CLICK TO VIEW ALL PHOTOS Photos and Narrative courtesy of Ben McPherson

CANYONS OF THE ESCALANTE, GRAND STAIRCASE-ESCALANTE NATIONAL MONUMENT, UTAH
The Escalante National Monument is located in southern Utah and encompasses 1.9 million acres of high plateaus, remote mountains and deep canyons. The National Sierra Club backpack in the Monument that I participated on was October 5-11, 2008. I flew to Salt Lake City October 3, rented a car on the 4th and drove to our meeting location in the small town of Escalante. There were 12 of us on the trip. We did two loops – one across high plateau of slick rock with beautiful views of deep canyons below. One day we hiked down into Death Canyon; the other loop we followed Harris Wash into the Escalante River and visited Neon Canyon and the Golden Cathedral, a pool enclosed by an overhanging dome with an opening in the center. A lot of the hiking in this region was in the River, which at this time was usually 1-2 feet deep, but you had to be careful of deeper holes. Then we hiked up a high plateau and back down into the river canyon. The final decent back into the River was sheer and steep and I was scared S___less. The weather was beautiful as it often is in October in this region, and the leaves were colored by the changing season. I returned to Salt Lake October 11 and flew back to Florida on October 12.