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Apr
1998
Coyote Creek to Escalante River: Escalante National Monument

The right time of year to visit Utah’s high desert is the Spring which is what we did in 1998. I headed out to Salt Lake on April 4th for our annual hike. But since the snow was still falling and plentiful, we stole one day on the front end to visit the Alta ski area. 12″ or more of fresh powder awaited us on a warm spring day. I think we counted 38 people total on the mountain. And the lift tickets were half price spring skiing! Never felt so much like a theif as that day at Alta.

The next day we met up with our largest group of hikers ever. We had Dave Kenison, David Hansen, Brad Clements, Gary (a friend of Brad’s), Buce Craygun, and Kim Ashcroft. And we would eventually meet up with Davy Crockett who was then living in Arizona and would drive North to meet up.

As we drove down we enjoyed the landscape as it gradually got to be red and orange…the colors of southern Utah. We went past some canyon rock that looked a lot like Bryce Canyon NP rock (hoodoos) and stopped to take some pictures of the freshly fallen snow on the rocks. Very pretty. But unbeknown to us, the snow would prove problematic for our friend Mr. Crockett.
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