October 15, 2023

By Tim Briese

7.8 miles, 200’ elevation gain, 6:00 roundtrip time

Teresa and I left Escalante and drove about ten miles east on UT 12 and turned right onto the Hole in the Rock Road. After driving this washboardy road about five miles to a big blue semi trailer water tank we parked in a small parking area on the side of the road. There were five or six other vehicles there. This trailhead and the trail are unmarked but the route simply heads east down the broad and sandy Harris Wash.

the beginning of the hike down harris wash

We found a trail and hiked down the wash about two miles until we reached the remnants of a fence where we turned left into Bighorn Canyon, a tributary of Harris Wash. A short distance up Bighorn we came to a fork and hiked into the left branch of the canyon. It had scenic stripes on the walls and soon narrowed into a nice slot.

entering the left fork of bighorn canyon

Presently the canyon became impassably narrow and we retraced our steps back to the fork and went up the main canyon to the right. It had a nice stretch of narrows too and interesting striped walls but they were not as tall.

there were a couple of chockstones in the canyon that were fun to climb over

After a while the canyon opened up and a fascinating colorful landscape unfolded.

We looked around taking photos for a while here and had some lunch in the cool shade behind a rock wall. It was sunny and quite warm today.

we dubbed this the "ekg rock"

Then we explored further up the canyon a ways until it became less interesting.

hiking further up the canyon

We returned to the colorful area and hiked up onto the slickrock above to gain some wider views of the area.

the bottom of the canyon is in the slot running diagonally across the bottom part of the photo

Then we hiked back down the canyon and returned to the trailhead. 

nice colors in harris wash on the way back

We sat on our chairs for a while and enjoyed a cool drink while soaking up the desert silence before returning to Escalante.