| Camera's & Rivers Don't Mix! (An Adventure in Dinosaur National Monument CO) Trip Report |
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| Camera's & Rivers Don't Mix! (An Adventure in Dinosaur National Monument CO)   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Colorado, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 40.50980°N / 108.92300°E Date Climbed/Hiked: Sep 30, 2006 Activities: Hiking, Scrambling, Canyoneering Season: Fall | Page By: jfox Created/Edited: Oct 10, 2006 / Jan 10, 2008 Object ID: 233818 Hits: 2828 Loading... Page Score: 90.69% - 30 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
IntroWhen I read Scott Patterson’s forum post on 14ers.com about him needing help to measure an arch he and his group had discovered over Labor Day weekend in Dinosaur National Monument, I was thrilled! I had to go. Being that I’m a geologist and am always up for a new adventure, I thought this was a perfect opportunity for a new experience and maybe even the chance to be part of something possibly historic. I immediately sent Scott a message saying that I wanted to help out. I have been to that area once already. I camped one weekend by myself at Echo Park and hiked down to Mitten Park to see some structural geology that I had read about earlier; the Mitten Park Fault.
Dinosaur National Monument is an amazing place. While there, I never came across another hiker the entire weekend except for a few back at the campground. This was the last weekend in April of 2006 and the weather was exceptional. The scenery is second to none and the solitude is unbeatable as well.
As the days went on, I had been emailing Scott as to a date for the trip. We settled on the weekend of September 22 – 24 but as it turned out, the weather had other plans for us. I, living in the Front Range w/o a 4WD vehicle, could not get through the mountain passes between here and Craig due to all the snow. So, we decided to wait one more week for the attempt. It’s a good thing we did to. The following weekend’s weather was superb! It also gave me the opportunity to gather some more essential gear, track down my wetsuit, and stock up on some more food.
DepartureFriday, September 29th, 2006
I left work at 12:30pm in Golden, CO and headed for Scott’s house in Craig. The night before I had packed everything I thought I would need for a weekend of exploring Dinosaur National Monument with the requirement to rappel and cross the Yampa River a few times. The drive to Craig was uneventful and I made good time, arriving in town at 4:00pm. After packing my stuff in Scott’s car and finalizing our plan, which had changed from a multi-day excursion, to a single day push, we were headed to DNM at 5:15pm. Our plan now was to head to Echo Park, camp for the night, then get up early on Saturday morning and head for the arch. This way, we wouldn’t have to carry an over-night pack and all the gear (tents, stove, sleeping bags, food etc.) all the way down to Outlaw Park on the river. We arrived at Echo Park at around 8:00pm and set up camp in the dark. We decided to head down to the river to check the temperature and water level. It was a nice night, with billions of stars to be seen and a half moon beautifully illuminating Steamboat Rock. The water temp was fine and we were elated to find out the water level hadn’t risen too high to cross safely.
The DescentSaturday, September 30th, 2006
It was a chilly night. At first it wasn’t bad, but by morning, the temp had dropped to the mid 20’s down in the recesses of the canyon walls at Echo Park. We got up at 7am and each of us packed up our tents, loaded the car, ate a quick breakfast and headed out. We drove along the dusty road that winds from Echo Park east throughout the monument to an even smaller road that heads north towards the cliffs above the Yampa River. We parked 25 yards away from the cliff and walked up to the edge to survey our destination and route from above.
 Outlaw Canyon as seen from above.
After orienting ourselves, we gathered our gear and headed out. It was 8:30am. We moved along the cliff edge towards a canyon that we could descend to the saddle area between two peaks that would get us down another slot to the river. Once we descended into the first of several ravines, the real ‘fun’ began! The rock was mainly comprised of the Weber Sandstone formation. It is bare and gritty. On some of the steeper down-climbs, I was worried about slipping. Carrying 30+ lbs. worth of gear made the going that much more difficult in this rugged terrain. It wasn’t long before I slipped on some slickrock and began a belly slide. “Oh shit…oh shit!” I yelled to Scott who was already below me. My feet had gone out from under me while descending a really steep section of bare rock. Since it is sandstone, some of the surface is loose, sandy grit and is terrible for walking on. Scott had already slipped once, but lucky for him, it was on a relatively shallow angle with no drop below. I on the other hand, was now sliding belly first, towards a small bench (that Scott was standing on) before a 20’ vertical drop….I had to get stopped! Luckily, my fingertips were able to bite against the stone and I came to a halt before I bowled Scott over. I got up, dusted myself off and we continued walking. The only injury sustained was that I lost my fingerprints on my index and middle fingers and received a small tear in my pant leg! Ouch.
Continuing on for about 10 more minutes, we came to another spot that we had to ‘jump’ and/or climb down that was around an 8’ drop. Well, as I prepared to make the descent, I grabbed a piece of the rock with my left hand for support, so I could lower myself gracefully to a step. That’s when the handhold, being in crappy sandstone, broke and I fell the 8’ into a juniper tree. Luckily my neck broke my fall. I got up again, wiped the blood from my arms and continued on. I hoped at this point Scott wasn’t regretting his decision to have me along! Winding our way down into the canyon, we came to a point that cliffed us out. There was no way down here, so we had to contour along the right wall of the canyon and finally reached a dry wash below the saddle.
From here it was a short hike uphill, nice for a change, to reach a tower to which we were to hike around to the right and descend a final gully to the Yampa River. Reaching the top of the gully, we took a quick break and drank some water. Scott informed me to lace my boots up good because this ravine was a little “nasty”. Great I thought…it gets worse?!? He was right, it was loose, steep, and filled with trees, scree, boulders, rocks, sand, cactus and was not much fun at all. However, finally we made it down and out of the ravine and arrived to the shore of the Yampa River at about 10:15am.
The Yampa River shore |
The CrossingThe river was higher than last time, Scott noted, and so he decided to try and ‘test’ the waters first without his pack. I watched from the bank while I changed out of my boots into my Keen water shoes, as he waded into the water. He got about 10 feet from the bank and was waist deep! Uh-oh I thought, this is going to be neither fun nor easy. Unfortunately on his way back to the near side, Scott lost his sandal. The current and the mud on the bottom were too much for simple sandals and so it was swept away forcing him to wade across in his shoes. However, Scott has been hiking down here for 20 years and so is used to wet feet. He would continue the rest of this trip with wet shoes and feet. We put on our packs and stepped into the Yampa. Even though I had brought my wetsuit, I did not use it. The water was not quite cold enough to necessitate donning a wetsuit. It was cold enough though, that half-way across, the arches of my feet began to cramp. Oh no…I thought…DO NOT FALL DOWN HERE!! I didn’t want to fall in the middle of the river, in a waist deep moving current only two hours into this ordeal. I did not want to be soaking wet nor have all my gear wet especially our ropes. I concentrated on every step, felt every grain of sand enter and exit my shoe and tried to catch my breath when the water went up over my navel. But, before I knew it, I was on the sandy beach at the other side of the river. Relieved and wet, I changed foot wear again and drank more water. After only a couple of minutes, we headed up the other side of the canyon.
Outlaw Park. |
From here on out, the terrain got worse. It was steeper, it was more loose, rugged, hot and treacherous. Immediately we had to ascend a steep narrow gully that was choked with boulders, trees and bushes. The climbing was difficult to say the least. Hoisting oneself up and over large boulders that are wedged between the walls of a slot is one thing, doing it with a large pack is not fun. I don’t know how many times my pack got caught on the trees we were climbing out from under. You had to pay attention to hand holds too. The rock was rotten, soft and loose.
We were now ascending about the same amount of elevation we had lost in getting down to the river. What we were aiming for was a saddle/ledge traverse behind peak 6489 that would allow us entry into “Outlaw Arch Canyon” and the arch, still a long ways off. At this point I started to tire. The sun was high in the sky and the temp had risen a lot in a little amount of time. I only brought two Nalgene bottles worth of water with me and was almost done with the first. We wouldn’t be able to get more water until we descended back down to the river, still many hours worth of climbing away. By the time we reached the zenith of this leg of the journey, it was about 11:30am, an hour after we’d crossed the river.
The route we followed. |
The Crux SaddleWe were both completely dry from our river crossing due to the extreme aridity of the terrain. This was a good thing too, because we had finally come to one of the crux areas of this trip. Scott explained to me that we’d now traverse a narrow ledge, approximately 3’ wide that had about a 600’ vertical drop to the right. “You don’t want to slip here.” he told me. I think that was the understatement of the century! Wanting to get some good pictures of this crossing, Scott headed up while I waited from a good vantage point to photograph the ledge. No problem. I needed a break anyway. So Scott headed over to the ledge while I snacked on some fruit roll-ups and more water. Scott made the ledge, did the traverse, and I got the picture.
Scott on the ledge traverse. |
Now it was my turn! I swapped out my empty bottle for my full bottle in my pack, sacked up and walked over to my fate. Upon gaining the ledge, I didn’t think it was that bad. I am comfortable with exposure and am pretty sure footed so I just moseyed along the ledge to the other side to Scott. I had wanted to video tape my crossing with my digital camera. However, Scott was right. Though the ledge was 3’ wide, you do NOT want to slip here. It takes focus and you need to mind your feet because of rocks and bushes that could cause you to trip. It wouldn’t have been safe for me to be trying to video this crossing. After I met up with Scott on the other side, we headed down a bit towards another saddle that would lead us to the route down into “Outlaw Arch Canyon”. There is one more sketchy move here that requires concentration or you could get seriously hurt or killed. We were to hike about 100m down to an opening or crack that was blocked by a giant boulder ‘choke stone’ and climb across.
The rocks here are very awkward to negotiate and care must be taken not to fall. The giant boulders are sitting in very loose sand and do come out of the matrix easily. Once we reached the crack we had to cross, we deemed it necessary to remove our packs to make the crossing safer. Scott crossed first, then I handed him over the packs, and then I crossed. The unnerving part of this was that again, the rock is brittle and soft so care must be taken in hand and foot placement or it meant a tumble/fall of maybe 50’. After our successful negotiation of this last obstacle, we donned our packs and continued down into the valley. There were several more sections of climbing as well before we reached “Outlaw Arch Canyon”. At one point, we even had to climb a tree to get up on a shelf.
The going was brutal. Up and down, up and down we went. Just when you think you are heading down for good, you must climb again. There is no such thing as a ‘direct-route’ in Dinosaur National Monument. There is no use in measuring distance ‘As the crow flies’ here either. That thinking doesn’t work. All that is here is rock, boulder, cliff, canyon, cactus and sun. The land forces you to go in certain directions; where it wants you to go. In doing so, we became water, following the path of least resistance ever downward into this ancient, sun scorched labyrinth of tortured stone.
Outlaw Arch CanyonAfter stopping for a quick lunch at around 1pm, we packed up and descended into “Outlaw Arch Canyon”. From our direction, we descended into another dry wash that intersected yet another dry wash. Here, we turned left and headed down into the canyon below. Quickly the walls closed in around us. The sandstone towered 1000’ above our heads on both sides and the temperature dropped since we were now mostly out of the sun. It was a most welcome surprise. This leg of the trip involved some interesting scrambling and some spectacular scenery. On a few occasions, we had to climb down through holes created by a collision of house-sized boulders. I would hate to have been in here when the forces that tumbled these behemoths were at work. The floor of this canyon is soft sand with the occasional cobble and pebbles. There are not as many trees or bushes here, which is nice; however, there is one very large pine tree on a ledge above to the left. It looks odd and out of place to see such greenery in this world of browns, tans and grays. The tree is very mature and probably 25’ tall. The sight of this tree was somehow comforting. Knowing that that tree has survived and flourished here in this desolate and lonely place for so long filled me with even more respect for the tenacity of nature. A few more steps later and we noticed large footprints in the sand. They looked very fresh and more than likely belonged to a mountain lion. We really hoped we wouldn’t run into it because we would be sort of ‘backing it into a corner’ since the canyon ahead of us ended at several cliffs with walls on both sides.
Lion Tracks. |
Trodding ever downwards, we came to an area where we saw a bench above and to our left. Scott thought perhaps this might lead to the top of the arch. We dropped our packs and backtracked a bit to find a place to gain the ledge. The only way up onto it was to climb and traverse an exposed section of bare rock. This took some patience and concentration so as not to fall. Once up on the bench, we walked along it for about 100m and sure enough, we were on top of the arch.
Traversing the shelf. |
Measuring the ArchWe began by locating the spot on the closest end of the arch where it came into contact with the cliff wall behind it. From there, we ran a 100’ engineer’s tape along the top as close to the gap as we cared to get. From our vantage point at the end of the arch, it appeared that it was touching the wall at about 88’ from the end. However, I walked down to this point and straddled the arch/cliff gap and discovered that it indeed did not touch the wall! So, we ran the tape out again and marked the end. 100’. From there we ran the tape out again and marked the end again. 200’. At that point we ran it out to a spot where the arch did come into contact with the wall at a total of 206’. If there had been no contact at this point, the arch could have easily measured another 60’ possibly.
We took many photographs and checked our measurements carefully. The gap between the arch and the cliff behind it is only about 2’ wide in places. It goes down to about 1’ in other places, but is definitely big enough to fall through if you’re not careful! I had to be extra cautious while straddling the thing to get some of the pictures. Needless to say we were excited about this measurement! This puts the arch at being the 9th largest span in the world! After we were finished, we placed a cairn at each end of the arch. What an exciting day indeed! Leaving Outlaw Arch CanyonOnce back to our packs, we stuffed the measuring tape and cameras back in and donned our rappelling gear. From here it was a short walk to the first rappel. But first there are several 7' - 10' drops into pools that you had to endure. I just put on my water shoes for the rest of the trip so as not to have to keep changing in and out of my boots for the rappels.
This first rappel would be the easiest and shortest of the three. It required a 65’ drop down a slab of rock. Sounds and looks easy enough for my first rappel in probably ten years. I was to go first so Scott could check my equipment. The hard part about rappelling here is that there are bushes and ledges to negotiate around to get situated on the cliff. Well, I was hooked in and when I stepped over to get around the bushes so I wasn’t tangled, I fell! Yep, I fell off the little 4’ ledge above the cliff proper. Luckily for me I did not let go of my brake hand. At this point my feet were above me so I had to right myself to get into position for the rappel. Upon doing so, the rope jerked across the rock and scared the crap out of me! O.K…nothing like a little excitement to get the adrenaline flowing. From there I backed down the rock face with the proper technique, splaying out the now tangled rope behind me.
This rock face curves to vertical about 20’ above the ground and so I couldn’t see if the rope was touching the bottom. Once I reached the convex side where it goes from a 75º angle to 90º, I stopped and peered down to see that the rope indeed did not touch the ground, but dangled about 7’ above it. Here, it also dangled down through a small tree, maple/aspen(?) or something. So I continued the descent and dropped the last few feet to the ground relieved.
Next came Scott with no problems. Well, on to the next one!
The next rappel was a real doozie! The canyon really narrowed here and the rock was slick and bare from being scoured by the torrents that must pour down this canyon during the wet season. This one was the most unnerving for me. It required a backwards belly crawl, after being hooked in, and then a dangle or drop a couple feet over a ledge to clear the lip of the slot. Once over that, you were then dangling 90’ above the floor below! Here we needed to use two ropes to get the length we’d need to reach the floor. We tied them together, and hooked them into the anchor. Scott tossed the rope. Only problem here is that you cannot peer out to see if the rope is tangled or whether it is touching the ground or not! It’s just too dangerous and awkward to get near the ledge and have a look. So we brought the rope up to check it. Sure enough it was tangled severely. Once we got it figured out, it was decided that Scott would go first in case any more tangles ensued. He has more experience than me in removing them. Down he went with no problem. Now it was my turn. With my large pack on, I clipped into the ropes. I then turned my back to the entry, got down on my stomach, and shimmied my way backwards into the slot. It was a tight squeeze and being able to only use my free hand since I had a death grip on the rope with my brake hand, it was difficult going. I felt my feet clear the edge and now they were dangling in space. I could hear my ATC and carabiners grinding on the rock beneath me. The rope above me was now laying on the rock and so I had to let go with my guide hand as the tension became too much and pinched my fingers between it and the rock. Keep going, keep wiggling backwards, wait for the drop, don’t let go with that brake hand, squeeeeeeze...DROP! Whew! I was now free of the chute and hanging 90’ above the floor below. Now I could see what it was that I was descending to. In earnest, I began my rappel. The sound of the rope sliding through my gloves and the ATC were somehow comforting. I could feel the heat from the friction building in my glove because of the long descent. It had rained the week before, and so there was water at the bottom of every rappel. So much for keeping the ropes dry! Once down we hurried to the next rappel station. It was getting dark and the narrow canyon walls allowed even less light into their depths.
2nd rap showing slot. |
We made the third and final rappel station in quick time. Here we were practically under the arch.
This rappel was just as high as the last one, but our feet would be in contact with the rock. The anchor again was in trees and so required some gymnastics to get set up on. Here however, the rock was really loose and so rock fall was a hazard. Scott went first and then me. More water at the bottom, but another successful rappel. Once down, we packed up, filtered some water for drinking and hastily made our way down to the Yampa river which was really close at this point.
ExitWe hit the river at about 5:00pm and immediately had to get in. We stayed close to the shore and waded in waist deep water for about 200m until we could get out onto the bank. After about 5 minutes in the waist deep water, I realized that my digital camera was still in my pocket! Oh crap! I took it out and of course it was dead, hence the reason for no more pictures from this trip from me! I just hoped at that point that my memory card was not damaged! I had taken over 100 pictures by now. We reached the bank and were able to follow a deer trail for about a quarter mile but then had to get back in the water. At this point we waded right down the middle for about a half mile to a sand bar. It was waist deep again and sometimes up over the navel. We needed to hold our packs over our heads to keep them dry. While doing so, I lost my Nalgene bottle…the one I just spent 15 minutes filling with filtered water…my last. As soon as it hit the river and went under, I knew it was gone for good. That current swept it away and out of my life forever. So once on the sand bar, I had to re-pump river water so I’d have enough to get me out of the canyon. From here it was another 300m walk in the middle of the river to the other side where we had crossed at 10am that morning. We changed shoes, ate a snack and headed up the gully we descended earlier.
Once out of this, we decided to leave the canyon a different way, one that wouldn’t take us over exposed slick rock that we crossed that morning. This turned out to be a lot easier but longer route back to the car. It was getting dark and we wanted easier terrain to cross without the light. On this new route, as luck would have it, we saw another arch! This one we measured at 50’ in length. We have no idea whether or not this arch has been documented though. Scott took some pictures of me on top of it and then we continued on and up out of the canyon. The last mile was in the dark, but luckily there were clear skies and a half moon lightning our way. We arrived back at Scott’s car at 8:30pm a full 12 hours after we left!
Closing CommentsI had a great time on this journey and thank Scott for sharing this discovery. I’m glad that I was able to help him measure the arch! While Dinosaur National Monument is a beautiful area, it is some of the most remote and rugged terrain I have ever seen. Again, there is no such thing as a straight line while hiking here. Dangers abound. We didn’t come across one single person that day either. Scott who has been hiking here for 20 years says he’s never come across so much as even a boot print out here…ever! I believe it.
When you stop to listen...the silence is deafening. It's one of the quietest and most beautiful places I've ever been to. However, it was some of the most brutal hiking I’ve ever participated in. I was sore, bruised, cut, lacerated, stabbed and scraped over most of my body, mainly my arms and legs. Shortly after, and even while doing so, I swore I’d never come back. But, time heals all wounds and now that I know the route, I am sure that I will return someday. Images
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The Discovery of Outlaw Arch > Camera's & Rivers Don't Mix! (An Adventure in Dinosaur National Monument CO)
