Page, Arizona: Sidestep Canyon, Edmaier’s Secret, White Pocket, Yellow Rock, Wahweap Hoodoos, Sam Pollock Arch (April 17–25, 2021)
Twisted Hoodoo.
Saturday 4/17/2021. Drive Silverthorne to Page, about 10 hours. No problems. Joined by Janet Jacks, Dave Blakeslee, and Elke Dratch in the evening.
4/18. Sidestep Canyon, Blue Wonder Slot, Twisted Hoodoo in the White Rocks, return via Chimney Rock. Martha Fulford arrives in evening.
4/19. Edmaier’s Secret, Buckskin Gulch, Wire Pass for short distance, then climb out to Narnia Slot and Arch. Then to Wire Pass TH where Joan had left a car. She and Martha hiked Wire Pass.
4/20. Elke and I spent a day at the White Pocket with guide Paul Gagner of Dreamland Safari. We explored the White Pocket and then climbed to top of White Pocket Butte. Joan and Martha went to the Hanging Gardens near the dam.
4/21. We climbed to near Yellow Rock, then headed S to Red Top by a direct line. Then retraced a little and climbed to the rim towards Cottonwood Rd. and back to Yellow Rock, to the top. Joan and Martha went to the Toadstools.
4/22. We walked 4.3 miles up Wahweap Creek to the famous Wahweap Hoodoos. Joan and Martha did the Radio Tower loop, not far from the dam.
4/23. Big day: We started at the Goulding Trail TH and took, roughly, that trail to Point 5770, and then down to the steep canyon containing Moki House, and then down to the Watson Cabin in Hackberry Canyon. Then up-canyon and left to Sam Pollock Arch. Return to the Hackberry TH and walk a mile on the road to the car. 15+ miles. 9+ hours.
4/24. Joan and I drive to Moab, with a lunch break at an overlook near the top of the Moki Dugway with a great view of the Goosenecks of the San Juan.
4/25. We went to Upheaval Dome. Joan hiked to the standard overlook. I went a little less than a mile around the rim in the counter-clockwise direction, and then headed to the rim for a view of the dome.
Highlights
4/18: Great fun to go through Blue Wonder for the third time. We used a rope to haul packs and the crew had no trouble with the steep crux. We then exited and easily got to the spectacular Twisted Hoodoo, and other hoodoos in the area. We then continued in that direction to Chimney Rock and the easy walk back to the car. We saw a huge plume of smoke to the southwest that was a little depressing, but it turns out it was a controlled burn.
4/19: We quickly got to the tower southwest of the summit of Edmaier’s Knoll, and then climbed the knoll and continued S to descend on the beautiful sandstone. That put us into Buckskin Gulch. Three women on horseback passed us. The climb out of Wire Pass was steep but straightforward and we easily got to beautiful Narnia Slot. The team climbed well through the difficult entrance, but the light in the canyon was not suitable for good photography. One needs to be there early, around 10 am.
At the end of this day Janet and Dave learned that Janet’s newish Ford Escape (18000 miles) needed a new engine. The Ford dealer in Page could do it in several weeks, but now they were carless. So their plans changed and they stayed the entire week, driving back with Martha on Saturday. They are great hiking partners, so this news was welcome for me.
4/20: Elke and I met guide Paul Gagner (Dreamland Safari tours) and did the very long drive to the White Pocket. This has become a popular place and deservedly so as there are so many interesting features. After seeing the usual sights near the parking lot we headed up White Pocket Butte and climbed it by a devious class-3 route.
4/21: Nothing too exciting, but we made a nice loop in the valley and rim east of the trail in Yellow Rock Valley. Some ponderosa pines were nice to see, and the colored sandstone is spectacular.
4/22: We climbed to the rim above the Tower of Silence which gave us a view of the next canyon east. So on return we went in there and found some interesting hoodoos.
4/23: Great views of Castle Rock and that is surely worth a day trip to climb to its top.
4/25: I had spotted a potential way into the crater from the rim not too far from parking and it was satisfying to see that this would likely work. I went only halfway down.
Sidestep Canyon as we start the descent into it.Janet, Elke, and Dave on the fun descent into Sidestep Canyon.The entrance to the Blue Wonder slot.The first climbing step. Note how blue the walls are deep in the canyon; hence the name Blue Wonder.Stan looking up at the crux pitch. The rope was used only for hauling the packs as a couple sections of the slot cannot easily be done with packs on. Photo by Elke Dratch.Dave at the top of the crux. This is a wonderfully photogenic spot. The photographer has to step over the opening from the easy terrain to the right.Looking back from past the crux. The blue color appears in the depths as a reflection of the sky.The formations in this canyon change every year. This year the highlight was this gathering of the Little People. An example of pareidolia!Looking back at Blue Wonder (looker’s right) and the narrow fork (left), which I did in May 2020.Twisted Hoodoo, in the White Rocks area not very far from where we exited Sidestep.An amazing expanse of lace rock (compaction bands) just on the east of the summit of the main knoll in Edmaier’s Secret.Approaching the southwest side of the main knoll, which leads to the remarkable tower below.Extreme example of free-standing compaction bands in the Navajo sandstone. More details on such things is at: Richard A. Schultz, Chris H. Okubo, and Haakon Fossen, Porosity and grain size controls on compaction band formation in Jurassic Navajo Sandstone, Geophysical Research Letters, 37:22, 2010; available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228665063_Porosity_and_grain_size_controls_on_compaction_band_formation_in_Jurassic_Navajo_Sandstone.The route from the tower to the summit leads past some nice deformed sandstone.Dave resting on the descent into Buckskin.Aliens?The strenuous entry into Narnia slot.Light was not ideal, but the slot was beautiful.Janet descending the Narnia entrance.The highlight of this day was this remarkable Sandstone Curtain. It is very thin and fragile. How long has it been in this formation, one wonders. I have seen a lot of lace rock, but never something quite like this. It appears that a thin band of more-compacted sand forms and when the material is compressed into stone, that section becomes a more resistant thin band and so erodes more slowly.This feature gained fame recently when it was used by Apple as the basis for the screensaver on the iPhone.Another great wall.White Pocket Butte. We climbed it via the right-hand skyline. Class 3 if one finds the easiest way.A rose.This top layer of sandstone gives the White Pocket area its name.The swan.Heagonal or pentagonal forms are common in the Navajo sandstone. Here the small Moki marbles have rolled into the seams, highlighting them.This was taken on our return to Yellow Rock on the ridge line to its south.The Tower of Silence with the distinctive rivulets of the Gunsight Butte member of Entrada sandstone. The caprock is Dakota sandstone.An unusually angled caprock. This is in the canyon just before the one with the Tower of Silence.The Tower of Silence viewed from the canyon rim; Wahweap Creek in background.Our route in took us by Castle Rock, which has an easy route to the top. Future exploration needed. (Edit: Climbed it twice.)My new wide-angle lens made it easy to get a good shot from inside Sam Pollock Arch. Sam Pollock was the mastermind behind the Cottonwood Narrows Road, which was built in 1957 to connect the Bryce region to Page. I am hopeful this will make the cover of SPAN, the journal of the Natural Arch and Bridge Society, and that is why I focused on a vertical shot.The front of the arch.The well preserved Frank Watson Cabin. Our route into Hackberry was an intricate one down the steep canyon just above the chimney. Note the cacti growing out of the roof.Our return to the road was via Hackberry Canyon which ends in a great section of narrows. The stream is perennial, but the flow was low so walking in the water was very easy.View of the goosenecks of the San Juan River with Monument Valley in rear. This is from a location about 3 miles east of the top of the Moki Dugway. Here the river is flowing from left to right, to reach Lake Powell and the Colorado just upstream of Rainbow Bridge.From our lookout spot we could see these blocks falling off the main cliff. This extended a long a way and the blocks were remarkably homogenous in size and angle, making a clear zig-zag pattern on the edge.The straight joint lines extend back into the formation. This is a Google Earth image. Maybe this is Cedar Mesa Sandstone. Below is an image from Google Earth which shows the fallen blocks and the almost exact sawtooth pattern formed in the area they fell from. It appears that the faults here run back to the upper left, though I cannot see them running to the upper right which would seem to be required for the square shapes being cut out.The rectilinear tiling is clear.A view of Upheaval Dome from a point about a mile counterclockwise from the parking lot.
