The day was beautiful, a collage of red rocks, green and yellow trees, and blue skies with white puffy clouds. The 50 - 100 foot high walls near the river blocked our view of the high cliffs making the canyon look little more than a wash, but as we continued the canyon got deeper and more narrow so that by afternoon we passed through a gorge where the river ran wall to wall, 20 feet wide below 300 foot cliffs. When we were in the narrowest part we were caught by a fifteen minute thunderstorm, which we weathered under the overhanging cliffs. It cleared quickly and that night we made camp on a sand bar by a turn in the river.

Finding campsites proved to be no problem throughout the trip. The canyon is generally wider than the river and the inside of most turns has a flat hard sand bar. The banks are covered with grass, tamarisks, cottonwoods and aspens, which, in addition to providing a bright green contrast to the omnipresent red of the walls, also provide an abundance of firewood. The only camp we made without trees nearby was next to a log jam of weathered wood left by some forgotten flood. The longest we ever had to look for a campsite after deciding to stop was less than a half hour.

The second day was much like the first. The weather was pleasant, though cool, in the morning and then cloudy in the afternoon. The wind rushed up and down the canyon, first one way and then the other, twisted and spun by the canyon walls, The walls themself continued to get higher, more undercut on the turns, and more tapestried. We stopped for lunch under one of the great overhung walls, and, through some acoustical quirk the sound of the river, which was only two feet away from us, Seemed to come from a point 300 feet above and behind us. In this part of the canyon the river snaked and twisted, requiring many crossings, but since it was smooth, wide, and gentle, they caused no trouble.

That afternoon, after we reached The Gulch, a large side canyon from the east, the Escalante canyon widened and straightened considerably. The walls were set back from the river, sometimes a quarter to half mile apart. There were some fences, since the people in Boulder run cattle down there during the summer. The hiking was better since the crossings were fewer, but also less exciting. One had a sense of hiking through the canyon instead of being a part of it.

When we got up the third day, it was completely overcast and just as we finished breakfast it started to rain. We hiked for about an hour with the rain getting worse and with a cold wet wind flowing down the canyon and onto our backs. The rain began to turn into sleet and, being constantly in and out of the water, we began to get chilled. When we saw the burned out remains of a cabin, we headed towards it, hoping to find shelter by stringing the tents in some nearby trees, Then, at about 200 feet up the wall, at the top of a sand slide, we noticed a 20 foot wide overhung ledge. Tom went up to check while I helped Chuck with his pack, which was starting to get a little wet. Soon Tom called down to us and Chuck and I scrambled up to the ledge. We huddled there in sleeping bags trying to get warm and watched the storm over the Escalante. Whenever it lifted a little we could see out over the damp, grey canyon, but mostly we were closed in and could not even see the river. The water began to streak its way down the walls, making shiny ebony stains on the red rock. It snowed softly and gently, drifting silently across the wilderness.

At 11 o'clock, two hours after we had reached the ledge and three hours after it began, the storm lifted, and we went out to investigate the area, since it seemed we might have to stay several days. There was plenty of firewood and around to the right, sort of behind our ledge was a spring. The spring flowed across a little alcove, a circular glen no more than 50 yards across set at the base of hundreds of foot of red cliffs. The glen was full of lush long-leaved grass and had a still, small reflection pool in its center, which was dappled along one edge by the red and yellow leaves of an overhanging aspen. The uniform cloud cover provided even, shadowless light. It seemed that each leaf glowed softly with its own luminescence in, the pale light, so that the bottoms were as bright as the tops.
 
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