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Coyote Gulch for Spring BreakView MessagesViewing posts 1 to 16 of 16 messages posted.
Perfect weather, perfect trip. “Me and three friends took off with our Venturing Crew Wednesday after school and headed for Escalante in a downpour. We had a total of 13, but one of the sissy boy ventures decided to bail out at the last minute because it was raining up here in northern Utah. We drove straight to Escalante State Park, and crashed for the night. Thursday morning we got up and drove to the trail head on the Forty Mile Ridge road. We walked cross country to "The Crack", and let our packs over the cliff with a rope, then scrambled down the crack to the sand hill below. We hiked down to Coyote Gulch, and headed up stream about a mile and half to our intended camp-site under a deep undercut in the cliff wall. We spent a perfect night there, then the next day we negotiated two waterfalls, quicksand (yes, actual quicksand) and a few miles upstream we arrived at Jacob Hamblin Arch and made camp again. We then spent the rest of the day exploring the canyon upstream from there. The next morning we used the route up the cliff from Jacob Hamblin Arch and scrambled up out of the canyon, then headed cross country back to our vehicles. The weekend was perfect, the weather was perfect, and all in all we had a terrific time. I think there were more than a handful of these young men who were astounded at what they could accomplish, as most of them have never done anything like this in their lives. Not to mention their amazement at the magical place that they had passed through. Now for the quicksand: We came up on a trio of hikers, with one of them buried up to his hips in quicksand in the middle of the creek. They had been working on digging him out for about 15 minutes when we got there, with no success. They had no rope, but I don't think a rope would have helped much anyway. As they pulled on his arms, he was crying out in agony. They couldn't even pull up one leg at a time due to the suction. It caused him a great deal of pain. Almost as quickly as they would dig out a limb, the sand would pour right back in around it and set up like concrete. This was my first experience with quicksand, and after we knew what to look for, we actually located about 4 more places up the canyon where it existed. It looked almost like every other sand bank we had hiked across, but as you would throw a rock on it, it would ripple like the the surface of a pond. I went up to my knee in one place I stepped, but quickly dropped to my knees and was able to crawl across it by distributing my weight over a greater surface area. This is a phenomenon I've never experienced before, and am curious to know if anyone else has ever encountered it. Oh, by the way, they eventually got their buddy dug out after quite a bit of effort and time. 9:47:47 AM 3/27/05 “Wow, What a great trip! Did you help get the guy out? That is so cool to hear that quicksand really exists. I'd love to actually see some. Any pictures of this adventure for us??? last edited: 3/27/05 11:02:37 AM” 11:01:53 AM 3/27/05 “Yeah, C'mon Hobbit, give is some photo's !! :) (I hope you've gotten your cameras all working again) The orientation for the Keet Seel hike mentions quicksand but the ranger i spoke to their said he hadnt actually ever heard of anyone encountering it.” 11:29:02 AM 3/27/05 photos “Photos to come later. My cameras are both still in the shop.... repaired, but not picked up yet. I do however have access to one of my companions photos when he gets them processed. I'll be sure to post some when I get them. As for quicksand, the ranger warned us of some down by the Escalante River, but we told her that we wouldn't be exploring that direction, so we just shined it on. We didn't actually participate in the extraction as there was quite a lot of quicksand all around the guy, and his companions had things pretty much in control when we got there. We exchanged e-mail addresses with the guy who had photos of his bud buried in, and he said he'd send them on when he got them. I'll post them when/if I see them.” 12:39:25 PM 3/27/05 quicksand!!! “and other than die, what does one do when waist deep in quicksand and is hiking solo. Great tr.” 7:05:57 PM 3/27/05 Okay, here's the pictures: “  This is what the gulch looks like from the desert floor, hiking up to it.
This is looking towards the edge, where we dropped our packs over the cliff with a rope.
This is looking down into the gulch from the canyon rim (wide angle).
Hiking through the canyon.
This is Coyote Natural Bridge.
This is one of our campsites, under a rock ledge.
A spectacular view up the canyon.” 10:27:07 PM 4/13/05 “great pics!” 10:30:25 PM 4/13/05 “its Oz. I want to be there” 10:31:29 PM 4/13/05 Quicksand “ 
10:06:45 PM 4/14/05 “I was hip deep in quicksand in upper Paria river about 6 years ago. Scarry stuff! It ruined my trip though, ended up pulling my hip flex muscle getting out. I bailed on the trip and limped the 4 miles back to my truck.” 1:26:54 PM 4/15/05 hobbit... “those are amazing photos...that quicksand is scarry...I guess its something that comes at you and you never know it....how can you spot it?” 2:38:23 PM 4/15/05 “After having it pointed out to us, it was quite easy to recognize. The firmer sand under the flowing water had ripples in it, like dunes in the wind. The quicksand was perfectly flat with no ripples. I guess as it was more liquid in nature, it didn't have a chance to form the ripples. After that, we just avoided nice flat sand bars.” 11:18:32 PM 4/15/05 “Freaking awesome pictures. will have to add that as a place to go.... Thanks for sharing!” 3:01:48 AM 4/16/05 “Just reviving this thread for a friend who is taking his 22 year old son down there next week.” 8:00:02 AM 5/13/05 “I recomend anything coyote :D” 10:28:11 AM 5/13/05 “Hmmm..... any references? Free samples?” 10:42:40 PM 5/13/05
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