1. Zebra Slot Canyon Escalante Utah

Zebra Slot Canyon, Escalante: See 58 reviews, articles, and 67 photos of Zebra Slot Canyon, ranked No.11 on TripAdvisor among 25 attractions in Escalante. Zebra Slot Canyon can easily be visited when you are staying in Escalante or even better when you stay in Boulder with their fabulous lodge. There is no guide required and you can go there on your own. It is very good but Antelope Canyon is more spectaclular. However it is a nice alternative if you are not going all the way to Page,AZ.

×Harris Wash offers an easy route to the Escalante River and is popular with both people and cattle - many visitors hike the lower 10 miles, usually on overnight backpacking trips, while the upper stretches are grazed extensively all year. The canyon becomes 1,200 feet deep and has impressive streaked Navajo sandstone walls, large rock alcoves, pools and year-round flowing water in the lower reaches which sustains many trees, bushes and flowers. It has no obstructions and although never very narrow, some of its tributaries are true slot canyons and are much less often visited, as the best ones, which are characterised by unusual rock colours and textures, start upstream of the regular trailhead.

Location

Harris Wash is just about the longest tributary of the Escalante River - it starts high in the Kaiparowits Plateau, where it is known as Alvey Wash and is followed for a while by the upper end of Smoky Mountain Road. The stream flows northwards to Escalante town then turns abruptly southeast, runs close to UT 12 for a while and crosses the Hole-in-the-Rock Road at mile 4 where it changes name. Harris Wash meets the main river after another 20 miles and the hike can begin from this point, but the usual starting point is further downstream, reached by a side road - see the location section of Red Breaks for details. For exploring the upper tributaries, there are two options for the approach - either walk down Harris Wash starting from the main road, or take a short-cut along a tributary (Halfway Hollow), which meets the road 3.5 miles further south.

Photographs

10 views of Harris Wash and side canyons.

Map

Zebra Slot Canyon Escalante Utah

TopoQuest topographic map of upper Harris Wash; Zebra Slot is just southeast of '24', while Tunnel Slot is the next tributary east.

Description

There is not much to see in upper Harris Wash. 1.8 miles east of the Hole-in-the-Rock Road, Big Horn Canyon joins from the north - this is a long drainage with two branches and plenty of interesting narrow sections. Continuing downstream, the main wash remains quite wide and the stony streambed winds between grassy sandbanks, sometimes past sheer cliffs with occasional small overhangs while at other places the sides are much less steep. Several very short, curving slot canyons join from the north but the next worthwhile tributary is not reached for 4.3 miles (or 2.4 miles via Halfway Hollow), at a point where the wash becomes rather wide and turns due south, just before the junction with Halfway Hollow - this is the second main side canyon to the south, the other being Cottonwood Wash.



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Coordinates: 37°25′41″N110°58′52″W / 37.428°N 110.981°W

The Canyons of the Escalante is a collective name for the erosional landforms created by the Escalante River and its tributaries—the Escalante River Basin. Located in southern Utah in the western United States, these sandstone features include high vertical canyon walls, numerous slot canyons, waterpockets (sandstone depressions containing temporary rainwater deposits), domes, hoodoos, natural arches and bridges. This area—extending over 1,500 square miles (3,885 km²) and rising in elevation from 3,600 ft (1,097 m) to over 11,000 ft (3,353 m)—is one of the three main sections of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and also a part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, with Capitol Reef National Park being adjacent to the east.

Geography[edit]

The headwaters of the Escalante River are located on the slopes of the Aquarius Plateau, in Utah's Garfield County, just west of the town of Escalante. The Escalante River begins at the confluence of Birch Creek and North Creek,^[1] with the flow of Pine Creek added just below the town.^[2] The river runs a total distance of 80 mi (130 km) from the Birch/North Creek confluence before emptying into the Colorado River in Kane County.^[3] The lower section of the river, southeast of Coyote Gulch, is now beneath the surface of Lake Powell.

Numerous side canyons also feed the main river, accounting for the large size of the basin. From the west, the major tributaries are Harris Wash, Twentyfive Mile Creek, Coyote Gulch, Fortymile Gulch, and Fiftymile Creek, along with the smaller Phipps, Fence, Scorpion, Davis, Clear, and Indian Creeks. Most of these larger creeks flow from the top of the Kaiparowits Plateau or from the base of its eastern edge, the Straight Cliffs Formation. An even greater number of tributaries flow in from the north and east, including Death Hollow and Calf Creeks, the combined Boulder and Deer Creeks, The Gulch, Wolverine and Silver Falls Creeks, and Choprock, Moody, Stevens, and Cow Canyons. Streams from the north flow from Boulder Mountain, while those from the northeast originate in the Circle Cliffs area, near the Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef National Park.

Geology[edit]

The sandstone layers now exposed in the Canyons of the Escalante were deposited during the Mesozoic era, 180 to 225 million years ago,^[4] when this area was part of a large area of sand dunes. Near the end of the Cretaceous period, about 80 million years ago, the entire western section of North America entered an era of uplift and mountain-building, an event known as the Laramide orogeny. More recently, additional uplift formed the Colorado Plateau province. These episodes of uplift raised the Aquarius Plateau to the extent that there were strong erosional forces acting on the Escalante River Basin. Wetter climates during the recent ice ages of the Pleistocene period contributed to deep cutting of the canyon walls.

Sandstone exposed in canyons nearer to the Colorado River are typically from the Glen Canyon Group. The dark red cliffs of Coyote Gulch, for example, are composed of Navajo Sandstone. The lighter sandstone domes of Dance Hall Rock and Sooner Rocks are formed from the higher Entrada sandstone layer. Due to tilting of layers throughout the area, sandstone exposed at higher elevations near the town of Escalante (e.g. Deer Creek) may actually be from a lower layer, Wingate Sandstone.^[5]

Gallery[edit]

• Zebra Canyon

• Stevens Arch, near the mouth of Coyote Gulch

• Neon Canyon

• Calf Creek Canyon

• Spooky Gulch

• Peek-a-Boo Gulch

See also[edit]

• Geology of the Bryce Canyon area - to the west of the basin
• Geology of the Capitol Reef area - to the east of the basin
• Hole in the Rock Trail - unpaved access road to the canyons
• Utah State Route 12 - only paved highway through the basin

References[edit]

1. ^'Escalante River Watershed Water Quality Management Plan (PDF)'(PDF). deq.utah.gov. Millennium Science & Engineering, Inc. and Pocket Water Inc. August 26, 2005. p. 8 (of PDF; page 4 of original document). Archived(PDF) from the original on November 10, 2016. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
2. ^USGS topo map
3. ^'Groundwater Discharge from the Navajo Sandstone in the Escalante Basin'. ut.blm.gov. BLM. n.d. Archived from the original on February 15, 2008. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
4. ^Escalante Canyon at utah.com
5. ^Geologic Map of Capitol Reef National Park and vicinity (large PDF)

Bibliography[edit]

• Hiking the Escalante, by Rudi Lambrechtse (1985), ISBN0-915272-27-X
• Canyon Hiking Guide to the Colorado Plateau, by Michael R. Kelsey (1995), ISBN0-944510-11-6
• Canyons of the Escalante, Trails Illustrated Map (1994), ISBN0-925873-98-5

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Canyons of the Escalante.

• Escalante Canyon at Utah.com (archive)