Kane Gulch to a Natural Arch

Bears Ears National Monument

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I was going to go for Owl Canyon, but discovered that I might, with a properly early start, be able to do the whole loop with Fish Creek. The ranger recommends against trying it because you just can't travel that trail as fast as you would expect. Anyway, I've decided to hike Kane Gulch instead today. Yes, ruins are expected. (This is a fee area. The one week hiking permit I got yesterday for $5 will cover it but an America the Beautiful pass will not. Fees increase at the start of 2020 to $10 per week per person.) For this one, parking is right behind Kane Gulch Ranger Station, marked as "long term". Then it is through the notch in the fence and across the highway and down into the wide, shallow wash on the other side. Somewhere early on, the Emigrant Trail should swing south from it, but I don't see that. Maybe if I was looking for it more, it would be there. I just see trail following the fence that the trail crosses through a gate a short way from the road.

trail beside the parking lot for a few feet — The start of the trail with information kiosk.

trail through the short, wide wash — Trail marches through the wash to a gate in a fence across it.

The canyon has some early spots to practice following cairns across the rocks where it is nice and open, then gets into lush areas where there is a human sized hole between the green which includes all too much tamarisk. I hope tamarisk removal is on the agenda with the increased funds. Besides being invasive, it has some features that make it even worse than willow for being near a hiking trail.

growth going way up — The green grows from leg high banks. Sometimes there is trail in the creek area, sometimes up on the sides. Sometimes one goes for a bit and just stops with scrambling routes to the other.

I find myself steered toward a slit in the rock where a large piece have separated. It doesn't go to a different drainage or anything, but it makes for an interesting area to pass through. I note some wet spots where water is seeping out of the rocks, often in an overhang. Eventually, it becomes the sandstone canyon I was expecting, and then the bottom drops out of it all.

crack in the rocks just wide enough to pass — Not quite a slit canyon, but still a slit on the rocks.

canyon with sandstone boulders, sides, bottom, and overhanges for edges — Roaming the sandstone canyon.

canyon bottom level dropping fast — There it goes. There are two waterfall type areas to navigate via the sometimes indistinct trail.

The trail has waterfalls to navigate. Well, undercut shelves of some height where water could flow. It swings to one side, clambers down, then walks a shelf around to the other and clambers down some more. For the second, I take the same prescription as the first, then keep having to try harder and harder to follow where people have gone before. I pause and look and see the row of cairns looping up a steep slope on the far side. There are more along a shelf across from me and back to where I went wrong. I just added to the chances the next person goes the wrong way.

small ledge with cottonwood getting a drink — One small ledge actually has water sitting below it.

big sides and little trail — The trail squirms around the side as the canyon gets deeper.

rebar sticking out of rocks — Bits of handrail long gone are additional clues to go the right way as well as showing this to be a rather old trail.

Navigation is easier, or at least more forgiving, after the large waterfalls. There are still spots where it seems like I wouldn't want to go wrong, but then I look down to see trail apparently getting the whole way through an area strewn with boulders. I'm sure there must be one little crawlway along there somewhere, but nothing I can see.

perfect circle along the top — The curves made in the carved rocks above the turns seem to have a sort of perfection to them.

statue carved from sandstone by flood water — A piece of sandstone cracking away looks like a carved figure leaning against the wall.

Grand Gulch, another large waterway, joins in a wide flat between the high walls. How many hundred feet are these? The map suggests about 400 feet from top to bottom. There was a small camp earlier, but this is a very well camped area.

high walls and large areas of cottonwoods — The area at the confluence.

Not that the canyon seems bigger below the confluence. Maybe the curves become more perfect. There seems to be old trail along the way getting abandoned, but that seems to be the way with these trails that cross a creek area many times. It shouldn't be too much further to the arch.

Great pillars in the canyon under some slow curves.

no arch up there — Should the arch be visible yet? I see nothing.

enlarging cave — A collapsed chamber along the outside of one curve.

plunging land — Surely the arch should be visible on this bit of land.

I begin to despair that this arch might not actually be visible from somewhere in the canyon. Maybe someone was working around the upper surfaces when they noticed it. But around the far side, there it is finally, a very stout natural arch. Perhaps it is more of a bridge, really?

natural arch of a very strudy build — There's the arch, up high with a tree growing under it. That's actually behind it, through the hole.

just the bulky arch — The closer look at the arch.

Arch observed, it is time to head back up the canyon. I try to take in a little more of the perfect curves and the hanging gardens that live among the many seeps. Actually, the gardens are a bit bedraggled with some freezing nights past. I ponder exactly how to portray the magnitude of this canyon with its buttresses that rise high above me. Oh, and how to circumnavigate the backpackers that seem to have arisen fully formed from the center of the most used camp area which really is part of the trail. My route to the side on a lesser well used trail leaves me stepping over the used wag bag instead. Joy. Anyway, right, the canyon magnificence.

high up with lots of knobs — The carvings of knobs from long ago now sitting very high up.

uppward to a buttress and out to a distant wall — Almost getting a nearby buttress into frame and the wall shrinking into the distance doesn't quite capture it.

flaking wall with sharp overhang — Standing beneath a wall that seems to be flaking huge chunks below a sharp overhang just shrinks it to a size more easily grasped.

low walls at the top — The upper canyon is easier to grasp the size.

rock like a butterfly wing and pattern — I hadn't noticed the texture in the narrow crack. It is like a butterfly wing.

bathrooms and parking — The return to the ranger station.

There were ruins along the way. Ruins that I first saw so high up I thought the canyon bottom must have been higher. But closer up, there was another lower and more basically on the current bottom. They really got up that high. (And me without my bigger telephoto.) They would carve footholds to help, but those are generally gone now. It still looks worrisome. Ammunition cans full of information including some specific to the location are at the sites. The ruins are still being studied, so it is important to visit without causing harm. Fingerprints are harmful and footsteps can be downright detrimental. (It has become commonplace to leave some areas left to research because new technology will gain new insights, but only if an area is not fully researched using old technology.)