Escalante and Hole in the Rock Road June 22-26

Hole in the Rock road is 60 mile long dirt road from the town of Escalante down to Lake Powell.  It is a blast!  We stopped and checked out several sites along the way

-Devils Playground
-Dinosaur tracks : not convinced they were actual tracks...
-The end of Hole in the Rock road - a long hike/scramble down to Lake Powell
-Spooky and Peek a Boo Slot Canyons
-Neon Canyon - Golden Cathedral

My favorite part was blowing up the air mattress we had and hiking up to the large sandstone cliffs on the edge of Lake Powell to sleep for the night.  Being the first to feel the suns rays in the morning is great! Check out the pictures!

The slot canyons were VERY cool.  A short hike down and we were slithering our way through some tight quarters in the canyons.  Each canyon was unique.  Peekaboo was smooth and more open with lots of arches, and holes to climb through.  Very twisty turny.  Spooky was much deeper and more narrow.  Kate and I both had to travel sideways through this canyon.

Kate's Golden Cathedral Section:

Our hike up Neon Canyon in search of Golden Cathedral was like no other. We hiked down Fence Canyon across the Escalante River and then finally along the north rim of Neon Canyon until we had made it past Golden Cathedral: A pool of water in the canyon base that sits at the lower opening of the skinny, slot section of neon. Oh, and the pool sits about 80 feet below the opening to the slot. Of course this sounded like a perfect opportunity to rappel! What we didn’t expect (or at least what I didn’t expect) was how testing the section of that upper slot canyon we would travel through would be. Hiking along the top of the canyon we made certain to past Golden Cathedral before taking our first drop into Neon Canyon. We then hiked along the bottom until the canyon started getting slimmer, where we approached our second rappel- into the depths of the slot. We’ve been through a handful of slot canyons now and I think they are great. This one though.. not so great. It wasn’t so bad at first that the canyon was fairly dark, but it became a problem for me once we had to cross multiple stagnant, dead creature filled, buggy pools of water which were now stagnant, dead creature filled, buggy pools of DARK WATER. Unfortunately there was no other way out, we’d just dropped 30 feet or so down slick rock to get into here and the only way out was to hike to the end and rappel from the Cathedral into the more open area of canyon. After a few panic attacks and some extremely quick swims, we’d made it to our last (best) rappel. Finally what we came for! The top of the descend is through a thin, steep slot (dry, luckily) and then you drop through a hole and the canyon opens around you and you’re in the beautiful Golden Cathedral. The sun shines on the pool of water and reflects onto the roof creating an incredible scene. We dropped in one at a time, enjoyed the scenery for a while and hiked back toward the truck, completing our HOT ten mile trip. The beautifully awesome rappel made the day worth it and I know we both finished feeling accomplished but would I get back in that slot to do it again? Absolutely not.