WHITE CANYON, UTAH
March 26, 2005
By Tim Briese
This marvelous canyon is located in the heart of Utah=s canyon country, about 60 miles southeast of Hanksville. We had hiked a section of it on another trip in 1999, and were so impressed with it that we wanted to go back and see it again.
My wife Teresa, daughter Emily, and I were returning home from a trip to Phoenix and planned our route to take us through the canyon country in order to do this hike. We stayed the night before in Mexican Hat, Utah, at the San Juan Inn, a motel with a spectacular setting in the cliffs on the north side of the San Juan River Canyon. In the morning we drove northward into Utah, and took scenic Highway 95 northwest toward White Canyon. This remote highway has long been one of my favorite scenic drives. Following directions from Michael Kelsey=s Canyon Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau, we pulled off the highway into a parking area on the north side of the road just past mile marker 57.
We left the parking area with our two labs and hiked about 200 yards north across a plateau until we reached the rim of a side canyon that we descended to reach White. The descent was a lot of fun, as we downclimbed about 500 feet on a lightly cairned route, with a bit of scrambling over beige sandstone blocks and benches until we reached the bottom. Emily was ecstatic about this adventure, because scrambling routes in canyon terrain are her favorite kind of hikes.
Once we reached the bottom of White Canyon we were a bit surprised to find a little stream flowing there, because the canyon bottom had been mostly dry when we were here previously. We proceeded to hike down the canyon, with the intention of going as far as we could until our progress was stopped by permanent pools of water in narrow slots further down the canyon. One such place a couple of miles down the canyon is known as the A Black Hole@ , and can be negotiated only by swimming through a narrow slot only two to three feet wide, a feat best attempted during hot seasons of the year in order to avoid hypothermia from the continuously cold water.
Upon heading downstream we immediately encountered a place where the stream flowed up against a sheer wall, so we had to remove our boots and wade to the other side. We proceeded down the canyon, hiking on gravelly washes, scrambling over slickrock boulders and benches, and crossing back and forth across the stream. This was a great deal of fun. The golden beige canyon walls towered several hundred feet above.
After proceeding a mile or more down the twisting canyon we reached a narrow gorge where the stream flowed into a slot a few feet wide. The water here was too deep and far too cold to wade in for any distance, so our progress appeared to be stymied. We looked for a way around this obstacle in the cliffs above, but found none. Concluding that this was as far as we could go today, we stopped here and ate lunch while sitting on a nice sunny shelf above the creek.
In 1999 we went further down the canyon, past pools of water, under interesting overhangs, and over rocky areas on the canyon floor, until we reached an area of huge boulders that we scrambled over for a ways until our progress was stymied by water pools in narrow slots.
After relaxing for a while we headed back up the canyon, enjoying the trip back every bit as much as the hike in. The dogs had a great time splashing in and out of the water. We scrambled back up the rocky route out of the side canyon and returned to the truck early in the afternoon, completing this nice little hike in about three hours.
