Escalante, a vast sandy desert filled Life, wonder, and the occasional drainage here and there.
Some of the details are harder to see than others.
Many of Escalante's passages look flat and lifeless horizontally
But when you get rather close to them, they are quite vertical.
The desert is covered with a network of drainages that seek the Escalante river and ultimately, lake Powell.
One particular area we
ended up in, is called Egypt.
A rather beautiful and scenic region of Escalante that has a continuous network of drainages.
There are a number of canyons that are named after egypt which are: 0,1,1.5,2,3,4,5
Some of these canyons have their own side drainages.
It was an honor to share the
experience of venturing into some of these drainages with great friends.
Our first canyon was Egypt 1
This canyon is quite short and only took us an hour to complete.
This was an excellent arrival canyon for our weekend.
We encountered a couple small drops
that appeared to be optional downclimbs
The canyon itself was quite scenic for the area and reminded me of keyhole canyon in zion a bit.
We continued to Egypt 2 and up Egypt 3 the following day.
We knew that this would be quite the day so we prepared for a full day in the canyon.
Egypt 2 has quite the
introduction
There is a 300 ft entrance rap that drops you right into the beginning of the canyon.
The rap is a blast and made for a fantastic day in the canyon.
We continued to work down the scenic canyon and had a few additional raps that we encountered.
The canyon had some interesting
swirling scenery and interesting mud!
The cracked mud looked like broken pottery as it was quite large.
rocks from above created large splatter craters within the mud when it was wet which added to the texture.
We were in this canyon for a few hours
and soon exited out the bottom.
We found the trail over to egypt and proceeded up the canyon.
Egypt 3 is non technical until you reach the last section of the canyon where there is a rappel.
We bypassed this rappel and continued to climb up the canyon .
I highly recommend
this route if you are going to visit egypt 2.
We left our rope up at the top of egypt 2 and worked out way around the canyon .
There are so many beautiful canyons in the area and these are right off the dirt road.
I highly recommend visiting these canyons on a fall or spring weekend.
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