Climbing into Peek-a-boo, crawling out of Spooky Gulch: A Utah canyoning tale
In the slot canyons of Utah are canyoning challenges that can drive an unwary traveller to the edge of fear and over into joy. An intrepid tale from the Grand Staircase-Escalante
I am standing in front of a canyon, the entrance to which is approximately 15ft high on a slick rock wall. It has been 12 years since I have done any sort of climbing, and I stand for a moment scratching my head, trying to decide whether to carry on or turn back.
I had started driving a Nissan Rogue from Los Angeles three days ago to take it on a wander across California, but the lure of the topological features on a paper map, the fatigue-free comfort of the car and the voice in my head that kept whispering “just a little further" soon had me driving across California and Nevada into the centre of south Utah. And that’s how I found myself in an area called the Badlands, staring at the mouth of a canyon.
Serving as the base to explore the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), Escalante in southern Utah is a one-horse town with clean, comfortable motel rooms, good food and great coffee. The GSENM spread around it is known for having the most slot canyons, or narrow deep gorges with far greater depth than width, in the world.
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Poring over my map, I decide to explore Peek-a-boo and Spooky Gulch, together known as the Dry Fork slot canyons, on a whim. I do not research them—and that turns out to be a stupid mistake.
At the base of Peek-a-boo canyon, I am surrounded by a group of silver-haired women. One by one, they scamper up the rock face and into the canyon. One of them graciously offers to wait while I climb.
For me, it is a struggle. My knees, battered by a motorcycle crash a few years ago, almost creak with the effort of hoisting my body 12 feet up the smooth face of rock with only shallow footholds.
I feel a shove on my posterior and a pull at my shoulders from above. The women, keen on carrying on, have taken matters into their own hands, and push and pull till I flop into the entrance of the canyon like a sack of potatoes.
Even before I can pick myself up, Ms Push has scampered up the wall and has joined Ms Pull, and both are standing over me. Still lying prone, I express gratitude, but there’s no turning back now.
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Traversing Peek-a-boo Canyon is akin to an hour of intense isometrics. The climbs and drops within the canyon pull and stretch muscles in my body that have been latent for years.
The canyon, composed mainly of Navajo sandstone, has been shaped by the flow of water over millions of years, causing a wave-like erosion. For all its undulation, Peek-a-boo Canyon is 3ft wide at its narrowest. Enough width for two people going in opposite directions to cross each other and keep claustrophobia at bay.
I walk out of Peek-a-boo Canyon with the knees and seat of my pants scuffed and feeling like I have been put through some mild stretching on a medieval torture rack.
Yet, I am feeling buoyant as I walk the kilometre from Peek-a-boo to Spooky Gulch, inanely thinking that the worst is now behind me.
My mind goes back to the one-hour hike from the car park to the entrance of Peek-a-boo when I had met a lithe youth on his way back to the car park. He’d said that traversing the canyons was extremely strenuous, both physically and mentally.
“How much more difficult can it be?" I think to myself as I beatifically walk to Spooky Gulch with a bounce in my step.
Ten minutes later, the python of fear is uncoiling in the pit of my stomach as I sweat profusely, even though the temperature is 12 degrees Celsius. I have walked into what can be described as the physical manifestation of the phrase “the walls are closing in on me."
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Spooky Gulch is impossibly narrow—the narrowest in the state and less than 10 inches wide in many spots, as I learn later—with ripple-shaped gaps through sandstone. I spend more time walking sideways—much like the soldiers that are painted on old Egyptian tombs—with my head turned so that my chin is in line with my shoulder. The eerie exactness to a tomb sends a shiver down my spine.
For most of the walk, the outer cartilage of my ears has brushed along the walls. I have carried on in the hope that the canyon will widen out. It is blind hope because the ripple-shaped stone of the canyon means I can’t see what lies ahead. Nor can I go back because I can’t turn my head around to bring my face to my trailing shoulder to change direction.
I shuffle on, walking like an Egyptian, hoping that the canyon will widen, but it persists in its wafer-thin form.
Just when I think that the situation can’t get any more challenging, I wriggle to a tall and thin boulder that has fallen into the narrow path and blocked most of the passage. The only way is through a gap that rises from the floor to my mid-thigh. Once again, I find myself lying prone, but this time on my side as I try to squirm through the gap feet first, terrified by the thought of what lies ahead and the irrational fear of the boulder coming crashing down on me. These thoughts threaten to push me to the brink of reason and into the abyss of hysteria. I take a deep breath and wriggle through with my hands over my head, writhing along the floor.
On the other side of the boulder, to my horror, the canyon has now narrowed to a mere 10-inch crack splitting the sandstone. My terror further exacerbates when I hear voices approaching from the other direction. There are people coming the other way. Thankfully, they have stopped at a point where the path widens to 20 inches across. They must have heard all my colourful cursing while squirming under the boulder.
The locals, who have traversed this canyon before, notice my anxious appearance and interpret it as a desperate plea for reassurance that the worst is behind me. A portly gentleman in the group informs me, “You are not clear yet. There is a challenging section ahead," and adds with a chuckle, “Despite my ample girth, I successfully navigated it, and so will you."
The section is a 20-metre stretch with a crescent moon-shaped gap through the rock, no wider than 10 inches. The fit is so tight that halfway through, I become stuck at the seat of my pants and must shuffle back to remove my wallet from the rear pocket of my trousers. After that I am clear and free.
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I have never felt as much gratitude as I do when I finally emerge from Spooky Gulch out into the open. I am not particularly fit or agile, and I have never gone canyoning before. I realise how incredibly foolish and fortunate I was to have walked into those canyons and successfully navigate them. I learn that people have gotten stuck in Spooky Gulch and have needed to be rescued. There have been fatalities too.
Later in the day, I pull up by the side of the road where cowboys are herding cattle. I step out of the Nissan just to admire their skill and drink in the wide-open expanse.
I exchange some banter with the cowboys, telling them that I am on my way south to Phoenix, Arizona, before heading west back to Los Angeles.
“Yeah, you’ll go past Page in Arizona," one of them drawls. You should check out Antelope Canyon, it sure is swell!"
My “no" cracked through the arid air, sharp as a rifle shot, making the cowboy’s horse whinny in alarm.
Antelope Canyon, for all its tourism brochure fame, could have been Atlantis itself—but for now I was done. Dusted. Canyon-fatigued beyond redemption.
Maybe on another trip…
Rishad Saam Mehta is a Mumbai-based author, travel writer and budding travel video maker.
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