As we wandered across the flats a group gravitated to the rear. We watched in astonishment as Super Leader Les went over a ridge rather than around it. We thought that maybe that was the way it was done in the HPS so we followed him. Near the top of the ridge I had to delay for a while. After starting again I encountered my tail end group - Vitz' s Vikings - wandering in the wrong direction, having been left by Les' Losers. Over Fred Bode's constant objections (trust me, Fred) I led them up the most direct route. We could hear the other guys yelling "Rock" for about an hour as we plugged up the ridge. My boys finally arrived at the summit plateau and we wandered over to the rest of the group, which was already splitting up for the descent.

After a short drink to celebrate my 100th Desert Peak (counting repeats) we noticed that everyone except for the leaders had already started down. I picked up Chuck McQuillan and descended by the same route end overtook the first Sheep group. We wandered overland to that peak arriving just before Lipsohn's Lightfoots. Les' Losers had already returned to the cars where they were drinking my beer. We zapped down to Cactus Springs and followed the trail out to the cars arriving shortly after dark, with more or less the same number of people who had signed in.

OUTLAW TRIPS

ESCALANTE RIVER   -   Jerry Haven

Sitting at work one day in September of 1970, I suddenly realized that with the year three-quarters gone I still hadn't used my allotted two weeks of vacation. My first impulse was to drop everything and run to the Sierra, but Chuck McQuillan, who also still had his vacation hanging over him, suggested that we go somewhere together. Since he couldn't go until the last week of September, we turned our attention from the Sierra Nevada to the canyons of the Colorado, finally deciding on a backpack down the Escalante River. We postponed one more week to give Tom Wall enough time to get laid off his new job at Rand, and thus on the first Saturday in October found ourselves on Utah 12 where it crosses the Escalante River between Boulder and Escalante. Even there, high on the river, the canyon country is spectacular. The road is about one and a half lanes wide, no wider than the canyon bottoms and ridge tops it winds along. The aspens were starting to turn, golden against the red Navajo sandstone and the brilliant blue of the Utah sky. We continued on to Boulder, to visit some hippie friends there. Boulder is an island of green in the midst of the red wilderness, a beautiful farming and ranching valley of about 90 people, looking like a piece of eastern farmland dropped into Southern Utah.

We returned to the river that night and the next morning Chuck in his MG and I in my Corvette (which has delusions of being a jeep) drove back toward Escalante and then down the road to Hole-in-the-Rock to set up a car shuttle. We planned to hike down the river until it became a lake, and then go up Coyote Creek, the last free-flowing tributary on the west. We had to guess where to leave the car since the area is only partially mapped. With the unexpected help of park service signs identifying the creeks and washes, we decided to leave the car at Willow Tank next to Hurricane Wash (neither of which were on the topo).

Tom had the packs ready when we got back, so we were quickly on our way. After about ten minutes hiking, the river turned, switching from one wall to the other, so we took off our boots and waded across. After two more crossings in the next fifteen minutes, we realized that we would never make it in boots. Chuck and I had shoes that we could use but Tom didn't, so we went back to the car, spent the evening in Boulder and early the next morning drove to Escalante where Tom bought a pair of tennis shoes. Thus, Monday morning, properly shod in canvas shoes, we started down the river once again. For the next nine days the only sights we had of other people wore a few fences, a cabin, several cans washed down by the river, and the con-trails of the high flying jets.
 
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