vacation pictures #1: Peach Wash, AZ

[ilanarama]

Our first night was spent at the free campground of Navajo National Monument, although to our disappointment it turned out that they were not yet running tours to the ruins. The next day we drove toward Page AZ, where Britt vaguely remembered a slot canyon - a tributary to Navajo Canyon - that he'd visited a few times in college and wanted to see again. After a few false starts, we finally found the correct jeep road leading off toward the canyons. Which alas had a fence across it courtesy of the power company (it ran under the power lines and was probably intended for tower access, not for hiker access). We parked there and then hiked the mile or so to the OMG scary steep gully access into Peach Wash (lots of big steps down big drops, chimneying, etc.) and then, yay, beautiful slot canyon, where we found Peaches (pictured above) lying in the sand. We were stopped from going downstream by big pools of water (it was cloudy - in fact, it was threatening rain, and the only reason I agreed to go into the canyon was that Britt pointed out the storm was downcanyon rather than upcanyon of us - and the idea of getting soaked wasn't appealing) but upstream we managed to go quite a ways before getting stopped by a muddy plunge pool.





Then we retraced our steps to the exit, which unfortunately had become no less steep during our explorations. We went up and out, started hiking back, and then the heavens cut loose on us and we got very, very wet, or at least our rain gear did, as we pulled it on as soon as we felt the first drops. Got back to the van, got inside, got dry, drank hot chocolate, and then headed to Page to fuel up. We spent the night on BLM land just a little ways up Cottonwood Gulch, near the Paria Ranger Station. Our plan was to see if we could get a walk-in permit for the North Coyote Buttes (the area known as "the Wave," which has been popularized by a German travel programme and is now heavily controlled, i.e., impossible to get into) but alas, no luck (47 people trying for 10 slots) and so we continued on to Zion National Park.