Welcome to Kanab (Utah, Feb ’24, part 1 of 4)

_{Author’s Note: I intended this to be one long post. It’s four. Mostly because I uploaded too many photos. If I kept it as one, the photos won’t load at all. So, please enjoy the beauty of the Southwest…(Link to post #2, Link to post #3, Link to post #4)}

_{Another note: If you have trouble with any of the pictures, try rebooting the page. That usually works.}

_{Importantest Note: These pictures look sooooo much better on a computer than on a phone. Use a bigger screen!}

So, it’s been a while since I sat down to write anything. The main reason is that, for better or worse, I now have a job again. After getting completely stressed out with teaching, I’m now pushing papers and punching buttons in the Office of the Registrar at UCSC. It’s not glamorous or anything, but it’s decent. My co-workers are an interesting crew. I get to help people solve problems. And my boss has the same birthday as me. The biggest drawback is the unrelenting hours. 8 to 5 daily without the flexibility of determining when I work and what I’m doing is a big change from teaching. But, working at UCSC, I have the great benefit of being able to wander off into the woods most days during my lunch break. I’ve taken to exploring the ravines while trying to avoid the wild turkeys and poison oak. It’s pretty nice. And the days I bike commute home have a pretty spectacular view…

Anyhow, enough about work. I came to tell the story of the days between jobs.

I left teaching behind at the start of November and didn’t start my new job until the beginning of March. That left four months of time to hang out (and job search and write about Southeast Asian travels) in the meantime. I spent a good amount of time exploring the redwoods around Santa Cruz, taking long walks, and playing one of my favorite dice games, Can’t Stop, pretty much non-stop.

But, once I got a job offer, my boss gave me some of the best advice. He said it would take several weeks to get the hiring process done, and once I started I wouldn’t have any vacation time at first, so now was the time to travel. I had had the same thought already, but I liked having it confirmed. So, in my usual spring break tradition (actually in February this time, but…OMG! No more spring breaks! I’ve taken spring break to wander in the desert for many of the last 15 years…what am I going to do?!?!) I took off for a week exploring the red rocks of Utah.

My main goal was to get to see The Wave, a particularly spectacular formation in the North Coyote Buttes area of Vermillion Cliffs National Monument (right on the AZ-UT border). I had already stayed in nearby Page, AZ once, and while I liked it, it wasn’t my favorite, so I decided to head to the other side of the area and stay in Kanab, UT. Kanab is a tiny little town with not much going on, but it’s in a gorgeous area, and that works out well when there are $50/night hotel rooms during the off season. I appreciated that. I also appreciated their attempt to sell the town as “Little Hollywood” since it was used as a base for filming a bunch of old westerns. Signs all around the town point out the various stars that had stayed there to shoot films. I appreciated this sign even more…

Anyhow, while in the area, I didn’t shoot any films, but I did shoot about 2 billion photos. Prepare thyself. (If you just want the best part, skip to the second post in this series. But really, it’s all pretty spectacular. The desert is amazing!)

DAY ONE

I arrived a day later than expected after I missed my connecting flight. It was raining on the drive from St. George to Kanab, so my plans to stop for a hike along the way went out the window.

But, upon checking in to my hotel and checking the weather, I learned that it wasn’t raining at all in Page, so I jumped back in the car and started heading further east. As soon as I crossed the cockscomb (a major north-south ridge halfway between Kanab and Page), the rain disappeared.

Given the potential for the weather to catch up with me and the late start, I decided to stick with short hikes for the day, so I went to one area I’d passed by on many previous drives through the area, the Toadstools. The highlight of the hike is a series of hoodoos (that’s the name for weird towering rock formations in the southwest) called the toadstools, each of the narrow stalks topped with a wider rock. Some were quite spectacular. Others, just odd. And one particularly phallic.

The hike to, from, and around the toadstools was also quite pretty, wandering through a crumbling muddy layer of mixed reds and whites.

As the rains still hadn’t arrived, I drove a few miles back towards Kanab to explore a little canyon I’d seen while driving out to the toadstools. Catstair Canyon cuts right through the Cockscomb just off the side of the highway. At first, I pulled off on the east end of the canyon and wandered in to the wide opening. Just past the entrance to the canyon, there are some great pictographs. However, after about a half a mile or so, the canyon came to a boxy end. There were definitely a few routes I could have climbed up pretty easily, but I wasn’t 100% sure where they went to or that I could get back down safely. Hiking alone in the desert, I try not to take too many risks. (Some, but only if they are small and really worth it.)

So, I backtracked to the car and drove a few miles up the road to the top of the canyon. This end was even prettier and as I headed down-canyon to the east, I started to see something truly odd…

Yeah, that.

While the eastern hike is often labeled “Catstair Writing,” this western part of the canyon is usually called “Catstair Rip Rap.” These piles of old cars are just off the side of the highway, (it’s not an interstate or anything, so not very loud), so I thought maybe they were being transported to a junkyard and fell off the side of the road somehow. Later, I realized that they were intentionally placed there as an additional support to keep the wall of the canyon from collapsing under the weight of the neighboring road. In the end, while I love the purity of the desert, I kinda enjoyed the feeling of a sort of public art piece in the middle of nowhere.

Unfortunately, I didn’t make it too far down the canyon past there. Again, as I was going down, I was cognizant of the need to get back up, and didn’t venture beyond my limits. I knew if I got down to the part just above where I’d stopped before I could p r o b a b l y get down and out the east end of the canyon (if I couldn’t get back up the way I’d come down), but, again, I wasn’t sure. I also didn’t want a repeat of my 2009 trip, when I had exactly one incredible day of hiking, then smashed my toe and had to go home several days early. So, I turned back before getting too deep into the canyon, thinking I’d do one more short hike before heading back for dinner and a shower.

Unfortunately, the shower arrived first. I’d forgotten my earlier observation: that the Cockscomb separated the rainy Kanab-side of the area from the dry Page-side. As soon as I drove about 30 seconds past the turnoff for Catstair Rip Rap, the rains started. I called it a day and went back to explore Kanab.

DAY TWO – MORNING – MY LUCKY BREAK – AND SOME UNNECESSARY DETAILS (if you don’t want to visit the area yourself)

As I mentioned, my number one goal in visiting Kanab was to get to The Wave. To go there, you need to win a lottery to get into the North Coyote Buttes area. For each day, 24 permits are given out several months in advance and 24 are given out just two days before. Not knowing I was coming until just days before this trip, I’d obviously missed the earlier lottery. To enter the daily lottery, you need to be in the area between Kanab and Page, thus the decision to base myself in Kanab.

But, I knew my chances of winning this were low, so I also entered the daily lottery for South Coyote Buttes. This area has formations similar to the wave, but has a more dispersed set of attractions and is generally less well known. For the South area, only 20 permits are given out daily (10 early, 10 two days before).

Well, that first night, I won the Coyote Buttes South lottery. So, on my second day in the area, I got up early to go to an info meeting where I could pick up my permit. I also used the time there to study some maps of South Coyote Buttes and mark my GPS with some rough ideas of where to go because…the area has no trails.

Being on my own, and without a 4WD vehicle meant that I was going to have to park about 3 miles away from the least interesting end of the area and hike as far in as I could before turning around to get back to the car before dark. I was still excited, but I was mentally preparing for a grueling day.

But, as I was collecting my permit and preparing to leave, the three other women who were there asked, “Do you want to share a 4 wheel drive tomorrow?” Hell yeah! In fact, we came up with a great plan. I would drive to the location I had originally planned to hike in from, and they would pick me up there and drive me in their 4WD around to the other end of the area, I’d start hiking with them, and then ditch them and get to go the whole length of South Coyote Buttes back to my car. I was pretty psyched. We made a plan to meet early the next day…

(…to be continued in the next post!)

DAY TWO – HIKING

Well, enough about the tomorrow’s plans. I still had hiking to do today! I left the info meeting, dropped my permit at my hotel, grabbed my bag, and started walking. I spent the next 9 hours on a ridiculously long hike around the outskirts of Kanab. I headed north out of town, climbed up the Kanab cliffs, along the top of a giant mesa (with views north to Bryce Canyon), back down to the base of the cliffs, off trail up a couple of side canyons, halfway up the cliff again and around “K-Hill” (a part of the cliff with a big “K” for Kanab), and then down into the last bits of sprawl heading out to the east of Kanab. Just when I thought I was done…I got a great suggestion from a new friend.

I ran into a woman laying branches across the dirt road to prevent off road vehicles from going where they’re not supposed to. We had a nice long talk about her little war with them and her volunteer work on the Navajo reservation and then she suggested that rather than heading back into Kanab, I should go just a little further and check out Pugh Canyon. Well, she was right, it was lovely. But, it added another 3 miles or so to my day, and by the time I made it back to Kanab, I’d hiked about 14 miles…the day before I was planning an epic trek through trailless desert. Hmmm. Great planning.

Nevertheless, it was a fun day exploring the local trails. I won’t lie and say it was the prettiest hike ever, but if I weren’t already spoiled by visits to Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands, and the like, I would say it was really pretty great. The cliffs were steep, there were some cool rock formations, the little canyons were full of fun rockslides to explore, and the walk into Pugh Canyon (especially as the sun was getting a little lower) was quite lovely.

After a rather exhausting day, I went back to the hotel, washed up, and ate a ridiculously large dinner. I will say that the exhaustion from the hike helped me sleep well, which was good, because the next day was even more exhausting…

_{(Go on. The next post is the one with the best photos and the best story too. Really!)}