Spooky Slot Canyon Adventure

No, the experience wasn’t “spooky,” but the canyon itself it named Spooky Canyon. Perhaps it is such named because the walls are very high and it’s very narrow, so it can be on the dark side. Some of the walls are dark in color too.

I drove from Escalante down the “Hole in the Rock” road to access Spooky and Peek-a-boo slot canyons. You travel down a dirt road for 26 miles before turning left on Dry Fork Wash. It’s just another 1.7 miles to the trail head where you hike down into a wash where you can access both canyons. I was trying for Peek-a-boo first, but the entrance proved too difficult to climb up with my heavy backpack and tripod. I had strapped my tripod to my pack, but after getting half-way up the entrance, I backed out of it and descended. The weight of the pack just made it too sketchy to proceed. So I decided to go to Spooky instead and I heard you can hike from the Spooky entrance and enter the end of Peek-a-boo and go the other direction. So to Spooky I went with big backpack and tripod in hand.

Slot canyons are better photographed with tripods since they are often dark inside and you also want a large depth of field in your photos (and not to use 6400 ISO). So being, the dutiful photographer, I brought my tripod. Well, let me tell you, Spooky was the most narrow slot canyon I’ve ever been in. For quite a length of it, you can’t even walk forwards, but need to turn to the side to go through and also you need to take off your backpack and hold it in your hand to the side. So there I was scraping myself through the walls with a tripod in one hand and the backpack in the other, each arm to the side. It seems that later on that I became known by the other hikes as the "woman with the tripod."

At least the canyon was very interesting and I did indeed use my tripod to take some photos. It actually worked better to leave it extended as it sometimes was helpful to come down a section. There were a few sections where you need to climb up or down AND they are very narrow. I wonder if anyone gets stuck in these things. Lucky I’m pretty small. LOL You can always tell when someone else is coming as you can hear there scraping and slithering along the walls long before you can see them. Best not to wear clothes that you don’t want shredded. Luckily my clothes seemed to wear well and weren’t damaged, but it’s a good thing to know for the next narrow slot canyon I decide to slither through. Checklist: slender backpack, no tripod, light things and clothes that won’t rip while sliding along rock.

I would like to have more slot canyon adventures and it would be fun to do a more technical one with a very light and slim backpack (and no tripod). I did slither through the canyon a bit without my pack and tripod to scout ahead for potential photos, and the freedom was wonderful.

So after Spooky, I hiked over to the end of Peek-a-boo and did it backwards. It was interesting, but not nearly as nice as Spooky and by then the lighting wasn’t good anymore for pics, so the little windows I had wanted to photograph didn’t look that great by the time I did it. That’s the only interesting part of it photo-wise and it’s in the very beginning. This canyon had some water in it here and there, but it was easily avoided.

So then I had to descend that steep entrance….or walk back through to the end and hike over the top to the entrance of Spooky to get back to the wash. Very doable, but much longer of course. As I was perched at the top contemplating how I could lower my pack and tripod and then climb down, a very spry elderly couple came over and asked if I needed a spot. So I said yes and lowered them my stuff and the guy gave me a spot as I down climbed. They saved the day! Yeah! So happy they came along and helped me out.

After the canyon adventures, I went back up the dirt road towards Escalante and visited Devil’s Garden on the way – an area of weird sculpted sandstone shapes, bridges and arches.

So now it’s time for the Petrified Forest and Burr Trail and then head to Capitol Reef.