Kanab – Day 5: Hole in the Wall Road

It’s a long drive to our trailhead for today at about 160 miles each way.

Hole in the Rock Road follows an old Mormon Trail beginning near Escalante. The trail first blazed around 1880 included having to lower wagons down a cliff to where the Colorado River could be crossed. Today the road lends access to many hiking opportunities including several unique rock formations, arches, canyons, and slot canyons. We are here attempting to explore three or four slot canyons including Dry Wash, Peek-a-boo, and Spooky slot canyons. We don’t know lots about access to these canyons other than the preferred access for Peek-a-boo and Spooky is to start in Peek-a-boo and exit via Spooky. Also, we know that entrance to Peek-a-boo involves a scramble up a 15 foot rock face with small footholds in the rocks. We don’t know if we can access it but we are attempting it.

The trail is close to 30 miles in on the gravel road and we hardly see any signs of other people. Upon reaching the trailhead there are around 20 cars so we know this is a popular hike. There is plenty of space so we have no problems.

The trail down to the wash where the slot canyons can be found is a couple of miles and at one point heads down along slick rock at a steep angle. If one falls from here it’s maybe a 50’ freefall. It’s rough going and maybe it is at this point we realize that everyone we have seen today is under 30 years old…. Hmmm..

We do make it down to the bottom of the wash and hike to the entrance to Peek-a-boo. That 15’ scramble up the rocks has nice but very small footholds. Our boots do not fit in the footholds so there is no way we are making it up there. Instead we elect to head to Spooky where we would normally exit after going in via Peek-a-boo.

Once we get to Spooky we begin to understand how this slot canyon got named. It is narrow and dark. We find ourselves crawling at times while at other times we squeeze though the many narrow sections. While moving forward and turned sideways both of us are scraping both sides of the canyon walls at the same time. There are times that we wonder if we are going to be able to squeeze through further. It’s so narrow that Wells only manages to capture one photograph and that was at one of the few wide points.

At some point we turn around and make it out to the open wash once again. The third slot canyon is way wider so we can get a few photos.

After finishing the hike out we are beat. Now for the long drive back to the camper and a good night of sleep.