In the Grand Wash

March 29, 2021

As predicted, today is fair but very windy with gusts up to 40 mph. Biking is out, as is the hike we’d been considering: to Navajo Knobs, a highly touted ridgetop hike into the national park that sounds amazing but a bit too precarious with such strong winds.

Right after breakfast Rachael takes off on a walk down the backroads around the motel, wanting to get her exercise in early before the wind picks up. She returns after only a few miles for a change - it’s cold this early in the day and she’s feeling uncharacteristically achy and ready for a day off. She’s pretty happy to hang out at in the room for the rest of the day, reading a book and listening to the wind howl outside.

I’d thought I must just sit out the whole day, until around noon when I go out to retrieve something from the car and realize it feels and looks wonderful outside and I have to get outside and do something. I consider biking somewhere in spite of the wind but then settle on driving back down to the park for a gorge hike, somewhere that might be more sheltered from the wind and where I don’t need to fear getting blown over a cliff.

I ended up in the entrance to the Grand Wash, the springboard for a few of the better known hikes in this part of the park. I didn’t take any of those though. Instead, I just parked the car at a pullout and walked up a minor side wash, following an unmarked and faint trail up through a narrow gap between towering, varnished cliffs. I didn’t get far - maybe four or five miles round trip - because I was eventually stopped by a narrow throat in the canyon clogged by cabin-sized boulders. I crawled between a few of them, finally resorting to crawling on hands and knees through a low gap before coming to an obvious dead end and turning back.

Not a long walk, but a wonderful experience walking beneath these amazing cliffs, totally alone, hoping this wasn’t just the time for another one of those cabin-sized boulders to dislodge from the rim and bring a curt end to my project. A fine coda to the tour.

A pretty primitive trail, which you can see at the bottom. Only fifty yards from the car, and I’m totally alone for the next two hours. You don’t have to go far.

The trail, such as it is, follows the wash around the bend to the left.

Image not found :( — Beneath a large sandstone arch. I felt just a bit insecure walking beneath here.

Just visible up there is the top of Cassidy Arch, so named because it was reputedly a hideout of Butch Cassidy. There’s a short, steep, exposed hike up there but this didn’t feel like the day for it.

From our motel this evening: the last full moon of the tour. A well timed one too - its high tide helped that tugboat armada finally wrest the Ever Given free from the banks of the Suez Canal.

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