SUE3: Boulder Creek, The Gulch, Spencer Canyon, Phipps Wash

[Jammer]

Southern Utah Exploring: Part 3 of 3

[SIZE=3][FONT=Calibri]After 6 days of mostly car camping and day hikes, I was anxious set out for a backpacking trip. On my Across Utah hike in 2009 I got flooded out at Escalante/Boulder Creek area

[Sombeech]

Once again, excellent report.

[Tango]

Nice, nice, nice TR and your photos are divine! What camera do you use? How many cameras do you carry? I agree with you about the cows, they sort of ruin the hike sometimes! I was hiking in the Coyote Butte area it was HORRIBLE, someone should teach those cows LNT!!!! It was laughable that there was a notice at the TH about packing your own waste! But I digress! Thanks for sharing your adventures!

[Wasatch]

Nice pics.

[Jammer]

Nice, nice, nice TR and your photos are divine! What camera do you use? How many cameras do you carry?

I was experimenting with a new camera this time out. It's a Lumix FZ100 "bridge" camera -- ie cheaper and lighter than DSLR, but more control than a standard Point n Shoot. Unfortunately -- I wasn't really happy with it. Granted the lighting conditions were pretty horrible all week, but the pics were still more contrasty/noisy than I'd like. I usually take a video camera and a digital camera -- the hope was this one camera would serve as both, but the jury is still out.


Thanks,
-Jamal

[ibenick]

Great trip reports, Jamal. Kind of sucks to have to change plans after doing all the research for a different area.

Back in 2005 I set out for a trip to the middle Escalante down near Neon Canyon. The BLM guys told me no way, water was too high but I didn't have anything else planned out so I asked them what they would recommend. They told us to go to The Gulch. Not knowing anything about it we went there and started hiking down from The Burr Trail and covered the 10 miles to where it slots up. We slept right at the edge of that slot in your picture without tents because there wasn't really anywhere to pitch a non-freestanding tent. The river was running crazy high, total chocolate milk, it was intense to sleep right at that edge. We had to put out 'safety rocks' and other objects to keep things from rolling into the raging torrent down in the slot. And the mosquitos... oh man, the mosquitos. It would not be an exaggeration to say I had at least three or four hundred mosquito bites on each arm by the time we got out. We ended up pretty much running the 10 miles back out after struggling to pump drinkable water from the chocolate milk the second day. I'd have a TR from that epic fail posted if I hadn't killed my camera in quicksand on that trip. Quite possibly the roughest trip I've ever had.

[americanhero]

wonderful trail report and great pictures.

[bigred72]

[zzyzx]

Interesting TR and pics from a beautiful area.
THX

[accadacca]