Neon Canyon

[lofty]

Neon, Choprock.....finally I got to see thee......along with Chris, Scott and Ron

Not if it were up to the rangers at the Escalante BLM office.... we were warned that the escalante river is about to crest with an expected flow of 50 cfs at the town gate reaching much greater numbers further down where we would have to cross..we were told to not even think about crossing the river....the river looked tame where it crossed the road... but what do I know... it could be a raging torrent further down and surely the rangers and hydrologist knew best ????? Being from the land of plenty water where a raging torrent includes white foam, cascades, bad hydraulics and such .. I was a bit concerned.... Chris wasn't......now I did check with other locals in Escalante and felt much better after... apparently the water levels were just getting high and strong enough to allow floating on it. Needless to say.. when I saw the river in person I wasn't quite sure if I was indeed looking at the "raging" Escalante... before me was a gentle meandering shallow bottomed creek...warm too...and it remained so the entire weekend... yes.. the current became a bit faster but nothing dangerous... no whitewater, no bad hydraulics.....and I still couldn't float back to camp as I kept hitting bottom...ouch !

We chose the confluence of Fence Canyon and Escalante River as our basecamp.

Wishing I had my large pack we headed down canyon along slickrock benches....already dreading the long hot hike back up a few days hence.

The sandy campsites were amongst tall cottonwood trees and very nice. Fresh water was provided by a clear spring in Fence Canyon To get to Neon we had to cross the escalante river four times and I was quite surprised how warm the river was. Not far past the mouth of Neon we had to climmb up to the benches above that led to the middle entrance. Beautiful as the scenery up top was... it was also hot in the mid afternoon sun and we were looking forward to swims inside the canyon.


The light reflections in the pools was lovely and I wished I had a waterproof camera so I could keep taking pictures. Just above the near entrance we hit our first obstacle... a deep keeper pothole ....sometimes full sometimes not.....for us...half empty....to bypass we had to climb the steep slickrock to a bench and anchor above. We dropped back in at the far edge of the keeper and had a beautiful swim to an open area. Shortly after we passed the near entrance and arrived at the well known not easily bypassed Keeper Pothole. Thankfully the water was still lapping at the upper lip and escape from it was easy.

Lastly the rap down into the Golden Cathedral through the potholes....absolute breathtaking !!!

It was early evening so we didn't quite get the golden colors but the high canyon walls on the hike out did glow nicely in the eveing light.


Once back at camp we hung our gear to dry, had a bite to eat and went to sleep... tomorrow would be a big day....CHOPROCK was on the agenda.





http://www.flickr.com/photos/anja1/s...7626746077539/

[Sombeech]

Awesome

[theking648]

Awesome, I'm going to guess trout can't survive down that low in the river. did you see any? that would be fun... canyoneering and fishing.

[Big_E!]

Looks like an awesome time!! Thanks for posting.

[Cirrus2000]

Excellent Anja! Looking forward to more. Going to savor the photos on Flickr, now!

[spinesnaper]

So far so good. When do we get the second installment?

Ken

[oldno7]

Hoily Crapola you guys have big packs, did you remember you have to come back up??

[ibenick]

Great TR, Anja! You know it's really awesome if it brought Kev back here to say something about it!

[Scott P]

Great stuff Anja. It was great meeting you (and the others)!

Hoily Crapola you guys have big packs, did you remember you have to come back up??

Most of us carried two backpacks down to camp.

[lofty]

Yes.. we knew we had to come back up....but we timed the hike out for early morning.

choprock coming soon.....

[accadacca]

GREAT photos! Many favorites, but I love this one.