31 Incredible Day Hikes in Escalante, Utah

                         Take a Hike Video Escalante Utah 

Willis Creek

When planning a trip to Escalante Utah, it's best to see what are the hiking options. After all, Escalante National Monument has 4 amazing seasons. You can visualize and pick out, the best hike for your vacation by watching the above video, Take a Hike Escalante Utah.                                                         

Escalante Utah Amazing Arch

Only 10 easy scenic miles from Escalante, Utah to visit the colossal Cedar Wash Arch. It's a casual walk to view the arch east to west from where you can park your car.

Cedar Wash Arch 

We discovered swirly gold, grey and white sandstone surrounding Cedar Wash Arch as we explored the many angles to this unassuming arch. Finding a route off the slick rock was an adventure.

Slick Rock

Cedar Wash Arch looking up West to East

Delighted and surprised we found other unusual slick rock formations on our way to viewing Cedar Arch west to east. Amazing, the power of water shaping rock into these unique structures.

Behind Cedar Wash Arch

  

In Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument you are welcomed to go beyond the easy-to-find landmarks.

Two Easy Ways to Escalante River Utah

Nov 15, 2015
Escalante River 1 mile down from Boulder Creek

We were searching for the "most photogenic" spot on the Escalante River by wading in the Escalante dozens of times, sliding down slippery chutes, and scampering slickrock ridges.  The numbing water and air temperature were 33F degrees and 36F degrees, respectively. I got to know this one mile of Escalante river intimately, hunting for that illusive "photogenic" canyon.

Our group of three parked the truck off Spencer Flats and backpacked through sand and sage brush a couple of miles toward Escalante River. We camped two nights just above the Escalante river on semi-flat slickrock. Dropping to the river was an easy climb down from our camp.

Across from our camp and the cold river, we found another way, a well traveled trail, to access Escalante river from the Burr Trail, Boulder, Utah.

We did discover some short and sweet canyons and pretty stained monolithic walls, worth all the senseless, numbing river crossings. But still need to find the "best" spot to photograph on the Escalante River. 

Flex Canyon
Near Escalante River

Dancing the chill away.
Our camp spot for two nights.

Winter hikes in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument

Visiting Escalante Utah in the wintertime is cool (not cold) and very uncrowded. You can take your time taking photographs. These are your hikes and you can stop and shoot when you want to capture the timeless beauty of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

Slick rock is your friend when snow is present.
Tributarie to Harris Wash

Calf Creek Falls Winter 2011

Snow happens in Escalante Utah. Skis and snowshoes add
to the Southern Utah adventure. 

 

9 Marvelous Miles of Trail Running Escalante Utah

Powell Point can be seen on Highway 12

Under the icon of Powell Point or "Pink Mountain" in Escalante Utah, lies a single track that leads 4 and 1/2 miles down to Henderson Canyon. Pink hillsides, strayed arches, and endless vistas distracted me from the grueling inclines. The Ponderosas kept the morning heat at bay and a few steep ravines slowed our heart rates down.  9+ miles round-trip trail running was finished in a couple of hours verses 4 hours at least for hiking. Choose how you want visit this beautiful, easily navigable Forest Service trail in Escalante, Utah.

Single track along edge

End of Hole-in-the-Rock road Escalante Utah

Navajo Mountain

The Hole-in-the-Rock road is the main vein to many outstanding hikes and wild rock-formations trails in Escalante, Utah.  This dirt packed road is in great condition, albeit with long stretches of wash-board surface conditions. We even saw a Mini-Van vehicle had made it all the way to the end of the road, where you can see Lake Powell.

Lake Powell is about a 20 minute hike from the parking area to where you can swim in fresh water. It isn't an easy hike, especially on the way back, with some exposure on ledges.
The Mormon pioneers hauled up their cattle, wagons, and all their possessions up through this crack before settling into Potato Valley. Give yourself at least 3 hours driving time to view Lake Powell through Hole-in-the-Rock.

The Hole-in-the-Rock

Harris Wash Escalante Utah

The beauty of hiking in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument is you never know what you may discover. We found this grove of Hoodoos off Harris Wash road in Escalante Utah by spying a lone spiral rock in the distance.

Watch this short video on our hike to the Harris Hoodoos:
Harris Wash Hoodoos Video

When visiting Escalante National Monument, keep your eyes open for the unexpected rock formations. They are waiting for you to take their photo. 

Fair-weather clouds Escalante Utah

Cumulus clouds are flourishing above Escalante Utah through-out the year.   

Cumulus Humilis (wider than tall)
moving slowly over the Henry Mountains.

Fair-weather clouds sunrise
Escalante, Utah.

Cumulus congestive tower
can produce sizable showers.

                                                                     

Cumulus fractus
dissipating in front of
La Luz Desert Retreat

Cumulus Mediocris (tall as wide)
seen on Scenic Highway 12
Escalante, Utah.

Hiking Willow Canyon Escalante, Ut

Easy walk to Broken Bow Arch

Jumping for joy in Willow Canyon

                                                                                                   

                                       
                                   

See Broken Bow Arch, Sunset Arch, and more photos by Dylan H Brown:

DH Brown Photo Blog

Scenic Byway 12 Escalante Utah

The drive on Scenic Byway 12 is worth the trip to Escalante, Utah alone. Experience 124 miles of diverse, remote, and wildly sculptured landscape you'll ever find in the world.

 
 See why Scenic Highway 12 was voted #2 as the most beautiful highway in the world:
                                                  Most Beautiful Highway

Better yet, explore the red rock country, hoodoos, high alpine forests and open sagebrush flats on your road bike. Whatever your transportation mode, Byway 12 will add to your spectacular Southern Utah journey.

25 Mile Wash Escalante Utah

25 Mile Wash canyon can be a long day hike or 

multi-night journey. Drying mud patterns

are most attracting to the eyes as rock layers on 

canyon walls change down river.

The first three miles in 25 Mile Wash, from "Egypt" road,

 decisions were made to get muddy or plow-thru Willows.

See Lower 25 Mile Wash to Fox Canyon and our choices of steps. 

Escalante Canyon Utah Sounds of Spring

We spent two nights, March 15 & 16, backpacking 15 miles down the Escalante Canyon, Utah. The birds called, we navigated over thick ice banks along Escalante's river banks and caught some warm rays and few rain showers. Escalante Partners Program, piled downed Russian Olive trees in clumps (on land) for easy traveling through the Canyon. Great camping at the confluence of Dead Hollow creek, where we pumped sediment-free water. Large fish darted up and down Dead Hollow creek. The second night we camped at Sand Creek where a clean spring gave us our drinking water, no filtration needed. Cache ruins still sit near Escalante's Natural Bridge. 

Listen to the sounds of Escalante Canyon and watch the springtime changes.

                                 Escalante Canyon Sounds of Spring

Finding Boulder Creek Utah

Good map, relatively narrow canyon, & confidence was what we needed to find Boulder Creek via Escalante Canyon. Not really. Supportive water shoes are essential, especially when quicksand sucks your shoes off.

The first mile & half down from the confluence of Calf Creek & Escalante River ("The Bridge") the path was easy to follow until the turn-off to Phipps Canyon. We carved arrows in the sand to steer our way back. Then the trails became thready and vague. Chutes in the steep banks plunged us over and over into Escalante silty river as we tried to find the "camping" area at mile 5 from the Bridge.

We camped at who-knows-where and still were determined to find Boulder Creek the following day. After more bush-whacking and butt-sliding into the River, we noticed we were in clear, clean water. We wove our way into Boulder Creek! We tanked up with our water filters.

Steep stained walls curled tightly around Boulder Creek, forcing us to walk in the water between black spewed Volcanic rock. We were shocked to encounter two other hikers coming from Haymaker bench wading down Boulder Creek and hiking back up from further down Escalante River. Their 6 hour loop trek was a lot shorter than our 3 day tour to finding Boulder Creek.

We thought we could put-us-on-the-map on the way back to the Bridge but we never found those arrows in the sand. Instead, we found our next trek: a dry wash canyon where Bowington Arch resides. We'll find it.

Slip Sliding Jacob-Hamlin Arch

I didn't have the urge to climb on top of Jacob-Hamlin Arch but my son had to see Coyote Canyon from this monolith's vantage point. As he climbed down (right side of pictured Jacob-Hamlin arch) a hand hold broke and he slid down the nose. Watch the slide caught via my iphone:
We had beautiful warm weather backpacking Coyote Canyon Easter week-end 2012.

Snowshoeing on Boulder Mountain Utah

Last Sunday, the day after we received a few inches of snow in Escalante, Utah, we ventured out to Boulder Mountain to snowshoe. The summit (almost 10,000') had grasses poking out of thin snow and we wondered if there was enough snow to snowshoe.
As the truck dropped down toward Torrey, Utah, the ground had more coverage of snow but no berms from snow plows. We strapped on our snowshoes and stepped into thigh-high snow!

Tell-taled avalanche warnings abounded: slabs of powdery snow broke off; spaces between snow layers when we dug holes, that "woomff" sound as clomped through fields; bottomless holes while poling; mounds of tall wind-blown snow to cross.
We kept close to trees and boulders but when on a mountain, you gotta go up. The snow continued to settled under our shoes but we wanted a work-out and up we went. No major slides only lots of snowballs that rolled down from our wakes.
It's snowing again but we'll wait until the snow settles (at least 24 hours) until we climb on Boulder Mountain again.

4-Wheel Driving Smokey Mtn Road Escalante, Utah

As of 1pm today, 78 miles of Smokey Mountain Road is open with some sections needing high-clearance vehicles. Its not everyday you can drive this dirt road along the Kaiparowitz Plateau to Page, Arizona. Rain, wind & snow play havoc on this slow winding remote road. You'll want to go slow because you can miss this cache along side of the road or other ruins on the way to Lake Powell. The rugged desert landscape had long shadows as we descended into Big Water, Utah.
After spending the night in Page, Az, we headed back in search of an interesting hike. There are countless old ranch roads that go no where and that was fine with us. We walked a double-track ATV road that seem to connect with Last Chance Canyon for over 2 hours. Perhaps next exploration we'll ride our mountain bikes and find where the ATV track meets Last Chance Canyon.
Closer to Escalante, we had a rare glimpse of the elusive "Fins," tall castle-like fortress, lit up in the late afternoon sun. We recognized our next adventure off Smokey Mountain Road: to find a route to climb these secluded rock fins.

Friendly Flash Flood

We saw all the symptoms of an impending flash flood: dark grey clouds over our westerly direction, thunder despite our sunshine, a 20 minute cloudburst, the creeping foamy trickle of water, newly formed waterfalls. Then our previous dry canyon became a ripply river within a minute.
Yet, the worse fear I had was my shoes getting wet. We had found a rock over-hang while the cloud busted open and ate lunch. Caramel, a Boxer dog, drank rain water that streamed off the overhang as if was coming from a Camelback tube. Later, she played in the foamy water by tossing up the foam in the air and catching it. We watched water shoot through conical slickrock chutes. As we continued to hike up Mitchell Canyon, we stayed higher than the caramel-colored river and hopped on rocks when we had to cross the rising river. We managed to record the GPS coordinates of "Sand Dollar Rock" (our objective) and I didn't get my shoes wet until the last crossing to the truck. The drive down Alvey Wash road was another story: How not to get your vehicle stuck in the mud. Not all floods are nice.

Moment Away

The pressure was on: get from Park City, Utah to Escalante, Utah in less than 5 hours so Ricki (husband) could give his lecture on "Beekeeping." We were miffed when a caravan of tourists stopped on Highway 12 to gawk and film a huge horseshoe rainbow over Henrieville. How dare these tourists hold up our deadline! We sped past them and as we zipped into the Blues, a hologram of yellow, red, and blue spilled into the Blues' ravins. Was this the end of the rainbow? How to capture this moment when we didn't have time, nor was it safe, to take a picture of this pot-of-gold? I realized that this moment will never come again. The sightseers had it right: have your camera ready because you'll never be here, in this moment, again and there is beauty all around you.
Yesterday morning I did capture the moment, via iphone, as the Harvest Moon dipped below Powell Point.

Road Cycling to Kodachrome State Park

We changed our usual morning exercise routine to an early evening road bike ride last night to Kodachrome State Park from Cannonville, about 20 round-trip if you go into the State Park. What a relief to have the temperature cool down the longer we rode bikes. The shadows were long as the sun lost it's luster. Highway 12 has fascinating scenery for road biking, West and North from Escalante, Utah but no shoulders.The road to Kodachrome rarely had vehicles on it, perhaps because of the evening time or it just isn't as crowded as the local National Parks. I felt safe and at ease riding skinny tires on this open road toward Cottonwood pass (just outside Kodachrome), home of Grosvenor Arch and back to Cannonville, and continued east on Highway 12 toward Escalante. Ah, this is where the missing vehicles were going, to Escalante.

Peak Bagging Mt Ellen

This wasn't the first time we've tried to bag Mt Ellen, the highest peak of the Henry Mountains. In July 2009 the conditions were stormy, foggy, and viewless. This year we marched right up to the top of Mt Ellen (11,522 ft) and we could not believe we were at the summit, despite a mailbox of "yays, we did it," in a large cairn on top. No, we had to continue to the other peak, Dry Lakes Peak, a conical peak that drops 400 ft and back up to 11,506'. It did look taller and had a bona fide trail leading to this yonder peak. We saw Factory Butte in Cainville and the La Sals and the Book Cliffs around Green River. It's the 360 degree views that were amazing. We saw herds of buffalo and deer on distant fields and a few ATVer's looking for their wanna-be deer trophies. The drive to MacMillian campground was a 4 hour drive from Escalante but less if you ride a mtn bike to Sandy's Ranch from camp (save 2 hrs driving). Now when I see the Northern most nipple in the Henry Mountains I know that there is more than just one peak to be had.