Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument, Utah

October 8-13, 2003

Many of us had been dying to get back to the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument in Utah.  Bill Priedorsky put it together for us, with the able bodied assistance of his co-leader Dave Scudder.  This time we would horse pack into Sand Creek Canyon  for exploratory day hikes in October of 2003. 

Slickrock makes up the higher elevations of the monument.

Bill"s Group:

Bill's group was separate from ours, but we did hike together to a limited extent.  We camped down canyon from one another.  Bill's excellent trip report for the Los Alamos Mountaineers covers the details of his groups activities, which are similar to what we did with Dave.  

See below for  Bill's complete Sand Creek trip report.
 

Getting There & Back:

The nicest thing about driving out and back to this isolated spot is the incredible beauty of the areas that we got to pass through; namely the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and the Capital Reef National Park.  In addition, we drove right by the Goosenecks State Park.  The many stops along the way fully justified the drive.

See below for our  "Getting There & Back" Gallery.
 

Our Hikes:

Dave's group, which included Cosima and me, hiked almost every  waking hour.  We always returned to the same camp for dinner and sleep.  This was our standard mode for canyon country.  We did slickrock and canyons, but we always kept an eye out for pools of water to cool off in.......we found plenty this time.