Escalante River: Town to Powell

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Notes for Potential Hikers

Introduction

Do not attempt this trip if you are not already familiar with backpacking in the canyons of the Colorado Plateau. Hazards and navigation are not the same as other regions, and describing them here is beyond the scope of this article. This route is too long and too remote to be a first canyon trip. By far the best information on hiking in the region is published by Steve Allen; if you seek how-to information or detailed Escalante route information, you should buy his book Canyoneering 3, Loop Hikes in Utah’s Escalante.

Walking the floor of the Escalante Canyon from town to the confluence with Coyote Gulch varies from fairly straight-forward to challenging, depending on the water level. We were lucky on our trip and the river was rarely more than knee deep. The obstacles we faced between town and the confluence with Coyote Gulch were the expected things: thrashing through willows and tamarisk, frequent stream crossings, avoiding the mucky shoe-sucking holes. We were never forced to leave the river floodplain in order to avoid obstacles so in that sense the route is very straightforward.

Our CalTopo map shows the primary route down the river, but except for Cow Canyon, none of our exploratory trips to the rim or up side canyons. This is intentional as we believe every hiker deserves the chance to discover their own treasures.

Access

Escalante Canyon is located in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. A back-country permit is required and easily obtained at the Inter-agency Ranger Station just west of Escalante.

We drove to the town of Escalante and a local gas station gave us permission to park for the duration of our walk. We started our walk in town and crossed some fields to access the river. The entrance to the canyon system is a bit over a mile from the center of town.

At the end of the trip, we walked up Coyote Gulch to the popular trailhead on the Hole in the Rock Road and easily hitched a ride back to Escalante.

Escalante town to Choprock

We had not previously walked the river between town and Choprock Canyon, an east side tributary roughly 45 river miles down canyon. The walking was quite similar to our previous Escalante trips and was very enjoyable. We spent time exploring side canyons and looking for routes to the rim.

Choprock to Coyote Gulch

We had already visited this stretch of the river during prior backpacking trips so we did not linger. Walking past the mouths of the side canyons we had previously explored brought back many fond memories.

Below the Coyote Creek confluence

We had not traveled below the mouth of Coyote Creek on previous trips because Lake Powell had flooded the Escalante to near the confluence with the Creek. Because the lake level was down and most of the silt and mud deposits had been washed down canyon, we were able to continue down river. Unlike the riverbanks upstream of the confluence, there were the huge loose bluffs on either side of the river. The material in these bluffs are riverine deposits of silt and sand that had dropped out of suspension as the water velocity slowed upon reaching Lake Powell. Over time, these deposits filled the entire canyon bottom to lake level and created impassible muck flats. As the Powell pool level dropped, the Escalante easily cut a channel down into these loose materials to the new lower lake level. The further down canyon we traveled, the higher the walls of this channel. The sediments forming the walls of the channel were barely consolidated and very unstable. They were steep and loose enough that climbing them was usually impossible and in many places potentially dangerous due to potential collapse if disturbed. Ultimately these sediments will be washed downstream into Lake Powell and the river banks will re-vegetate, leaving the canyon looking much like it did prior to the building of  Glen Canyon Dam.

Some of the rock formations in this lower stretch of canyon were visually outstanding. Further exploration is certainly warranted.

Eventually we reached the new edge of Lake Powell and could not continue further downstream on foot. We had passed the mouth of Cow Canyon, a major east side tributary to the Escalante, just prior to where we hit the lake. It is extremely difficult to access this canyon from anywhere except its junction with the Escalante. Cow Canyon is deeply cut and has high vertical walls throughout its length. Because of this, almost nobody, except possibly a few people entering via boat from Lake Powell, had been in Cow Canyon since Powell was filled in the 1960’s. We entered the canyon and spent a full day exploring as far up as the pour-offs at its eastern ends. It was terrific being able to visit a canyon that seen neither cows nor many people for at least 40 years.

When we started to head back up the Escalante toward Coyote Gulch, we found that the river level had gone up due to rainfall somewhere up river. This meant that travel in the river was no longer possible, as the water was too swift and deep. Travel on the shore was also not practical due to the high, steep, and loose banks of silt deposits. After poking around a bit, we were able to find a place to climb up to a bench high above the east side of the river and continue on that until the river level had dropped enough to enable us to drop down and travel upstream in the riverbed. The other option would have been to wait for the water levels to go down.

Up Coyote Creek

We walked out Coyote Creek to the Hole in the Rock Road. There were many people out on day and overnight hikes in this popular side canyon.