Iceaxe
05-19-2009, 08:52 AM
Into the heart of the canyon
LAKE POWELL (UTAH)
Story and images by Scott Willoughby (The Denver Post )
After days of scouting, research, curiosity and debate, the edict came like the refrain from a canyoneering hip-hop classic in the making.
"We just need to drop that slot," former rock-climbing guide Charlie Ebel of Red Cliff announced with rhyming conviction.
The decision ultimately arrived easier than the plan. From the houseboat base camp several miles up the Escalante River arm of a nearly deserted Lake Powell, the mission seemed plausible, but reliable information was impossible to come by. A network of the Southwest's most dedicated slot canyoneers knew next to nothing about the remote half-mile ravine connecting Clear Creek Canyon to the lake at what's known as the Cathedral in the Desert. Guide books, websites, GPS and Google Earth imagery offered little more.
The scenario is hardly unusual in the realm of desert canyoneering, in which hidden geologic intricacies peel away like layers of a sandstone onion. Within the Four Corners region of the American West, the labyrinthine web of gor- ges and chasms making up the Escalante River Canyon might constitute an "inside" corner, an almost underground passage easily overlooked in the larger desert picture surrounding what we now call Lake Powell.
Oh, sure, it has long been on the map, in bold typeface since the 1996 designation of the surrounding 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. But near as we know, the river canyon bearing missionary explorer Silvestre Velez de Escalante's name was never actually discovered on the circuitous route that brought that first party of non-natives through Utah in 1776. And much of it remains relatively hidden.
Modern explorers of the region tend to plod through the canyons the way Escalante himself might have
LAKE POWELL (UTAH)
Story and images by Scott Willoughby (The Denver Post )
After days of scouting, research, curiosity and debate, the edict came like the refrain from a canyoneering hip-hop classic in the making.
"We just need to drop that slot," former rock-climbing guide Charlie Ebel of Red Cliff announced with rhyming conviction.
The decision ultimately arrived easier than the plan. From the houseboat base camp several miles up the Escalante River arm of a nearly deserted Lake Powell, the mission seemed plausible, but reliable information was impossible to come by. A network of the Southwest's most dedicated slot canyoneers knew next to nothing about the remote half-mile ravine connecting Clear Creek Canyon to the lake at what's known as the Cathedral in the Desert. Guide books, websites, GPS and Google Earth imagery offered little more.
The scenario is hardly unusual in the realm of desert canyoneering, in which hidden geologic intricacies peel away like layers of a sandstone onion. Within the Four Corners region of the American West, the labyrinthine web of gor- ges and chasms making up the Escalante River Canyon might constitute an "inside" corner, an almost underground passage easily overlooked in the larger desert picture surrounding what we now call Lake Powell.
Oh, sure, it has long been on the map, in bold typeface since the 1996 designation of the surrounding 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. But near as we know, the river canyon bearing missionary explorer Silvestre Velez de Escalante's name was never actually discovered on the circuitous route that brought that first party of non-natives through Utah in 1776. And much of it remains relatively hidden.
Modern explorers of the region tend to plod through the canyons the way Escalante himself might have