Near Death Adventure #2

Okay, so we kind of have a bad track record this year with our backpacking trips. This time we don't have anyone to blame except ourselves for not taking heed to the weather, and to the good motherly advice to change our plans at the last minute. But, I must say, now that all is said and done and we are safely at home, this adventure was actually really fun. It will definietly be top on my books.

Here is the crew: Dad, Alison, Stacey, Justin, George, me and Greg, all ready to start our hike Friday afternoon up Coyote Gulch in Escalante National Park.

We ended up getting a little bit of a late start on our hike because of the tires on our Suburban. A guardian angel approach my dad at the gas station in Beaver bringing to attention the baldness of our tires. They looked really bad. He was pretty sure they would explode any time, so we had a little set back as we waited for that man to put all new tires put on our suburban... After seeing the deep mud and 2 foot deep puddles we had to drive through to get home from our hike we realized that there was no way we could have gotten home without them.

For the first part of the hike we walked across this slick rock that was glowing because of the puddles of water from the rain in the morning. It was beautiful.

This was the view of the gulch from the top of the cliff. Unbelievable! And this is George in his Indiana Jones outfit. Hot Mama!

To get down, we had to lower our packs down with ropes because they wouldn't fit through the 18" narrow crack we had to walk down to get off the slick rock cliff. George brought this rope as a last minute thought... and it turned out to be our life saver.

When we got down to the river, we found that the trail kept leading us back and forth across the river. The water was a little over knee high because of the earlier rain storms, but it wasn't too bad, and with help of the guys we were able to get to a good campsite relatively dry.

The view were breathtaking!!

We had fun crossing the river and George found creative ways to get accross each time.

Before it got dark we came across the perfect campsite on a nice sandy beach underneath a rock overhang to keep us dry from the rain. We set up camp there, and enjoyed our dehydrated meals, and a nice warm fire. It was the perfect cozy spot, and with the river rolling by, and a little natural spring dripping down the rocks leaving a nice relaxing water sound. Even though it was overcast and a little misty that night, it was still pretty warm, so I thought I would sleep okay.
At about 1:30 AM, George had another night terror episode, where he sat up and screamed “OH NO!” Because everyone knew about the night terrors, they didn’t really take it serious, but it did trigger Justin to go outside and check things out. Because of the rushing river sound it was hard to tell if it was raining or not, but when Justin went out to check, he noticed that the water level had risen about a foot from the night before. He got up a little while later and noticed that it had gone down again, but we were all a little more aware of the river at this point, and it started to freak me out. The sound was no longer relaxing. I went outside to see for myself and go to the bathroom, only to find that the rock I had used the night before was covered in water, and the trail to our campsite was completely covered in raging river.

PANIC struck me at that point and there was no way I was going back to sleep. I just sat there shaking in my tent, trying to plan where a bag was that I could throw up in. George tried to comfort me, but singing “THE FOOLISH MAN BUILT HIS TENT UPON THE SAND… AND THE RAINS CAME TUMBLING DOWN” did not help one bit. I was just replaying this image in my head of this huge rush of water flushing through the canyon and taking us with it. I have seriously never been so scared in my life. When I finally calmed down a little bit and relaxed, that was when I felt a huge rush of water run under our tent and lift us up like we were in a water bed. Because we were already wide awake, I just DOVE out of the tent and screamed at everyone to get out. George yelled OH NO again and then added “NO REALLY” this time so that everyone would see that he wasn’t just sleeping talking. In the next few minutes we had everything out of our tents and our bags packed up. Dad was able to get his tent to higher ground before it got soaked so that we had some place to go to stay dry, but really, there wasn’t much higher ground then where we had been sleeping.

We just sat on our beach that had turned into a little island with rushing river on both sides and waited as the rain continued to pour and the water continued to rise. I was so freaked out. I had no idea how long we were going to be sitting there, and if we were going to be hanging onto the trees for dear life until someone came to rescue us. It was the worst feeling in the world.We sat there waiting for about 5 hours until the water finally started to recede a little bit. It was enough for us to realize that we needed to make a break for it while we had the chance. At that time, we ran into 5 people from Canada who were in our same boat, and who also wanted to get out. We teamed up with them and made the trek back and forth down the river that was now chest deep in some places. The men would forge ahead with the ropes and we would take turns walking across the deep swift river holding on to the rope for dear life.

As we made it further down the river we started accumulating more and more people who were as scared out of their minds as we were and were desperate to get out. Our group suddenly grew to 32 people, 3 ropes, and lots of men…. We created our own search and rescue team and worked together to get everyone across the river safely. We got a pretty good system down and booked it out as fast as we could because this whole time it had been raining, and the water was just getting higher and swifter. Wow, the best picture of the trip was not even taken because no one wanted to get their cameras out… it was a picture of 32 people lined up crossing this river, and then moving ahead to the next spot to start another rope. It was the most incredible thing I have ever experienced, and I loved that group of people more than I could have ever imagined. We saved each other. The sigh of relief finally came as we crossed the very last river stretch and walked up the huge sandy gulch back to the car safe from the rain and the river. Thank Heavens for a long Memorial Day Weekend that we could spend catching up on our sleep and resting from such a traumatic experience. I'm happy to be home and to be alive. I think I may be done with backpacking adventures for the time being.