Grand Gulch Backpack

Original Trip Description: (April 27-May 4, 1991)
Entrenched in the Cedar Mesa Sandstone of southeastern Utah's redrock canyon country, Grand Gulch is a major tributary of the San Juan River. We will begin our backpack by entering Grand Gulch at the Kane Gulch Ranger Station, and exiting seven days later at Collins Canyon. The trail starts at 6400 feet and quickly enters this immense drainage system. Along the way we will admire 600 foot high canyon walls soaring above us; freshwater pools; and the cliff dwellings, pottery shards, pictographs, and petroglyphs located at countless ancient ruin sites. "The best place to see Indian Ruins on the Colorado Plateau" - see Canyon Hiking Guide by Michael Kelsey.
A major trip emphasis will be to explore most of the significant side canyons of Grand Gulch: Coyote, Bullet, Green, Step, Dripping, and Deer. We'll go as far south as the natural arch located six miles from the San Juan confluence. While there are no layover days, all of the dayhiking opportunities will be optional, allowing each participant to partially choose their activity level. Exploring this isolated and colorful gorge promises to be a stimulating and rewarding experience. The trip is rated moderate to strenuous (M/S).
Originates @ Kane Gulch Ranger Station, UT.

Anasazi Pictographs

Anasazi Granaries

Trip Report:

Can weather ruin a perfectly good backpack? Try meeting cold-footed participants at the trailhead in a snow storm caused by a lingering weather front. Almost immediately, everyone begins to question their sanity and a few people think that it would be a great idea to go to the nearest town and find a good motel in which to tough it out.

Some of us met on Friday evening at Bridges National Monument. It was extremely cold and windy. To make it worse, the 13 space campground was full. After collecting everyone, we went to an overflow camping area and established a hardship camp. Most people went to bed immediately after dinner. A few of us stayed up for a while and discussed the situation in Peter's mini-van. The next morning we took the rim drive to see the bridges and by the time we headed for Kane Gulch the weather was looking ominous. A blizzard was raging at Kane Gulch so we all crowded into the ranger station and talked to ranger Scott Edwards. He gave us a super presentation prior to our departure and offered lots of useful advice.

By the time everyone had arrived, we decided we weren't going to a motel, even with an inch of snow on the side of my truck. We instead decided to start the trip at Collins Spring Trailhead which is 1000' lower than the ranger station. The canyon bottom was an additional 1000' lower. Figuring a drop of 2000' would elevate temperatures 5-10 degrees, it sounded like a great plan to most of us. It was clearing as we all left Kane Gulch and cold but clear at the trailhead.

The trip turned out great. We camped at False Canyon for two nights. Sunday, most of our group dayhiked on their own downstream in Grand Gulch. Two of our hikers reached the arch, over 9 miles away, but most of us found so many side trips and diversions that 5-6 miles downstream was about our limit. We saw pictographs on the walls in many places and several small granary sites. The most spectacular pictographs were the golden hand prints under a huge overhang and the headless bodies on the big panel.

In the following days, we worked our way upstream in continuously improving weather. Both daytime and evening temperatures increased by 10-15 degrees as the weather stayed clear. We encountered larger and larger ruin sites as we approached Bullet Canyon. We set up camp at the mouth of Bullet one day and spent that afternoon hiking to Perfect Kiva and Jailhouse Ruin. The second level of Jailhouse Ruin was a real trip. Dinah and Bob found that you could get on that level by crawling along a 2' wide ledge and then through a body size opening. This ledge was 40-60 foot off the ground. Spectacular! This type of restricted entry to the second level was found in many of the ruin sites including Split Level, Turkey Pen, and Junction Ruin. There was frequently a lower level and a defensible higher ledge with ruins on it.

We camped one night at Split Level Ruin, a great campsite that doesn't get as much sun as one might like when the weather is cold. When the evening air became too cold, everyone would pile into someone's tent. The Hotel Rael, an expedition tent that Rael decided she needed after the first night, became a favorite hangout to play Hearts and hopefully generate some body heat to ward off the evening chill. The last night we stayed at Junction Ruin. It was impossible to believe that someone was able to climb to the defensive second ledge without modern climbing gear. The wall was about 100' high, sloped out and down on all ledges. Over half of the distance appeared to be sheer face with no handholds. Evidence of an old ladder spanned the top 10-15', but who built and carried a 100' ladder to the wall? How was it held in place? Of course this upper ledge was filled with ruins.

Grand Gulch lives up to Michael Kelsey's glowing descriptions. It's a great place to see prehistoric Indian ruins and artifacts. The canyon country is scenic but without towering walls. The canyon rims are always within a thousand vertical feet and frequently roll up. We've been in the bottom ends of both Slickhorn and Grand Gulch from the river. They're magnificent. In a few years, we may return to explore a Slickhorn to Lower Grand Gulch loop.

The present participant limit on a Grand Gulch trip is fifteen, so we had a full trip. We had three new participants on the trip. The rest of the group had traveled with us before. Everyone worked together well on the meal preparations and camp chores. We ate well and probably because of the cold, we ate everything.