Sheets Gulch: A Costly Hike

 

Susan’s choice of hike yesterday was Sheets Gulch off Notom Road, their favorite hike in Capitol Reef. Since it was a 27 mile drive to the trailhead, and up to a 14 mile round trip hike, she wanted to leave at eight to have the whole day. Off we went in three cars, since Mark, Bobbie, Maikel and Susan were planning to do the entire hike. Debbie can only leave her dogs for so many hours so she would have to cut it short, and Jim and I were going to try to go about 4.5 miles into the gulch, which I read was a good turn around point.

It started out easy enough, just follow the gulch, but after a fork where we took a right, there were pools of water from last weeks heavy rain.

Made for some interesting reflections.

The water also caused us to have to climb out of the gulch to go around some of it, which involved lots of rock scrambling, some of it way above my comfort level.

And also made for lots of mud. Slippery, stick to your shoes like glue kind of mud. I think all of us had slips and either full or partial falls trying to navigate the muddy parts. It sure was beautiful, though.

Susan, doing a great balancing act.

Big cat?

At one point we came around a corner to find Mark, Jim and Bobbie praying to the red rock gods. Jim apparently didn’t pray hard enough, though.

When it came to having to wade through knee deep water and not knowing if I had the nerve to continue beyond, I suggested that Jim, Debbie and I turn back. Almost five miles round trip was a respectable distance.

We had a hard time figuring out where to exit the canyon, and after a much too long panic attack, I finally was able to sit down and scoot across a particularly steep, precarious ledge. Shortly after that, Jim slid down a muddy slope into a deep pool above his waist. He was fine, but as I was helping him get out of the very cold water, I realized our “good camera”, the Lumix he had on a chest strap, had also been submerged. He quickly removed the battery and SD card, but water was visible behind the lens. Not good. But just another typical day with the Box Canyon gang! We are working on sending the camera in for repair.

Today Jim and Allison joined us for a hike from our campsite to a trail that kB thought we could walk to. A couple hours later we never did find the trail, and in the process lost Jim, Maikel, and Susan. They returned an hour later, which was fine except that I was hungry and had no keys to get in the house.

Still a fun morning, but we need to communicate better on group hikes. Stay tuned to see if that really happens.

Only had to go under barbed wire once.

Man and dog.

Just can’t beat this scenery.