Buckskin Gulch-Paria Canyon Backpack

Original Trip Description: (October 3-10, 1992)
The Paria River begins in the Bryce Canyon area and flows through some of the most spectacular canyon country in the Southwest. We'll enter through Buckskin Gulch, Paria Canyon's largest and most uniquely beautiful tributary. It is known for its sheer vertical walls and narrow sections, some no wider than a few feet. This canyon is a definite ten on the slot canyon scale.
After reaching the Paria confluence, we will continue through exotic multi-colored rock layers of the Carmel, Navajo, Kayenta, Moenave, Chinle, and Moenkopi, a tour spanning 200 million years of geologic time. Erosion has carved natural arches, alcoves, amphitheaters, pinnacles, and domes. There are a number of ancient petroglyphs along our route. Time has been allotted to explore Wrather Canyon to the arch, a rincon, and several other interesting dayhike opportunities. The trip is rated as moderate to strenuous (M/S).
Originates @ Lee's Ferry, AZ.

Buckskin Narrows

Abandoned Water Pump

Trip Report:

From Lee's Ferry, four of us hiked down Cathedral Wash on the afternoon of the meeting day. Instead of returning up the wash, we walked the Colorado River to Lee's Ferry, something Bob hadn't done since his 1980 walk from Diamond Creek to Lee's Ferry. By dinner time, the entire group had showed up. The campground was windy as always, which made dinner difficult to cook as everything had to be weighted down. The pots lost so much heat it was almost impossible to bring anything to a boil. Next time we meet at Lee's Ferry, we're thinking of reserving campsites and going to the Vermilion Cliffs Lodge for dinner.

The next morning all eight of us piled into two vehicles and drove our own shuttle to the trailhead. We left the rest of the vehicles in the Lee's Ferry river runners parking lot. We stopped in at the Paria Ranger Station for a last minute weather report and some extra trail maps. The last rain had been the stormy night when we were on Lake Powell two weeks earlier. Buckskin Gulch was in the best condition we had seen in our four trips. There were no large pools to swim, limited amounts of oozing mud to walk through, and sufficient water in settled pools that we didn't have to carry any.

Our first night's camp was at the Middle Trail. A few folks slept in the stream bed since the weather was so clear that a flash flood seemed unlikely. We cooked dinner up on a ledge and stored out packs up high, just in case. In the high country, Bob and Jim found a huge wall covered with petroglyphs and another route back into the canyon. All but one of us climbed out to the plateau the next morning to retrace their route. We saw few hikers in Buckskin but Paria was another story. We met one 15 person Elderhostel group and another 15 person National Sierra Club group. We were somewhat surprised because the new group size limit is ten, as of April, 1992. Traffic thinned as we proceeded down the Paria, probably because a lot of people hiked in and out the upper end and some were on a faster schedule than we were. The springs in Paria were all running well. We didn't have to drink streambed water anywhere except in Buckskin at the Middle Trail Camp and the last night at the Wilson Ranch.

Four of us made a couple of heroic climbs out of the Paria drainage. One was an interesting route discovery with intricate traversing through breaks in the sandstone. The other was a brutal rotten rock climb for close to 2000 feet. Both were exciting and offered great views. All but one of us made it up to Wrather Arch. We hiked separately in smaller groups much of the time and one person inadvertently hiked past the narrow canyon mouth of Wrather Creek. The Elderhostel guide, Carol Sue, pointed out two different petroglyph panels which we were having difficulty finding. One of them contained a porno-glyph, something we hadn't encountered before. Nearly everyone we met had a copy of an excellent new guide for this area: "Hiking and Exploring the Paria River" by Michael R. Kelsey.

On a beautiful clear night, our last camp was amongst beastly Russian Thistle at the old Wilson Ranch site. Carol, who had been sketching almost everyday, shared her artwork with us at dinner that evening. Weather conditions were excellent for the entire week. We had seven days of absolutely perfect hiking weather. Daytime temperatures were around 75 degrees and nighttime temperatures were 45-50 degrees.

We stopped at the Lonely Dell Ranch on the way out to eat some oriental pears from the orchard and take a few group pictures. Jim returned the drivers and their packs to the Wire Pass Trailhead on his way home and away we all went.

Report of a more recent Paria backpacking trip from our quarterly newsletters:

* October 2, 1999