Bull Valley Gorge and Lick Wash

We took hikes in the Paria Valley today, near Kodachrome, where we are staying. We thought we'd avoid the hour drive to Escalante (the town) and then the drive down the dirt road, Hole in the Rock. The first was Lick Wash which one of the hiking books said was one of the best, most beautiful hikes, with nice narrow canyons and lots of solitude, which would be nice after the Grand Central Station feeling of Bryce. It was 18 miles from the Kodachrome road, on a beautiful twisty dirt road. Well, we met tons of hikers, a bicyclist was starting his hike same time as us. And while the white sandstone was really nice, it paled in comparison to the exciting narrow tortuously twisty slots of the hikes off Hole in the rock. We did a bunch of bouldering which was lots of fun. I'd guess we did 3 miles in 3 hours. It was hot and the canyon wasn't narrow enough to provide constant shade.

On the way home, we decided to go to Willis, which was the first slot we ever did, and a really fun one with a stream through it. But as I read in the "other" guidebook about Bull Valley Gorge, we decided to try that instead. We thought we'd just go see the place where the pickup truck had wrecked in 1954 and was hanging in the gorge. But it looked so enticing, we got our gear and did a 2.5 hour (4 mile?) hike that was very exciting, a little scary, and very beautiful. First you have to walk half a mile on a scary trail skirting along the top of the gorge to the gorge entrance. You down climb in and the next 1.5 miles is just narrow, crazy deep gorge with surprises round every corner. There are some fallen trees set up to help you with the very steep dropoffs, including one that would have turned me around were it not for Leo deciding he could do it. He did it much faster than me, of course. There were huge pieces of fallen rock, some stuck in the top of the gorge waiting to fall in someday and some that you had to climb over. Lots of mud that could be avoided but we had a lot of fun throwing rocks into it. We got to do some fun bouldering here too. Leo and I were racing to be first in exploring the gorge. I'm not sure what the difference is between a canyon and a gorge, but this seemed so young, so clearly full of downed trees and recently fallen rocks. Anyway, it is now one of our favorite hikes. We definitely want to go back and go further.