As I was filing my lottery application for Coyote Buttes South I also idly checked whether overnight permits were available for Buckskin Gulch/Paria. To my surprise there were two spots and I snapped one up for Friday/Saturday. The timing did not seem ideal as I needed to be in Sin City on Sunday for my flight home early Monday morning. So I signed up to hike Buckskin Gulch and back to Wire Pass TH in 48 hrs. I went for it, and good thing I did. I picked up my permit at Kane County Tourist Office and was good to go for next day.
I camped at the Stateline campground about 1.5 miles from Wire Pass TH and was at the trailhead next morning by 6 AM, the second car in the lot. I knew what to expect the first few miles as I had hiked them the previous Fall. What was different was that the rope at the dryfall along the slot canyon to Wire Pass was missing and the climb-down was awkward. Without the rope there was one rock I could hang on to, but that did not allow me reach ground downslope. The dryfall is a slight overhang , so I hung by my hands from the rock and blindly fished for a foothold below. I thought I had one, but that one gave way and I fell down the second half of the dryfall onto my pack that I had lowered by handline. Luckily no issues as a result of the fall.
I was pleasantly surprised by the dryness of the slot canyon in mid-April. In the Fall I had had to wade through pools, knee-deep maybe, well before I reached the rockfall area where I had turned around. I reached the rockfall area in short order and found a much better way through than last time. As the canyon narrowed the ground became muckier, but for the most part there was a clearly visible path that was mostly sandy or rocky, with some mucky pools and a few water holes thrown in to keep me honest.
At about 10 AM I reached the mid-point where the more alpinistically inclined can climb out. I had had no intention of doing so and after looking at the exit route I stuck to my plan to hike all the way to the Paria. Given my rate of progress I slowed down a good bit for the second half. No need to rush!
Somehow there must be way to climb out this way, not that I see a way that I would take
Since you have to carefully watch where to step you have to remind yourself to not just look at your feet, but to stop and look at the canyon, because that's why you are there in the first place. Unfortunately it was an overcast day and the rock did not glow in the sunlight as it usually does in good weather.
I passed the famous toilet bowl where usually you have to wade through deep stinky muck, but not this time. A new wrinkle was the decomposing body of a bighorn that reeked a bit. Luckily most of the body lay in a pool of water, cold water at that, so the stench was not too bad.
A few hours later I came to an obstacle that I had a different mental picture of. There is a dryfall of some 15-20 ft. There used to be also a hole that you could climb through, but that has been plugged by debris during flooding, so down-climb it is. There's a rope with knots, there are some moqui steps. So you lower your pack on your handline and then you grab the rope and wrangle yourself down. What you do not appreciate at the top is that there is an overhang and there are no moqui steps in the rock for the bottom eight feet I'd guess. So I dangled off the rope and then lowered myself hand-over-hand. Let me say, I would not want to have to climb up this thing!
Dryfall with moqui steps. There's about 8 feet between the bottom moqui step and the wash bottom. Does not look like it, but it is!
After overcoming this hurdle the canyon widens considerably soon after and then just like that you reach the Paria. The river was murky and flowing reasonably strongly, a significant difference to my Fall Hayduke hike when the Paria had been clear and you could see where you were stepping.
I walked up the river carefully checking the ground ahead of me checking for depth of the water and for quicksand. Luckily no quicksand this time, and the water never reached above mid-thigh. I camped uneventfully about a mile upstream of the junction of Buckskin and Paria on the left bank, well above water level.
Next morning I continued upstream, walking in the river for another three miles or so. Man, it was cold! Unsurprising as all the water was snow melt run-off, so of course it's cold. Reminded me of my walk up the Paria more upstream from Hogeye canyon to the Willis TH during my WASU itinerary. Then I had just crossed the river, just an endless seeming number of times and my feet were not on speaking terms with me by day’s end. So this time it was not just crossing the stream, but walking in it for hours. The feet were not happy. Eventually I reached a narrow seam of land along a wall and the sun was shining on me! How nice to feel that warmth!
Eventually you spend more and more time off the banks or on dry ground in the stream bed until you reach the White House TH and campground. From there I made my way to the ranger station, tanked up on water and headed along highway 89 in direction of Kanab to Long Canyon Rd, where I left the highway and followed the sandy dirt road to the top of the ridge separating Long Canyon from Upper Buckskin Gulch. The road is fairly mellow at first, but at the back of the valley it climbs with a vengeance.
At the top I passed a corral and soon after the border of the wilderness, heading East along a cow trail at first and then x-country until I reached a cliff's edge where I could see across Houserock Valley. I found a way through a top layer of cliffs down to a dirt and talus slope which led me into drainages filled with sand and scrubby trees or slickrock. Following my intuition as to what might "go" I made good progress losing altitude and in almost no time was down at Buckskin Gulch bottom level.
I picked up the trail leading to the upper Buckskin Gulch slot canyon, made my way to Wire Pass and headed up to the dryfall, wondering how I was going to climb this thing, given my experience from the day before. Imagine my surprise to find a beautiful ladder installed in the dryfall! It took literally a minute to get up and twenty minutes later I was at my car.
Now I know that I have not to wait to be lucky for an overnight permit to do Buckskin Gulch on a day with decent weather and light. I can do this thing in a day, walk up the Paria to the wilderness border where the powerlines cross the drainage and I will be legal just using a Day Pass. I will be back!
A last note: In February '23 three guys hiked Buckskin Gulch and were caught by a flash flood. One survived, two lost their lives. Buckskin Gulch is nice, but it ain't worth losing your life over! If you have a permit, that's great but you are not obligated to hike the canyon when the conditions are not great. the canyon will still be there when you win a pass the next time! Know what I'm saying?
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