we set off on some short walks, and then drove around and enjoyed some of the overlooks at sunset. We did the remainder of the short walks / overlooks the next morning before moving on to Ouray.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Sunset at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

The Painted Wall, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

We were lucky to secure a campsite at the Amphitheater Campground above Ouray and then set off to do Angel Creek Canyon. Ouray is famous for its Class C (flowing water) canyons, but being autumn the water levels were very tame. We hadn’t researched any of the canyons prior to the trip and definitely missed having RoadTripRyan. The RopeWiki descriptions weren’t always easy to match to reality.

Angel Creek Canyon

Rap 1, Angel Creek, Ouray “You will get soaked on the first rappel”

Rap 2, Angel Creek, Ouray

Rap 4, Angel Creek, Ouray

We came away a bit underwhelmed at how easy Angel Creek had been – but then chatting to a guy in the outdoors store he said he knew of a group that had to bail out of it because of rapidly rising water only a couple of weeks before. So despite what appeared to be very innocuous conditions I guess you’ve always got to be on top of possible dangers.

Not all of the creeks were tame – the Box Canyon, one of Ouray’s main attractions, was absolutely pounding – very impressive.

Box Canyon (Tourist access!), Ouray

Home for 3 nights at Amphitheater Campground

The next day we hit up the Ouray Via Ferrata. There’s two routes – the Upstream and Downstream, which both start from the same place. The outdoors store guy had told us doing the Upstream route first, if we were planning to do both, was the more efficient, so that was our plan. The Upstream Route (VF Grade: 4.5B) is the harder of the two and we quickly found out that it wasn’t going to be an easy ramble – a step up from anything we had done in the Dolomites. Almost immediately we were doing slightly overhung moves and wondering if we’d got ourselves in over our heads. Fortunately the difficulty ebbed and flowed and we managed to make it through the route – albeit with much more of a workout than expected.

On our way to the Via Ferrata start

Ouray Via Ferrata – Upstream Route

Upstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Tom climbing the Helix Ladder, Upstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Upstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Upstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Final somewhat challenging climb, Upstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

We had a late morning tea (as it was already after midday) before wandering back down the track, to the start, to do the downstream route. The Downstream Route (VF Grade: 4B) was more scenic – the gorge in that section was more attractive, and it was easier. Though our hands were pretty worn after the morning so Tom, in particular, found it a bit trying. It would have been challenging had we done them the other way around! The end of the Downstream Route is at the car park so we were then able to head into town for a very late lunch near Cascade Falls.

Ouray Via Ferrata – Downstream Route

Downstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Downstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Downstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Downstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Downstream Route, Ouray Via Ferrata

Ouray is well-known for its hot springs, so it seemed wrong not to visit them. A couple of hours soaking in the outdoor pools with the beautiful backdrop was wonderful.

Relaxing in the hot pools after a strenuous day (Tom’s head front right)

The outdoor store guy had also suggested that Oak Creek water levels might be at a level we were comfortable with, so that was where we headed first thing the next day. Ouray is already at 2,400m and we had a solid 350m climb to start the day, to take us to the highest altitude canyon we’ve done. (We did visit Pleiades near Moab in 2013 which I think is higher but given it was covered in snow(!) we didn’t descend it). We weren’t really clear if autumn flow conditions warranted wetsuits but we figured we should play it safe and after much wriggling we were suited up and ready to go.

Lower Oak Creek

Taking the dry line R2, Lower Oak Creek

Lower Oak Creek has 9-ish rappels, the highest 40-odd metres down a waterfall. Even in the low flow conditions I got pretty wet on the way down – though Tom tells me that’s because I took a poor line. But he didn’t get to pop into the alcove behind the flow and ‘enjoy the unique view’. Our feet were pretty cold, but other than the main waterfall we weren’t really in the water very much above knee height.

Tossing the rope for the ‘highlight’ 40m rap

Looking back up at R3 (40m) and R4 (6m off the log)

Scenic backdrop (and awkward start) to rap 6

A short rap 7

Tom below Rap 8

It was very easy to tell when we’d got to the end as there’s a pedestrian bridge crossing the creek. After we’d de-wetsuited and packed up all our gear it was time for all the hikers to walk past. It was quite funny when they started asking how far it was to go etc, and us trying to explain we had no idea as we had not got to that spot by hiking. We got back into town in time for an earlier lunch than the previous day.

Packing up all the gear below the hiking bridge

Views from the Perimeter Trail

As we hadn’t yet done Portland Creek, the other Ouray beginner canyon, we figured we better do it that afternoon. We’d driven over Portland Creek several times already, as it’s on the road to the campground we were staying at. In fact the first rap is under the bridge you drive over. It was a short but scenic canyon. You just don’t get canyons like that in Australia where you can basically drive to the start, and so your entire trip is just the canyon – no real time spent on an approach/exit hike. It feels like cheating!

Portland Creek

Upper section of Portland Creek

Portland Creek

Rap 1 in Portland Creek – road to the campground above us

Rap 2 in Portland Creek

The weather was due to turn again the next day so it was sadly time to move on.

Continue to Part 4