Southern Utah Wanderings 2010 | Sunday
Sunday, October 3, 2010 | Day 2
Before I get into our Sunday adventures, I wanted to bring up a strange incident that occurred in the middle of the night. At around 3am we started to hear a loud buzzing sound coming from far south on the Hole-in-the-Rock Road. It was the kind of buzzing sound you would hear coming from an ambulance, fire truck or a police vehicle. We saw headlights in the distance that were slowly heading north. As this vehicle got closer we noticed that it was shining a spotlight to the side of the the road on occasion and it also set off a siren twice, but only for a second or two. We assumed it was a police/sheriff vehicle, but why was it constantly buzzing it’s siren? Was it looking for someone who was missing, or was it trying to warn us of an approacing storm that could wash out the Hole-in-the-Rock Road? This continued for over an hour until this vehicle was near our campsite. I was temped to drive out and find out what was going on, but I didn’t. Eventually it passed our campsite and went behind a ridge that finally blocked the sound from disturbing us, so we went back to bed. Of course, an hour later we were awoken again by the same vehicle coming back south! This time I was able to fall back asleep and am not sure how long the buzzing sounds continued….
After getting some more sleep we still managed to get up for an early start and headed down into the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch after some breakfast. Our destination this morning would be the Peek-A-Boo and Spooky slot canyons. There were some storm clouds north of us towards Escalante and some way at the southern end of the Straight Cliffs, but the area above this drainage was still clear. On our way down into the canyon those clouds provided us with a couple of rainbows to photograph.
Double Rainbows & Balanced Rock
Nice bright rainbow when we reached the wash in the canyon
Next we made our way up some narrows in Dry Fork and reached the entrance to Peek-A-Boo.
Dry Fork narrows
Peek-A-Boo entrance
We got up the initial climb into Peek-A-Boo pretty easily, but that is where we then ran into the toughest section. We could not climb up the steep slickrock into the next pothole. After some unsuccessful tries (and scraping up my elbows and knees on the sandstone) I ended up having to take a running start at the wall using momentum and my long legs to get up to the next level. Luckily that worked for us or we might have had to turn around. I was then able to help Jared up.
Jared climbing up into Peek-A-Boo
After the previous difficult section we continued up the slot without too much difficulty. Of course we took our time taking plenty of photos as well.
Jared photographing the two arches near the beginning of the canyon
Small arch and twisted passage
