Buckskin Gulch and the Long Road Home

I have a canyon bucket list, you might not be surprised to hear. It's divided into technical canyons (that is, needing rappelling gear) and non-technical. The top three canyons on the non-technical list are Buckskin Gulch, Little Wild Horse Canyon, and the Peekaboo-Spooky Gulch loop. We checked Little Wild Horse off earlier this year, and we're planning a trip to Peekaboo and Spooky later this month. That means 2017 is going be a banner year for slot canyons.

My #1 canyon, though, for a long, LONG time, has been Buckskin Gulch. The problem is the logistics. It's a 22-mile trip, so backpacking seemed like the way to do it. The problem with THAT is, you have to apply for a permit three months ahead, and you have no control over what the weather and conditions will be like when your permit date rolls around. A couple years ago, me and Michelle tried for a Labor Day trip with a couple friends, and that was a bust because the canyon was full of water (West Rim Trail in Zion was a fantastic Plan B, though).

A couple months ago, I learned that you don't have to get a permit ahead of time to do a dayhike in Buckskin, so I decided on a crazy plan to do the whole canyon in one day. That way, if the weather turned sour, just change plans and do it the next weekend.

Now I just had to find people to go with me. Michelle was kind enough to support my going on the trip, but not up to going herself, so my go-to partner was out. I tried to recruit a former mission companion, but foolishly sent a link to an article that hyperbolically called Buckskin "America's Most Dangerous Hike."[1] Gotta work on my marketing skills.

I hit up a coworker, Keaton, for whom hiking 20 miles on a Saturday is a normal thing, so I figured he'd be up to it. And he was!

We left Friday afternoon, April 28, and drove down to St. George. Addison and Bryn came with us to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa. We stopped at Dairy Queen in Scipio on the way down, and astoundingly, the dining area closes at 7:00.

Keaton and I got up and left at about 5:00 on Saturday morning, me driving the Civic and him driving Dad's Explorer. We drove the two hours to the end of the hike, White House trailhead, leaving Dad's car there. About that time, I casually looked down at my temperature gauge and saw that my car was overheating. It had been running a little hot since the night before, but it was cooler in Salt Lake and rainy, so it must have kept the temperature down. Hoping we could get the Honda to the other trailhead and then deal with the problem later, we headed back up the road to the turn-off on House Rock Valley Road. Unfortunately, the way was mostly uphill, especially once we got onto the dirt road, and the car overheated several times. We parked it on the side of the road and debated what to do. I really did not want to miss this hike because of an overheated car. Luckily, House Rock Valley is relatively busy road because it heads to The Wave, so soon, a nice family from Kansas stopped and asked if we were alright. They seemed a little hesitant to let us hitchhike, but soon we were in their car with all our gear. All this delay meant we started the hike an hour late, 8:00 instead of 7:00 as planned.

We started the hike at a jog, to make up for lost time, and passed a few people in the first few hundred yards of the wash. They were the last people we'd see for about six hours, which was amazing and awesome.

Ater about 3/4 of a mile, the wash slots up and you're in Wire Pass, which is a side canyon into Buckskin. We made our way down a little obstacle and continued into Buckskin proper.

It's hard to describe what a sublime experience it was for me. Buckskin is 13 or 14 miles of continuous slot canyon. There is only one major obstacle, and the rest is basically flat. It was early enough in the season that we had to deal with several pools of water, some up to my middle, and it was pretty chilly, but never dangerously so. The canyon wound on and on and ON, curving around us and towering over us. The walls would get really high and straight and it would open up a little, then you'd turn the corner and be plunged back into a deep, dark, wavy slot. It lived up to the hype by every possible measure.

This is the bottom of the major obstacle. Note the "Moki steps" on the right, which we did not take. We found a hole you could squeeze in to avoid having to lower yourself down the handline.

Near the confluence with the Paria. Right around here we ran into a group on horseback, the first people we saw since the trailhead.

After about six hours, we came to the end of Buckskin, where it joins the Paria River. Downriver a couple days' hike would have taken us to Lee's Ferry at the north end of the Grand Canyon. We went left, north, and headed up the Paria to White House. By this point we were pretty beat, the sun was warm, the sand was deep, and it was a long slog to go the last 8 or 9 miles. But we made it, taking 8.5 hours total. Michelle was shocked to hear from me before 5:00, expecting it wouldn't be until dark. We were pumped to get back to St. George in time for a shower and an early bedtime.

We slogged up the Paria for several hours, the walls getting ever lower and further apart. This is called Slide Arch, though it's not really an arch.

Except that's not how it turned out. We first drove the Explorer to Big Water to get some oil, knowing  the car was low. Their credit card machine was broken, so I had to bum money off Keaton and scrounge for change in Dad's car. Then we drove back to the abandoned Civic, dumped the oil in, and headed up the big hill toward Kanab. The car overheated again and again, until we discovered that the radiator had no coolant in it. I tried calling an old friend from Roy who's a mechanic to get some advice, but he didn't answer.[2] So we parked the Honda on the side of the road again and took the Explorer into Kanab. We got a bite to eat at Big Al's (which was not nearly as good as I remember) and bought a bunch of antifreeze.[3] Meanwhile, my friend called back and gave us some advice, and we headed back to the car.

We dumped it in, and somewhere along the way realized there was a hole in the bottom of the radiator, so the liquid was just trickling out the bottom. We limped it into Kanab, tried to seal the hole (with gum, which was a terrible idea), and I decided to try to make it the rest of the way, 10 miles at a time. (That was about how far we could make it on one container of antifreeze.) It was another terrible idea. We ended up being able to go only about five miles at a time, and by the time we reached Pipe Spring, I gave up. We tried to park the car at the gas station, but signs said overnight parkers would be towed, so I drove it toward the reservation and parked it in what ended up being the res police station. Hoping and praying it wouldn't be towed, we jumped in the Explorer and headed home.[4] We got to my parents' house a little before midnight.

The next day was Sunday, and Keaton needed to get home and the kids needed to get home, and nothing was open to get the car fixed. I contemplated driving everybody back to SLC in Mom's car and then driving right back to St. George to deal with the car, but luckily, we were able to work out another plan. Keaton took the shuttle home, and Bri and Mason happened to be in Las Vegas that weekend, so they could take Addison and Bryn back to Provo and then Michelle could pick them up there.

Dad and I went to Auto Zone and picked up some heavy-duty epoxy to try and seal the hole long enough to get the car back to St. George, then drove all the way out to Pipe Spring. Luckily, not towed or ticketed. We ended up having a really pleasant morning while we waited for the glue to dry. We walked around Pipe Spring and its visitor center and then drove up into the little town of Moccasin. Then we poured some antifreeze in the radiator and it seeemed to stay in there. We drove a ways toward Fredonia and the temperature stayed low, so we turned around and headed to St. George, making it all the way in just over an hour.

I still had to wait until the next morning for the repair shop to open, so I hung with my parents that evening, which was really enjoyable (though stressful knowing Michelle was picking up my slack at home). I worked from my folks's house the next morning until the car was done, and went to lunch with Mom, which was also a treat. Then I hit the road, several hundred dollars' poorer but with and a brand-spankin'-new radiator and grateful that the Honda will live for another 300,000 miles or so.

I've got lots of leftover antifreeze, if you need any.

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[1] Backpacker magazine called it that because it's supposedley the longest continuous slot in the world, meaning it would be the hardest to get out of in a flash flood. But (a) don't go in if it's going to rain, and (b) we spent the entire day pointing out places you could get high enough out of the canyon to avoid dying. So that little piece of advertising is baloney.↩

[2] A faith-promoting story: This guy Aran was my home teacher in Roy and always was so generous to help with our old cars. I went to the Roy ward a couple weeks before to help out with a musical number, and he came up and asked how I was doing and gave me his new phone number, telling me to call if I ever had car trouble. While he wasn't able to solve the radiator problem over the phone, he gave some great advice and troubleshooting tips that made a big difference. I'm pretty sure he listened to the Spirit when he gave me that phone number.↩

[3] In case you ever buy antifreeze in Kanab, go to the Shell station, not the 7-Eleven. Antifreeze costs five times as much at the latter.↩

[4] Incidentally, we drove by Hildale the night they were filming this commercial.↩