The next day, day six, started as more of the same. We did find a clear spring two turns below Scorpion Gulch which provided a welcome drink of clear cold water. By noon, as the wind drove the clouds away allowing the sun to shine on us, the walls of the canyon seemed to melt away. Their bottoms were covered by long talus slopes, reminiscent, except for color, of those in the Sierra. In places only the talus was visible, so we appeared to be walking through a great rubble heap. It reminded me of descriptions of the City after the Holocaust. Where the walls were visible, they were fantastically sculpted. They seemed to be made of big blocks of stone which formed castles and statues against the skyline. The broken country made the hiking much harder, and it was even worse the next morning. By lunch we had set a new record of 47 crossings, an average of one every 4 to 5 minutes. We had to scramble over rock and wade through cold waters on slippery mud. Twice I got into bad quicksand. Our choice was to either clamber over sand and sandstone with wet tennis shoes and backpacks or to wade through swirling opaque water on an uncertain bottom. The weather, however, was perfect and soon after lunch our efforts were rewarded as we got once again into my favorite kind of canyon, very deep with high overhanging walls. There was a great half dome, over 100 feet deep, allowing us to stand on the far side of the river and still be under the dome. The river itself got smooth again, making the hiking pleasant and easy after the struggles of the morning. That afternoon we turned a corner and saw Skyline Bridge, a great arching bridge placed in a wall high above the river. We camped where the wall that contained the bridge fell suddenly to the Escalante. It meant that we were only a quarter mile from Coyote Creek and our route out. The next day we left our packs at camp to hike down to the lake. Since we were no longer under pressure, we took our time to photograph and just look. The walls remained very high but were farther apart so it was warm and sunny on the bottom. There are several clear springs and many seeps, starting about two miles above Coyote Creek. We were in high spirits. It felt goad to be there under the blue sky and the red rock. The river began to get very wide and flat, until we reached a wall to wall mud flat, with the river meandered desulatorily across it. We had reached the lake, or rather, the ravages of its periphery, since it was drawn down farther than we walked. Hearing about the damage being done in the side canyons is one thing, but to actually see this beautiful river, our friend and companion for 8 days, dying in a sea of silt sickened me. As I stood there I thought of an ending for this write-up - "And so, as the lovely Escalante sinks slowly in the muck, we say goodbye to the grandeur that once was, remaining ever thankful for the beauty that is left." However, that is not the end of our story. After a day of rest, we started up Coyote Creek toward the car we hoped to find. We had been so long in the canyon that I had forgotten just how far down we were. The first part of Coyote Creek was not very impressive, but soon we were in one of those magnificent Glen Canyon side canyons with such towering walls that it is almost impossible to believe that they were cut by such a tiny, peaceful stream. There were many seeps, marked by richly marbled walls and a profusion of zed and green leaves. We passed a series of four small waterfalls where the water sparkled and tumbled over the rock. There were little caves two or three feet deep, forming mossy shrines set into the rock walls. The balance of form and color between rock, sky, and tree was exquisite. Around one corner, we found a bridge, a place where the stream had cut through the wall to make a ten foot tunnel no wider than itself. And then, around another corner a half mile on, we found a sculptured temple, one of those things that is uniquely a part of Glen Canyon. First we came upon the most richly colored of all the seeps we saw. Just around the corner was a forming bridge, a great jagged hole in the rock wall. The wall continued to the left and actually went under the overhanging edge of the far wall which was undercut several hundred feet. Beyond this the stream continued in a series of undercut S turns. Standing behind the bridge, with the walls arching gracefully over

Page Index	Prev	Page 11	Next	Issue Index