Permits and Politics - Red Canyon, Phipps Arch, Egypt 3 - September-October 2013

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The guidebook described another, shorter 4th-class downclimb on the other side of the dome. We walked over and had a look, and as it turned out, this wasn't hard at all. Firstly, there was an easy bypass around the steepest part, but even the steepest part wasn't all that bad, as Roland proved by confidently frictioning down in a few short seconds.

courtesy SDusablon

Down the other side

Enjoying superb slickrock

View of "exit" climb

From here, the guidebook had described "selecting a route east across astounding slickrock terrain to the rim". Astounding was the right word. We headed east, following the crest of a soaring, airy slickrock ridgeline. It wasn't airy in the exposed, scary sense of the word. It was airy in the "I feel like I'm flying on top of the world" sense. Exhilarating views in all directions, innumerable fantastic shapes and textures, light and shadow. It was truly an awesome stretch of hiking. I'll stop the text here for a bit and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Enjoying superb slickrock

Looking back along traverse

Resting atop a dome

Astounding View

Bowing to... greatness?

Arn and Roland

Andrew and slickrock domes

Towards the rim

Tearing ourselves away from the awesome views (made especially nice by the late day's slanting light), we continued east, hiking over the last bit of slickrock to the rim of the plateau to our east. This plateau was the northeast corner of Big Spencer Flat, a large expanse of tree-dotted, sandy desert terrain. We'd be turning south once we reached the plateau, charting a course roughly along its western edge back towards our start point.

Picture-perfect garden

Ancient trunk

Crossing Plateau Top

There is no trail down the western edge of the plateau, no indications of which way to go. It was a cross-country routefinding experience.

There were no boot tracks on the ground in front of us, and we tried to keep it that way. As is usually done before starting out on a cross-country desert hike, we had described what cryptobiotic crust was, and everyone understood that we should try and avoid crushing it. There was a lot of cryptobiotic crust all over the place here.

courtesy RHanel

Delicate Prickly Pair

Closeup, Cryptobiotic Crust

Looking back to the domes

Kyle carefully led the way for a while, hopping back and forth, sticking to slivers of bare bedrock or little sandy washes. We tried our best to walk in his footprints, leaving as little of a track as possible. It was nice having a pristine desert environment to travel through, and we wanted to provide the same experience to the next party who came along.

courtesy RHanel

Looking back to the domes

Crossing a drainage

North across flats

Resisting the temptation to cut back east too soon (lest we be forced to cross the many side drainages that cut into the edge of the plateau), we made our way north. Sometimes across vegetated terrain, sometimes across clean white Navajo Sandstone.

courtesy RHanel

North across flats

Roland's Fanciful Wood

Corrugated Sandstone

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(last message posted on Sun. Nov. 03, 20:08 EST 2013 by Arn)