Ski Mountaineering

Paria Canyon

October 2008

Randy Lamm



Here is a slide show of a trip I did in early October to Southern UT to hike the famous Paria Slot Canyon with Mike Rector and Stan Huncilman, Bill Lutz and Irma Tucker.

We drove Mike's "home off road" to meet him at the BLM office on HWY 89 between Kanab UT and Page AZ. Mike had taken off 2 weeks earlier on his modified husqavarna dirt motor cycle riding from Thousand Oaks to meet his daughter in Telluride, CO. He did a lot of dirt road riding thru the mojave dessert and indian reservations in AZ, UT and CO.

We camped the first night at the border of AZ & UT near the Wire Pass trailhead. due to threat of rain we only day hiked the buckskin cnyn and day hiked around the "wave" after the threat of rain diminshed we hiked from white pt trailhead down the paria and camped at the confluence of paria cnyn and buckskin gulch.

We found a nice camp site up there up on a bluff for 2 nites and were lucky that Bill told us there was a water source there - water dripping out of the rocks and clean. We were awoken at sunrise each morning as the sun rays bounced off the 300' high cliff walls and a giant raven made loud honking noises notifying us that we had trespassed on his space then flew down the canynon making a cacophany of honking noise.

We went furthern down the paria river slogging 6 miles south thru cool muddy water. the next day we packed up and hiked out camping at night on a remove dirt road north of page looking out at the lights of page, the stars and dining on chickens from the Walmart deli.

The next day we drove 40 miles up the dirt cottonwood road and camped in Kodachrome basin state park. very recommended. the next day we drove to some gulchs on the skutumpah road and hiked a gulch with a pickup truck crushed in the top of the gulch which they built a dirt road on.

The next day back to LA after driving over hwy 143 heading west at Panguitch thru bryce canyon and hitting 17F with snow over the 12k pass near cedar breaks then warm weather down at the 15 at cedar city.

A long drive back thru vegas followed up with an all you can eat korean bbq in victorvile.



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