Journeys: Coyote Gulch - Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah - Backpacking

Friday, June 27, 2008

Coyote Gulch - Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah - Backpacking

Jake, Rob, and I spent Memorial Day weekend backpacking in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Southern Utah. The area was designated as a national monument in 1996 by Bill Clinton. This created a huge amount of controversy in Utah because many people living in the area saw it as a land grab by the federal government. They would rather have the land free to themselves to strip mine and drill for oil. This was my first time in the area and Coyote Gulch was definitely one of my favorite hikes of all time. Perhaps the people living in Escalante are benefiting from tourism more than they would like to admit.

Check out all the bullet holes! That's how southern utah folk show their love for environmentalists.

We started our hike at Hurricane Wash. The dry wash gradually descended from the open desert into a canyon.

Me standing in Hurricane Wash. The canyon walls gradually rose up around us as we headed towards Coyote Gulch.

Jake and I at the confluence of Hurricane Wash and Coyote Gulch

Rob in Coyote Gulch

Jake and I under Coyote Natural Bridge

Me near Cliff Arch

Rob standing in Coyote Gulch

Jake and I (and Jake's greasy fingerprint on the lens) in one of the many waterfalls in Coyote Gulch

Jake and I above a waterfall

Rob under Jacob Hamblin Arch

Pictographs above Coyote Gulch

Me at the end of the hike back in Hurricane Wash

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess