UT- Hole in the Rock Trail

[Handlebars]

Updated as of August 2009

Ah yes, Hole in the Rock Trail, how you changed my life. This is the first really long slickrock trail I have done. It is 34 miles each way, through some of the most uninhabited, unspoiled land in Utah. It follows part of a much longer route blazed by Mormon missionaries driving covered wagons during the winter of 1879-80, from Escalante to what would become the town of Bluff on the San Juan River. This was a dubious shortcut, never attempted before that ended up turning what should have been a 6 week journey into a 6 month ordeal. Thanks to the pneumatic rubber tire and internal combustion engine, we Jeepers can do this segment in 2~3 days.

It is an out-n-back dead end route now, starting from Highway 276 about 13 miles east of Halls Crossing Marina, coming to an end at the head of Cottonwood Canyon, 3 miles shy of Lake Powell. The actual Hole in the Rock dugway that lent this trail the name is on the opposite side of the Lake. To get there it is a 202 mile drive, including a ferry crossing.

The Hole in the Rock Road is the 56 mile maintained dirt road leaving Scenic Highway 12 at Escalante, following the first portion of this same trail blazed by the San Juan Mission in 1879 to the now impassable Hole in the Rock road cut. Almost anything with tires can make the drive from Escalante to the Hole in the Rock. Thousands of hikers travel it every year to access sites such as the Devil’s Garden, Twentymile Wash Dinosaur Trackway, Peek a Boo & Spooky Gulches, Dance Hall Rock and the canyons of the Escalante River. However, that is the subject of another article.

Now, we are just looking at the Hole in the Rock Trail, the much more rugged part of the emigrants’ journey that began after they skidded their wagons down the mile long dugway created with 6 weeks of hard labor and ingenious engineering and ferried them all across what was then a languid Colorado River at winter’s ebb.

The trail is broken up into two maps, north and south. The trail used to go through Lake Canyon but the route washed out and became impassable to vehicles in March of 2009. The updated routing is shown as a solid red line on both halves of the map. The Lake Canyon routing is the dashed red line on the north map. You will not be able to drive past the washout shown on the map. The new trail entrance on Hwy 276 is easy to find thanks to a metal “Hole in the Rock” sign. This new segment is clearly marked with colored ribbons, painted dashes on the bare slickrock sections and some occasional road signs.

There is a spur road shown on the south map that grazes the south end of the Waterpocket Fold as it descends 1000 feet to Lake Powell at the Rincon. The BLM shows it on their route inventory, unfortunately Glen Canyon National Recreation Area does not, so it should be considered closed to vehicle travel. There is a possibility that it could become open if enough OHV users make their wishes heard- GCNRA is at the beginning of creating a new OHV travel plan. I submitted it as a route and suggested adding the shore of Lake Powell at the Rincon as a designated primitive vehicle camping location in their initial public scoping. There will be more chances for public comment before this travel plan is finalized. Let's get this perfectly good 60 year old 4wd road that goes to an incredibly desirable camping location added to the GCNRA route inventory! In the meantime the route to the Rincon is usually not marked with any kind of sign at all. If you stray down that road by accident and your vehicle shows up on the shore of Lake Powell you are likely to meet a Ranger in a boat.

There are several possible campsites shown on the map that are included as waypoints in the .gpx file. Some people set up camp partway through the trail and leave it there to use the next night on the return trip. Most Jeeps will be able to do the round trip from Hall’s Crossing Marina, which is 13 miles from the trailhead, on a single tank of gas. Hall’s Crossing makes for a good rendezvous point before starting your trip. There is ample tow vehicle storage, just be sure to display your receipt for the $15 Glen Canyon National Recreation Area fee. The Marina has a small store/RV campground/gas station. The gas pumps have card readers and are available 24 hours a day. You may want to bring a little extra gas if you are inclined to go exploring. Filling up there:

RV sites are $38.25 a night, or you can just get a hot shower from 8am-5pm for $2. For current information call the store at (435) 684-7009.

Across the road from the RV campground is a separate tent campground that has sites for $18/night which include a solar heated (cold!) shower in the price. A group site is also available for the same $18 flat rate.

Those of you coming south on Highway 276 will want to check the Lake Powell Ferry schedule and rates here or here before you leave.

Your choice of 87 or 100 octane gasoline is also available at Cal Black Airport, near the old Hole in the Rock Trailhead on Hwy 276. The airport is staffed 24/7 so stop on in anytime for a fill up.

On to some trail scenery...

Starting from the new bypass trail that comes in the Nokai Dome Road you will soon see this derelict halftrack. Note the road sign in the background, this new bypass is very well marked.

It is quick, easy driving until you leave the Nokai Dome Road, then things get rougher. I’m not sure if this was an existing track from uranium prospectors, there are places that seem to have been bladed at some point.

Some minor challenges along the way

There are quite a few signs marking the route

Moab-style painted dashes show the way over slick rock expanses

There were signs to orient you when intersecting the original Hole in the Rock Trail…

All that is left in May of 2008 are the posts

An optional steep hill at the waypoint “Three Way”

The slickrock jungle that much of the trail passes over

Another nice camping area, waypoint labeled “Big Alcove Camp” in the .gpx file. It is one of the nicer campsites for a large group and comes before the difficult ascent of Grey Mesa.

 

[Handlebars]

The dugway going up to Grey Mesa- one of the more challenging parts of the trail. This part was blasted out by prospectors in the ‘50s and takes a slightly different route than the wagon road put in by the Hole in the Rock party.

The original wagon road up Grey Mesa is better suited for hikers than Jeeps:

There is about 6.5 miles of easy high range driving on top of Grey Mesa.

A look at the Great Bend of the San Juan River, now Lake Powell

Dropping off the far end of Grey Mesa you soon reach the Chute, which has the unfair reputation as the most difficult part of this trail.

A short hike down canyon from the Chute Jared found Old Settler Natural Bridge:

It is about .5 miles down this potholed canyon

Back to driving the Hole in the Rock Trail- route finding is most difficult in the last 3 miles of trail as you travel up, down, over and around innumerable fins and domes of Navajo Sandstone. It gives you an appreciation for the abilities of the pioneers to find their way through this maze. You will need to look for the occasional tire tracks and rock cairns as very little road cutting was necessary to get the wagons through here.

 

[Handlebars]

At trail’s end you have a distant view of the actual Hole in the Rock on the opposite side of the canyon.

Jared and I had always wished for more time on previous trips so we could hike down Cottonwood Canyon to the lake. We left before sunrise to avoid as much heat as possible on one midsummer trip, since the canyon ran east/west and would be sunny all day long.

I had hiked down as far as Cottonwood Hill before and thought the route was well marked and easy to follow. It turns out that the rest of the trail down from there has been either reclaimed by the abundant vegetation of the canyon bottom or washed away. It sure felt like an off-trail hike, despite the intermittent covered wagon emblazoned posts marking the way. Look carefully for the trail:

Didya see it? Neither did we. Those pictures were just from the easy parts of the trail. I was too busy the rest of the time.

After 3 hours of hiking we called it quits here. Register Rock is just out of sight, below the cleft of Hole in the Rock but on this side of the lake. This area would be better explored from a boat.

Jared hiking back up the Sand Hill. Cottonwood Hill’s dugway is seen in the upper left, the rock that gives Aladdin’s Lamp Pass its name is on the skyline, right.

Considerable work went into the road cut on Cottonwood Hill

I would suggest only hiking down this far because that is the end of any visible trail for at least the next 3 miles. It ended up being a little over 5 hour hike, when we got back to camp we were pretty hot and tired.


Now to show the dead end but still interesting original Hole in the Rock Trail routing, starting from next to the Cal Black Memorial Airport. The Fortress Ruin is the first major landmark on the way. Down below is a great cottonwood shaded camping area, it is the one labeled "East Fork Camp" on the north map.

The Fortress is an Anasazi structure built of limestone that was excavated by a University of Utah crew headed by C. Gregory Crampton in 1960. They found that the walls and floor were finished with clay mortar although there few traces left of it now. It was a large, open pueblo that is suspected of being a gathering place, not a defensive arrangement due to the prominent location and low, easily approachable walls. Analysis of artifacts show approximately equal amounts of pottery from the Kayenta and Mesa Verde cultures in direct association, suggesting that the two cultures intermingled in this area. The estimated time of occupation was 1150-1300AD.

This is part of the big camping area in the canyon just below the Fortress. Several dozen people could camp comfortably in this canyon.

The first big drop comes soon after leaving the camping area

The serpentine trail through the upper half of Lake Canyon.

This canyon gets its name from a lake that existed here until 1915- Lake Pagahrit. There was a natural dam formed by a sand dune that completely blocked the canyon, allowing a lake/swamp to fill the canyon upstream. The Hole in the Rock party crossed this canyon on the top of that dam. In this dry country, runoff is has almost as much sediment as water and the canyon behind the dam filled in with dirt. This built up almost 100 feet of new soil that allowed trees and other vegetation to flourish. Once the dam washed out in 1915 erosion started carrying this backfill away. The more recent routing of the Hole in the Rock Trail follows the canyon floor formed by the remaining backfill. It used to go a couple hundred feet further down the canyon before turning up and out to the west. That location washed out in the huge rainstorms of October, 2006 and became utterly impassable in March of '09.

This is where the trail through Lake Canyon comes to an abrupt end.

For scale note the people circled in red at top left: