We left Oakland at some reasonable hour of the morning (9-ish?) in a rental jeep piled to the roof with packs, bins, boots and dehydrated snacks, and were enjoying burgers and suds in Springdale, UT by sunset. Marvelous what can be acheived when you get in the car and just drive. Following a tip from the waitstaff at the burger joint, we headed off to camp in the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. The route to the campground was a remote backroad heavily populated with jackrabbits. Avoiding them as they darted across the dark highway was like some kind of demented arcade game. Matt successfully missed about a dozen of them, but finally nailed one as it leapt right under the jeep. A moment of silence for this bunny. Got to the campsite without further carnage, and hiked out on some nearby sand dunes under a bright full moon before retiring to our tents.

After getting our bearings in Kanab the following morning, we left the car at the White House trailhead at the top of the Paria Canyon and caught our pre-arranged ride to the Wire Pass trailhead so we could get an early start the next day...

Day 1 - Tuesday, May 24th - Wire Pass, Buckskin Gulch, and the Paria River confluence

Group photo at the trailhead courtesy of our kindly shuttle driver, Betty Price.

Packed up and got an early start (6:30am) into Wire Pass, the shortcut into Buckskin Gulch. Apparently this particular canyon has been recently designated "number one hike in the world" by National Geographic adventure series, although I'm not sure what their criteria are, and there are a lot of hikes in the world. Nevertheless, this hike is one of unsurpassed beauty. Immediately you are winding your way through tall, sculpted sandstone narrows, some that are shoulder-width, and it just doesn't stop all day.

Matt, primed and ready for the long trek ahead.

Matt negotiates Wire Pass.

One of many pools of muck to slog through. A group of hikers coming out through Wire Pass the night before described it as "like wading through elephant dung."

The narrows and other formations are continually breathtaking for the next 13.5 miles until you reach the confluence with the Paria river. While there are no hills to climb, it's no easy 13.5 miles, trudging in the thick muck with a heavy pack. We'd heard about the "cesspool" but it was never clear to us which of the many cold, muddy pools had this designation...though none of them were more than thigh deep, it was creepy to think what might be festering at the murky bottom. In fact, the canyon offered us a cornucopia of critter corpses, including a hawk, a lynx, a snake and several rodents.

Matt's mucky boots (and legs) halfway into the first day.

Snake! Snake! Argh, it's a snake... (we think it was dead.)

The noon sun sneaks into the narrows. This is the shot that justified hauling in the tripod!

It's Log!

It's like doing the limbo, but much easier.

It's hard to describe the dark, quiet, cool mystery of the place. And it just goes on and on like this...

At one point we sang, and it was lovely how our voices reverberated in the canyon walls.

More amazing narrows.

A big chockstone above.

Anthony attempting to escape via the Middle Trail exit. Later on, we met a group of hikers who had actually come down into Buckskin via this route. Didn't seem such a bad scramble up, if you're a decent scrambler, but kind of a sketchy downclimb!

Anthony, utilizing his homemade duct-taped, moleskin-wrapped staff.

Stopping to take in a rare spot of sunlight.

It took some time to get past the boulder jam toward the end of Buckskin, which required descending through a hole with the aid of some rope ladders that had been left there (if there was an easier way, we didn't find it), but we hit the confluence of Paria around 6pm, just under 12 hours after starting. When we finally got to our campsite at 7pm, we were pretty thirsty, but only had two liters of water among us to last the night and the following morning. While the water in the Paria is far more tolerable to walk in than the stagnant pools in Buckskin, it has the same temperature, consistency, and color of a Frappuccino, rendering it pretty much unfilterable.

Buckskin Gulch at the confluence with the Paria. A wowie place.