protect yourself: escalante river section

after an easier than expected trudge into the unknown, we finally reached the elusive escalante river and all its impossible glory. how a river of any kind, found, scratched, and eroded it's way into such inhospitable terrain is beyond all human reason and reality. but i am here to attest to it's very real existence.

upon reaching the water jon and i began vigorously breaking down our bikes, and rigging our boats for three days in the heart of the escalante, pausing only to be stunned by our surroundings, and too stuff handfuls of greasy potato chips into our sunbaked faces.

once we rounded the first of many contorted twists and bends, there would be only one realistic way out, at crack in the rock. i figured this would require two or three days of hard paddling and dragging at times.
all other exit points would be for emergency only, and would likely be super impossible hard.

perhaps you have been on a river trip before? plenty of down time, chillin on the boat, cracking beers, maybe playing a guitar?
the escalante is a whole different piece of water that demands 100% of your attention, at all times. due to the very remote nature of this place, even a minor accident could turn into a serious situation.
not huge a amount of water, or gnarly rapids, just lots of small strainers caused by constant rock fall from the cliffs above.

breaks were so good.
they mostly consisted of, stretching out from the small boats, using a huge amount of sunscreen, and just trying to take in as much of the place as one could in the short amount of time that we had. i could honestly spend a lifetime exploring this area, but we only had a few days.

food tasted so good down there, but a little rationing was in order, as we had just enough snacks to get us out, and i knew that the river exit would be the hardest part of the escalante section.