Author’s Note: This is part 2 of a 4 part post. It’s split up so that the enormous number of photos doesn’t make it impossible for them to load on your computer. If you want to go to the first post, you can find it here.
DAY THREE – SOUTH COYOTE BUTTES
When I got back from this day of exploring South Coyote Buttes, I told Jessica that it might have been my best day of hiking ever. I don’t know if that’s an exaggeration or not, but it was freakin’ awesome. Three reasons:
- Beauty – this area is a national treasure full of endless wildly-shaped and -colored rocks. Some are pure browns and reds, others amazing swirls of every shade from white through yellow, orange, and red all the way to purple.
- Adventure – without trails, wandering among these formations is a truly amazing experience. There are a million ways to climb up, slide down, twist around, and get lost. And, oh, we got lost.
- Company – while I love exploring on my own (and, of course, with Jessica), my three fellow escursionisti made this a truly memorable day.
So, let’s start there. I met Michele, Dani, and Irene in Kanab and we followed each other on the hour long drive around to the south side of Vermillion Cliffs and up House Rock Valley Road to the parking area that was the closest I could get without 4WD, about 3 miles southwest of South Coyote Buttes. After slapping on some sunscreen, I hopped in the car and we took the next hour to wander slowly across a winding set of sandy roads to the Cottonwood Cove parking area on the east side of South Coyote Buttes. I served as the designated gate-opener:
Along the way, I had some time to get to know this fearless trio. Michele just retired after many years of teaching Italian in Chicago. Dani was her former partner. And Irene is Dani’s current partner. Both of these two are also retired Italian teachers, but not teachers of Italian–they’re teachers from Brescia, Italy.
The three of them had traveled a bunch together previously, both in the US and Italy and had some great banter back and forth. They were clearly all very close. Michele, of course, was fluent in both English and Italian. Dani understands English pretty well, and speaks a fair bit. Irene only knows a tiny bit of English, just slightly more than my nearly complete lack of Italian. But, between my modest Spanish skills, a few French phrases here and there, and (of course) Michele’s translating, we all did quite well together. They taught me a few words, explained about the Italian practice of (over-) sharing about their poop, and generally kept the hike entertaining.
There was a small trail leading across the sand from the Cottonwood Cove parking lot to the closest formations on the edge of the permitted area. As we approached and discovered what we were in for, we were stunned.
Eventually, we started the process of winding our way up and down the swirling sides of the rock formations, creating our own switchbacks, trying not to break the razor sharp fins of rock that make the area so amazing. Being a bit younger, and having a GPS map on my phone, I led the way most of the time. Of course, the person who kept up with me best was Irene, the one person I couldn’t really talk with. But, that’s OK. We had fun gesturing at one another, oo-ing and aa-ing over the landscape, and yelling at Dani and Michele–in whatever language we felt like–about which way they should or shouldn’t try to climb or descend.
While Irene and I kept our communication to a minimum, mostly smiles back and forth, Dani was excited to babble with me all the time. I tend to engage strictly in verbal theatrics. Dani is more of a class clown. She liked to ham it up in photos…
We even found some dinosaur footprints at one point and she had to be part of that as well, leaving her prints as a point of comparison. (Yes, they’re actually dinosaur footprints!)
And Michele was great to chat with. She told me stories of her adventures in the Southwest, in Italy, and in dealing with Dani (who was a handful). She was also, thankfully, willing to pose for pictures without being completely ridiculous.
The four of us had a great day exploring together. And it really was just us. As I said, only 20 people get permits for this area each day, and the area is probably about 10 or 20 square miles of just wild formations. There was NO ONE there. We literally didn’t see anyone else from the time we started until we got back to the parking lot, where we encountered one other small group. So isolated!
From our initial entry into the area, we wandered up and down the meandering sandstone formations…
Usually, I (and often Irene) would be out front, climbing up one mound or another, looking to see if we could make it down the other side safely. Occasionally we’d wave our arms wildly and signal Dani and Michele to turn around and find another route when we found that we were either climbing too steeply or had just scaled something with a giant drop off on the other side. But, mostly, our wandering–slightly guided by the random points I’d marked on my GPS–was fairly successful.
One of the highlights was finding the “Southern Wave,” a small area with a wave-like set of tiny delicate sandstone ridges much-like the more famous “Wave” in the North Coyote Buttes area. It was stunningly gorgeous.
And it also made for a good surfing spot…
As we wandered, we had fun trying to come up with good names for some of our favorite hoodoos and hills…
We marveled at the paper thin formations in some areas. Some made perfectly straight lines, others met at right angles, and some had clearly been warped and wobbled by the movements of the earth over the years…
In other places the giant towers, hoodoos, mounds, cliffs, and canyons captured our attention. I loved the mix of swirls, the ropy lines, the crumbling caps, and the windblown curves. Everywhere I looked was absolutely spectacular.
It wasn’t all just beautiful sandstone. There was also just plain sand. After we wandered a bit farther north than we’d meant to, we turned to the south and followed a sandy wash for a mile or so, encountering a few fallen cow-mrades along the the way.
Some places we enjoyed the desert flora…
…and others we simply examined the shapes left by the interaction of wind and sand.
While Irene was fairly confident in her climbing ability, Dani was reckless and ran up and down the sandstone hills at an unsafe speed (while telling me about times she fell and broke this or that bone), and Michele was a good sport in (slightly nervously) following the rest of us up and down some slopes we shouldn’t have been messing with.
In the end, we made some mistakes. After wandering in the desert for 40 years (or 4 hours), we decided we should start heading back to the car. We turned back to the east and started heading uphill, knowing that we needed to look for a gentle ascent from the canyon we had entered to the plateau above.
Our first attempt was a failure. We spent about half an hour winding our way up through some twisting alcoves and sweeping structures, only to find the hill getting steeper and steeper — steep to the point where we might have made it up, but definitely couldn’t turn back around and get down. Seeing as I was (de facto) leading three 60+ year old folks through a trail-less wilderness with no help for miles around, I decided not to risk it.
We looked to one side…but found a gaping hundred foot drop-off. On the other…a sheer wall faced us. So, it was back down we went. This was trickier work than we expected, and it made us glad we’d decided to stop ascending when we did, because it wasn’t even as steep as the wall we’d given up on climbing. We made our way carefully down, sometimes coaching one another where to step over a ledge or how to scoot down a steep slide, other times giving a helping hand (or just catching Dani when she started sliding)…
Eventually, we got to one section that had been the hardest to get up and I said I’d test out scooting down on my butt. I slid halfway down the slope without any ability to stop myself. Shit. I yelled, “Don’t do that!” and turned around to climb back up to my companions.
Luckily, I’d come prepared. Many years ago, Jessica and I had bought a simple 25-foot piece of webbing to carry when we went out on desert hikes. It’s light and folds up pretty small, but is strong enough to easily hold our weight. I yanked this from the bottom of my pack, wedged myself in where I had a good foot hold, and provided an anchor for my friends as they slid down.
Once they were down, I used the rope to throw my backpack down to them and then slid down myself. Stupidly, I slid down from where I’d just been sitting, a much steeper slope down than where I’d tried sliding from before. If you recall, the first time, I’d been able to stop myself before climbing back up. This time, I slid straight down and barely caught myself before I went over the small drop off at the bottom of the slope. Irene also caught my foot a second later, so I was doubly-saved. Yay!
Yeah, it doesn’t look that steep, but we were all old folks, so it wasn’t as easy as we’d hoped it would be…
Anyhow, you may have caught on to the fact that I didn’t follow through on my original plan for the day. Somewhere along the way, I realized a few things: (1) I was having fun with these folks, and (2) they had no map, GPS, or any other real method of finding their way back to the car. I think they would have been fine, but I didn’t really like the idea of leaving Irene and Michele alone to deal with Dani if she fell again.
…And (back to my first reason) they were really amusing me. Super-great folks to hike with.
You can see from how wobbly our track through the area looks just how much route-finding we did. And you can see our little misadventure down at the southwest corner. (The little symbols on the map were my guesstimates of where to find some of the coolest features in the area.)
This map also only represents about 1/4 of the South Coyote Buttes area. To get back to my car would have been another 8 miles or so to the south from near the point where we decided to head back uphill towards the 4WD. That was when I really made my decision. Staying with my people and helping them get home safe seemed like the right choice to make. (Though, I really want to go back and explore more! This place is wild!)
Anyhow, we eventually found another route back up and then made our way across the plateau, past more fascinating hoodoos, and back to the car. An hour in their 4WD back to my car, and then another hour drive and voila! Back to Kanab!
I seriously can’t say enough good things about this day. I got to hang out with some great people. South Coyote Buttes is an absolutely gorgeous area with wild terrain to explore. Climbing, hiking, sliding, route-finding, lost-getting, and all of it was just excellent. If you have the energy, go! I know I’ll be back. And I hope I’ll be seeing my fellow escursionisti again soon. (Perhaps in Brescia?)
(BTW, thanks to Michele for a handful of these pictures!)
(More crazy desert landscapes in the next post. Weirder, even! Though maybe a tad bit less pretty…)
A SERIOUS contender for ‘boldly but blindly’ – but you made it – somehow.