The weekend of August 18th found David and me back in my Ford Explorer and heading for Escalante Utah where we got a motel room for the night. We then headed to nearby Boulder Utah.
From Boulder, we headed east on the Burr Trail dirt road until we could drive up Long Canyon and then drop down into The Flats (which is anything but flat). Here we could join a jeep trail heading north and then west, passing The Lamp Stand on the way.
Our driving ended when the trail paused out at The Gulch. From this point, it was necessary to hike south In the Gulch for several miles, with Rattlesnake Bench on the east, until we could take a west side canyon veering to the northwest called Water Canyon. We shared this hike with a number of wild turkeys that scurried through the sagebrush in front of us.
The side canyon was heavily overgrown and required a lot of scrambling through the brush. Just over a mile up this dead-end canyon, we found Lamanite Arch in the right cliffs.
Luckily, most of the hike was on fairly level ground and not too hard. We drove back to our room in Escalante and rested for the next day’s adventure.
The next morning we had breakfast at a local cafe before heading south on the Hole-in-the-Rock road which was badly washboarded. We were headed to the Coyote Gulch road which is about 37 miles southeast of Escalante.
Instead of taking the road for the Coyote Gulch trailhead, we took the next dirt road to the east just before Dancehall Rock for 4.4 miles. This allowed us to walk overland for 1.8 miles to the northeast to the rim of Coyote Gulch and then follow the rim eastward until we found Cliff Arch just below us on the north cliff wall.
We then continued eastward to the rim of the Escalante River drainage. Here we could view Stevens Arch approximately .8 miles to the northeast.
It was then a 3.8-mile arduous hike in deep sand back to our vehicle. Ugh!
On the way back to Escalante, we did stop at Devil’s Garden to take pictures of Metate Arch and Mano Arch.
We then headed back to some much-needed rest in our Escalante motel room.
The next morning we slowly got out of our beds, had another cafe breakfast and then headed south on the Hole-in-the-Rock road again. This time we only had to travel about 20 miles of washboard before taking the Early Weed Bench Road eastward for 6.2 miles to the end of the trail. We could then hike .75 miles to the southeast to find Brimstone Arch near the head of the extremely narrow Brimstone slot canyon.
By hiking another .71 miles directly east, we were able visit Scorpion Arch.
Hiking back to the Explorer was about all we had energy for. It was time to go home and rest up.