Buckskin Gulch

So I got the great idea to do this hike a little while ago, but I just had to convince some friends to join me. The hike that I wanted to do was Buckskin Gulch and Paria Canyon. Buckskin Gulch is a leg of Paria Canyon which is a slot canyon located on the border of Utah and Arizona. The hike was about 23 miles, so it had to be done as at least an over nighter. So I talked some friends into joining me and we got all the required permits. It's a slot canyon so you are required to get a back country permit and they only give out 20 a night. So once we worked out all of those details we were ready to go. Thursday night we drove up to the trail head after work so that we would be ready to go Friday morning. Friday morning we were up and ready to go. Since the trail that we decided to go wasn't a loop we had to coordinate leaving one car at the end of the trail. Finally we were at the trail head and on our way. It was a gorgeous day to be hiking. Not to far on the trail we got into the canyon. We entered Buckskin Gulch through the Wire Pass trail. It got narrow and deep kind of quickly. Wire Pass was only a few miles until it meet up with the main part of Buckskin Gulch. We ran into a couple people going down the trail, but not too many. That is one of the nice things about limiting the amount of people in the canyon. It doesn't get to crowded. Once we got into Buckskin Gulch is where we ran into the first puddle of water. We new that the trail was going to have water, so we weren't surprised. The water was really muddy and kind of cold. The water at the bottom of the canyon really didn't see much of the sun light. It also meant that we didn't see much of the sunlight. It meant that when we actually ran into rays of sunlight we were super excited to see them. The canyon was absolutely beautiful. Buckskin Gulch is known to be one of the longest and deepest slot canyons in the southwest. Part of the danger when hiking down slot canyons is the danger of flash flooding. Because of the narrowness of the canyon any amount of water could come rushing down the canyon and would be extremely dangerous. We saw a few logs lodged in the canyon from rainstorms. It gives some perspective to how high the water would be when it was raining. Because of the danger of flash floods there were only a few places that we could camp in the canyon. This made the hike on Friday kind of long cause we had to get to the camp site. I had a little misfortune in one of the puddles along the way. I was wearing a pair of Keen water shoes that were working great until the one got stuck in the mud as I was walking through a puddle that was waist deep. Had it been clear water I probably would have fished it out, but the water was so murky I wouldn't see anything. I decided that it just wasn't worth digging out, so I left my shoes as a memory in the canyon. Fortunately I had packed another pair of shoes in my pack, so I didn't have to walk the rest of the way bare foot. One of the most challenging parts of the canyon came near the end of Friday. There is a huge log and rock jam in the canyon. The only way to get around it is to lower your packs down and than climb down the rope. It's probably about a 15' drop. It actually wasn't too bad, because there were notches already carved in the rock. There was also a rope that was also attached. It was kind of a fun little section of the hike. To end out the day about 1/2 before we got to the camp ground we had to walk through a puddle that was more mud than water. We ended up with mud caked shoes and our legs were caked in mud up to our knees. If you didn't know any better you'd think that we'd gotten tans. Shortly after that we were able to get to our camp spot which was in a wider part of the canyon. It felt so nice just to put on clean clothes and get some warm food to eat. We were pretty tired Friday night so had no problem getting to sleep. The next morning we woke up broke camp and were on our way. It was another beautiful morning in the canyon. It wasn't much past our camp site that we reached the location where Buckskin Gulch meets Paria Canyon. We were stopping to fill up water when we ran into a group of guys coming up Paria Canyon. Right where we had to turn to go up Paria Canyon there was another puddle that we had to wade through. The guys went ahead of us and as they walked through the water continued to get deeper and deeper. Eventually they had to take their packs off and carry them over their heads. Let me mention that I was shorter than most of the guys and we had to go the same way up Paria Canyon. Up to this point the deepest water that we'd walk through was about at my hips I didn't have to worry about taking my pack off. There were probably three or four puddles that we had to walk through Saturday morning that were chest deep, so to get through I had to carry my pack over my head and walk very carefully through the water. It definitely made for an exciting hike. The hike out of Paria Canyon was really pretty, there was more sunlight as the canyon started to widen out. The hike out on Saturday wasn't as far as on Friday, but we were definitely ready to be done. Overall it was an amazing hike and I'm so glad that I had the friends who wanted to join me. It was beautiful to see everything in the canyon.