Aside from being a wedding photographer and a portrait photographer, I go on road-trips to the most beautiful locations in the western U.S. Being out on a trip brings great contentment, joy, and peace for me. In the words of Marie Kondo, road-trips “spark joy” for me. I get to listen to music on the Sirrius XM radio or my iPhone on the drive. Have developed five classes of camping on road-trips ranging from the rare staying in a hotel to the prized backpacking trip. Plus I have gear, including camera gear, that’s different for each kind of trip. It takes up space and took a long time to figure out and get but it all works really well together. My wife recently made me sell the beloved Toyota Tacoma and get a RAV4 hybrid. Luckily the new RAV4’s have a back seat that goes down mostly and a person can make a simple plywood modification for sleeping in the back. I’ll have to do a blog post on the five classes, the gear, and the car in the future. One favorite feature of the hybrid is the gas mileage. Instead of spending around $1,000 for a trip to Utah, it’ll be a couple hundred for the gas now.

After reading about Coyote Gulch in Escalante for many years, I finally went there for the first time about ten years ago in the fall. I drove a little car, a Toyota Matrix, down to the dirt roads in Escalante. Toyota doesn’t make the Matrix anymore, but it was a two wheel drive Corolla with a hatchback. It’s the car where I truly learned how to sleep in the front seat. Learning the trick of parking on an incline, popping the head rest of the passenger seat out, and piling my gear and a pillow into the back seat to make it almost comfortable to spend a night is one of my personal favorite problem solving feats.

So I drove a tiny two wheel drive car down the Hole in the Rock Road into the heart of Escalante and went backpacking in Coyote Gulch for a few days. The car lost a hubcap and some people I encountered in the gulch were laughing at my bravery, but I got to experience a singularly amazing place in a fuel efficient car. It’s also proof you don’t necessarily need the most amazing four wheel drive truck or SUV to get someplace remote.

While driving on the Hole the Rock Road you see desert scrubland. The sandstone walls, rivers, creeks, canyons are all underground. Revealed to us after millions of years of erosion from countless rainstorms and endless wind. The Hole in the Rock road passes many turnouts for different trailheads and sandstone features, It seems to have endless washboard and hates anyone driving down into Escalante.

From the Red Well trailhead to the heart of Coyote Gulch, you have to hike slowly downhill for 13 long miles. The start of the hike is a dry cracked mud riverbed. The downhill isn’t noticeable for the first four or five miles. Then you start seeing the hills next to the river grow taller and finally you hit the first sandstone fin and creek meander. After awhile the creek/river starts cutting across the path and you have to walk portions into the water. On this trip I had my water walking shoes and aqua socks but was too lazy to put them on for awhile. I had to start jumping across the creek/river in parts. It was only after accidentally landing in the soft mud and into the water that I swapped shoes.

The last time I did this trip I just wore the water walking shoes, but paid the price for how heavy they become while walking out. Hint: wear lightweight running or hiking shoes and swap them for water walking shoes (like the 5.10’s) when you need to walk in the water.

On this first trip the creek/river was filled with silt and undrinkable. Since I started in the evening, I spent the night on the hike next to a sandstone wall on the creek/river. Luckily where I spent the night a tiny little clear water runoff creek was trickling into the Coyote Gulch. So I filled all the water jugs to their maximum and carried maybe 20 pounds extra into the gulch.

The map I was using was vague at best as to where any clear water might be located. So I hiked down into the heart of the Gulch and encountered for the first time in my life the gigantic amphitheaters carved into the sandstone walls. I have pictures of all this from my most recent trip there and will do another post showing what they look like. A person needs an ultra wide angle lens to show them and I was stuck using a Nikkor 24mm f2.8 lens for a couple years and it’s not wide enough.

So I get down into the heart of Coyote Gulch where you find the amazing arches, tiny water falls, and the fall colors are found and get blown away at the awe-inspiring amazingness of it all. While being amazed at this place I’m using water to drink, to cook, to brush my teeth and the twenty pounds of water goes to ten then to five. I’m starting to get a little worried about running out. Thirteen miles in and no nothing to help makes a person very aware of exactly what’s needed in the moment. Being reduced to basic needs might be a contributing factor to why I love going on road-trips and backpacking.

While there on this trip and staying on or close to the creek/river I noticed the water making regular pulses or surges of flow and sound. There would be nothing for awhile and then I would see a pulse in the creek as more water all of a sudden pushed it’s way downstream. It was like the heartbeat of the land singing its song to the universe. It left me mesmerized.

The crap-ass map sort of showed maybe a temporary creek on river left someplace. Didn’t know where because it’s impossible to get the bearings in the canyons without a GPS. So I’m walking downstream and keeping the eyes open for what might pass as a tiny creek. In a canyon filled with scrub bushes as cottonwood trees there’s the tiniest of creeks dripping into the gulch. Next to it was an almost trail. So I start walking up the almost trail. The water trickling through the cat tails and scrub was all oily from the tree resins and pretty gross.

I kept walking up the almost trail. Higher and higher into the wide side canyon it went. Pretty soon cat tails filled the bottom and the tiny dribbling almost creek disappeared into them. I kept going because now I wanted to see what might be at the end of the canyon.

After walking up the hill a ways the trail topped out and right there at the base of steep sandstone walls sat a crystal clear pool of water. My jaw hung open and my heart beat faster at the sight. Seeing this for the first time and not knowing it waited in hiding remains one of my favorite discoveries. I hung out for awhile marveling in its beauty. The thought of jumping in crossed my mind, but didn’t because it’s drinking water. Instead of jumping in, I looked into the clear water and saw little fish swimming around. The aquatic biologist in me grew immediately curious, and so I spent a long while trying to figure out how that was possible. A fun part of backpacking in the middle of nowhere for me is the way time can stretch out and leave a person with long whiles to ponder why small fish get into a desert oasis high above a creek/river.

I went back a couple times during the trip to fill up on water and to do this picture a little after sunrise to get clean light and the reflection. It’s really a cool place. The sandstone walls must be a hundred, two hundred feet up on three sides. Plus it really saved me on the water situation.

The trail was too overgrown the last time I backpacked there and the thought of didn’t have the motivation to hike through tick infested brush to see it again. A person I encountered on this trip said the name of the spring is The Black Lagoon. She also said it’s infested with leaches, so I’m doubly glad to not have swum in the water. But still, it’s amazing to see if you ever go.