Before I went to Joe’s Valley I visited Bryce Canyon and Escalante. But because of the realy bad weather I decided to switch the plan and go to Escalante after Joe’s Valley. I thought, that maybe the weather will be better in the end of August. But the weather was still bad. Cloudy and some raindrops all day long. Not so much rain that you get wet, but annoying nevertheless. On my way to Escalante I drove through areas with a lot of aspen … realy nice motives for beautiful pictures. But there it rained much more so I took just some photos out of the car.
When I planned this trip I found some pictures of a place called Moki Hill. It is in the middle of nowhere and is a realy amazing place. The so called Moki Marbles are lying there in their thousands. It is a weird place because it doesn’t make any sense that there is this tiny area where you can find so many Moki Marbles in one place. Here is a small galery with some of the pictures I took there before it started to rain again.
After the Moki Hill I drove to the Visitor Center and got a permit for Camping on the Hole-in-the-Rock-Road. This is where you start your tours to Slotcanyons like Zebraslot, Peek-a-boo or Spooky Canyon. The ranger told me, that the road is dry and it should be no problem to get to the slotcanyons when I start really early. The thunderstorms and flashfloods should arrive late in the afternoon.
So I drove down and got to a campside near the trailhead of Peek-a-boo and Spooky which I wanted to do the next day. I started realy early and while I was in the Peek-a-boo it started to rain … so I got out as fast as I could, went back and on my way up a flashflood arrived in the Dry Gulch. This is the main wash, where a lot of slotcanyons end. Maybe the ranger was to optimistic. That were my 10 minutes in a slotcanyon.
I decided to drive back the road to get near Zebraslot for the next day. I remebered the flashflood I have seen an hour before … when I stood before a big pod of mud where a road should have been. No way back. It didn’t stop raining and it was impossible to cross the road. In the end it took me two days before I got back to paved road, thanks to a few jeeps which cleared most of the mud early in the morning. A big part of the dirtroad was so wet that I was just slipping and sliding and trying not to drive the car off the road.
The weather looked fine this morning so I tried to get to the Zebraslot. It is an beautiful hike to the entrance and that alone is worth the hike. But it rained so much over the last days that it was impossible to get into the canyon. A river was flowing out and it would have been way to dangerous. So I hiked back and took just some pictures of the area around just before it started to rain again. The colors of the rock are amazing. Yellow to red to grey to brown to sometimes green and blue. And the rockstructure is just perfect. So I decided screw the colours and make some b & w shots.
Enjoy!