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Day 38 - Escalante The Fin and Deer Creek

Waking up in the secret canyon felt special-- like a once in a lifetime moment you should cherish-- and we did with a breakfast and then a hike up the canyon on the opposite, easy sloping side. Andrew, Blake and I had scouted the exit the previous night and knew the group could ascend it. And they did. Once to the top, we broke off into agressive and non-agressive groups with brother Joshua joining Joel and the scouting party from yesterday. 

Aggressive group, nicknamed Group Intrepid by Joshua, and led by triathlete Canyoneering master Alan, set out to see if we could climb up the fin, a narrow ridge above the Escalante River we had past below on our first day. We used our navigation skills of reading a bearing on a map with true north and then applying to the field with magnetic north and set out. We slogged through soft sand and over slick rock and around trees for several hours and Alan showed us his tactic for saving time on hikes-- cutting through the end of drainages and ridges. This worked very well for the first several crossings but as we neared the fin close to the river the terrain got very ridgey. Maps only show changes greater than 40 feet of elevation so sometimes the micro terrain or ridges and valleys between those elevations can be difficult to navigate. A 10 foot shear dropoff is still un-passable. We pushed hard up and down and steered our way toward the base of the fin. Now facing a forty foot blockage we stopped, claimed a hard fought victory, and ate lunch and enjoyed  incredible vistas to our left and right. 



A quick forty five minute hike up brought us to the meeting place with the other group. Together we descended into the canyon following a route described in the guidebook. Again confused by the language (especially since this one was given for coming up not down) we stumbled a bit following the directions but eventually pushed our way down, finding a cairn marking a hidden side path down a drainage to the canyon bottom. Finding paths up and down canyon walls is super fun-- my favorite. 

Tired but knowing this was my last full day at the Escalante River, I joined a group to explore nearby Deer Creek. A quick hour and a half hike proved exceptionally tranquil. We passed a magical pothole with hanging gardens and water reflecting off the back wall, a wide and high side canyon valley with towering totems and the Bowington Arch, a rock span set high in the wall. 




On the return trip to camp, Alan decided the pothole was so gorgeous that he couldn't pass it without a swim, so he undressed and jumped in the cold water. Andrew followed suit and then when-in-Rome I jumped in, followed by Blake. A skinny dip in a magical pothole pond at Deer Creek was the perfect finale to a full crescendo of a day in Escalante. 







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