Escalante Escapades
In mid-October Claudia and I headed out to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah for a week of car camping and hiking. We've had our fair share of mountain time this summer and autumn in Colorado and were excited to hang out in the desert for a change, especially in Escalante which is one of our favorite areas of southern Utah!
Sunset light shines on some ponderosa pines above the slickrock sea of canyons near Hells Backbone.
On our first evening in Escalante, we drove down a remote and rugged dirt road and found an idyllic place to camp on a slickrock terrace overlooking the Box/Phipps/Death Hollow area - the "upper" part of the overall Escalante canyon region. This higher elevation area is notable for its vast expanses of white sandstone slickrock dotted with stately ponderosa pines. On this trip we ended up spending all our time in this upper zone, mostly doing hikes with slickrock and vistas rather than the classic slot canyons down lower along the Hole in the Rock road.
That evening we sat in our camp chair for hours soaking in the views and enjoying the sunset light. As I was gazing towards the western horizon at dusk, I could see a subtle bright streak in the sky and I thought, huh, that kind of looks like a comet! I grabbed my camera and telephoto lens, zoomed in, and sure enough there was a big comet in the sky! A bit of googling revealed that this was the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet and this was actually the first night it was visible in the evening sky.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in the sky above the upper Escalante canyons near Hells Backbone. The canyon walls are illuminated by moonlight.
In the coming days, photos of the comet would be plastered all over social media and the news, but on this evening I had no idea about it, so it was rather surprising to just spot a comet randomly on my own, and also pretty serendipitous that we happened to be camped up high with a view to the west on that particular evening!
For the rest of the week we just bounced around the upper Escalante area, hiking during the days and camping in the truck at different camp spots each night. Here are a few favorite photos from the rest of the trip:
Sunset over Calf Creek Canyon.
Ponderosa forest in the The Box canyon near Escalante.
Sunset vista overlooking the slickrock basin of Phipps Wash.
Hiking over slickrock.
Phipps Arch is an absolute unit.
Strolling across the slickrock in a lovely desert landscape of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The Henry Mountains are visible in the distance.
Psychedelic patterns in sandstone.
Full moon rising over the canyonlands of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Truck camping on slickrock.
