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Buckskin Gulch
A hiking buddy called last Sunday with an invitation to do Buckskin Gulch, a slot canyon tributary to Paria Canyon on the AZ-UT state line. I’ve avoided slot canyons, after a few Arizona horror stories about rain storms up stream and resulting tragedies. But being we have apparently seen the last rain of the century here, maybe now was the time. The plus is that with the drought, there are no stagnant pools in the canyon to wade or swim through. If you’ve not seen a slot, imagine the surface of a small lake in high wind, freeze that in stone, stand it vertical, put a mirror image facing it, squeeze it up about 10 feet from the other, put some serpentine twists and turns in the route, and you have something of an idea. The walls in Buckskin are probably 150' +/- tall. In most places the sun never strikes the inner canyon, creating natural air conditioning. The footing varies from hard pack to deep sand, a feature not much appreciated after a few hours. We started down from the Wire Pass Trail Head about 7:30 AM, a bit late for my taste, but when your with a group . . . . The user fees ($5/hd, honor system) have paid for a new toilet there, a nice touch because there is nothing else out there. And BLM is keeping it clean, thank you. A sign warns that “Emergency Response is Never Rapid” and to be careful of rain. Do you know the sharp angle pass-throughs constructed to keep cattle from going through an opening in a fence, but allowing hikers to walk through without opening a gate? The worst one I’ve seen is on the Payson Ranger District-its made of barbed wire! The one at Wire Pass is at the other end of the spectrum; it’s made of at least 1-inch rebar, probably 1 and 1/4, set in concrete. Way to go BLM, sometimes it is the little things that matter. It’s about a mile of open wash to the beginning of the slot; you pass the cut-off to the “Wave” along the way. The Wave is a wind eroded feature of alternating white and red sand stone carved in sweeping shapes, about 3 mile from the trail head. The slot starts out shallow; then deepens quickly. Three short drop offs require a bit of scrambling, only one presents any challenge. Help from co-hikers makes it an easy navigation. Then we’re in the surreal world of the slot canyon. In the morning, sunshine is rare; it’s quite dark. The rocks are cool, mitigating the rising temperatures above. We pass through a few open areas, still narrow by normal canyon standards, where the sun shines and a little greenery grows. Then as quickly as the canyon opens, the route passes back into the narrow grotto-like world. In one spot my shoulders touch both sides at the same time, in many places you can touch both walls with outstretched arms. The walls are carved in waves, and the swirls and bends are impressive. Logs and once-floating debris jammed high above give rise to speculation-did it come over the top, was it left there as the slot deepened, or was it deposited in horrible floods, as the water flushed down the canyon at incredible depth and speed? Probably all three. Hanging from the underside of one low-setting jam is a hiker’s sock. It is a well-traveled route. A few petroglyphs along the way, mostly small animal figures, are about the only indication of human presence. Not a great deal of animal sign either, lizards dart around here and there in the open spots; some birds escape to the canyon, lingering in the cool. Some larger mammals have been in and left small deposits. An avian scream noted objection to our intrusion-a raven, eagle, hawk? We had set a goal of hiking in until one o’clock, then turning around and heading back out. It would have been nice to reach the confluence of Buckskin and Paria, but we met three hikers coming out at about 12:30 who informed us that would be 2 miles farther. That was the signal, and we turned around just before 1. The back-track was a bit dicey. Temps were up to 95 in the sun, 10-15 degrees less in the shade. It’s dry there. How dry is it? While eating a sandwich for lunch the bread dried noticeably during the time it took me to eat it-not long. The wind picked up, which was both a blessing and a curse. The breeze helped with the heat, but it also moved the blow sand across the desert up above, and when it reached the canyon, it rained down on us. Scratching our heads filled our fingernails with a mix of sand, salt, and sweat. It worked wonders on the cameras also. The area is quite popular; we saw maybe 25-30 other hikers, some backpacking, others day hiking like us. Hour number 9 got a bit warm, every hike has a time when it should be over, and it's usually just a bit before it really is. Four pretty worn out trekkers climbed in the car and headed home.
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