I woke in the middle of the night and noticed I couldn’t see the stars. Hmmm, must be some sort of cloud over us, I hope it doesn’t rain. Sure enough, I woke again to raindrops on my face. Half asleep, we pulled out the shelter and draped it over our sleeping bags and gear before falling asleep again. In the morning, we woke to clear blue skies. We ate breakfast, set up the shelter properly, then packed Mat’s backpack with needed items while leaving the rest in the shelter. We started down Coyote Gulch fairly late, around 10:30am. We rounded three bends before coming across the magnificent Jacob Hamblin arch, a large arch 100 ft across. Many people are camped here so we continued downstream. We came across other beautiful features: small waterfalls, narrows, and spires. We stopped for lunch at the sweet Coyote Gulch bridge, a smaller arch spanning the river. With no one around, we savored the beautiful & unique Utah environment.
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| Hamblin Arch |
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| Coyote Gulch Bridge |
We continued downstream, intersecting different backpacking groups here and there. We reached an area where the trail was obstructed by rockfall and scramble our way around. The shallow river actually forms waterfalls here but the pools are only thigh deep and only directly under the waterfall. We cooled off a little but continued downstream where we found larger waterfalls. We decide to take another break and play in the water. After drying off a little, we continued downstream, now determined to get to the confluence of Coyote Gulch and the Escalante River. The trail gets a little more steep and rocky, descending short cliffs since the river itself is jammed by a large rock jam dropping 20 feet. We eventually make it to the Escalante, which is much larger and deeper than where we had hiked it 70 river miles upstream although it’s still only knee high and warm enough to sit in. However, the water is cooler than the Coyote Gulch creek we’d been walking through. While sitting in the river admiring the landscape, a couple of fighter jets flew by with an explosion of noise! It was cool to see them flying so low and so fast!
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| Some waterfalls to cool off in |
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| Coyote Gulch-Escalante confluence |
We sat a little longer and noticed something small, white and blue, drifting down the river towards us. We wanted to do our good outdoor duty of wilderness ethics so we waded out to intercept the item. It turns out it was a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap, which was awesome because we forgot to bring some and totally needed it after all the poison ivy we saw today... the River Gods will provide!!! Soon after picking it up we spotted another item floating our way. We scooped up a white tube of chapstick. This is when we realized that some poor hiker/rafter must have lost some toiletries further upstream. We waited to see if any more items floated down but none came so we tossed the chapstick in our garbage to pack out and kept the Dr. Bronners for ourselves. What funny luck that somebody brought a bottle of Dr. Bronners, lost it in the water, and that it happened to float unobstructed to the confluence of the Escalante River & Coyote Gulch when we happened to be here. We were there for only about 20 minutes before heading back. I guess it was meant to be!
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| Coyote Gulch canyon |
It was approximately 4:00pm, and having taken six hours to get here from camp (with three breaks) we decided to get moving so we could reach camp before dark. Fortunately for us, we made it back to camp around 6:30pm since we didn’t need to gawk at all the scenery again. We washed using our new Dr. Bronners before getting into our sleeping bags since we passed by lots and lots of poison ivy during our day hike. We decided to take our chances again and slept outside next to our set up shelter. We enjoyed our hot meals while watching the change of shift again. At one point, a bat flew right between Mat and me!
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| Coyote Gulch |
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| Coyote Gulch |
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| Overhanding bend |
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