Paria River/Buckskin Gulch White House to the Boulder Jam

[Daryl]

For Memorial Day weekend we decided to do a monster day hike through Paria Canyon and Buckskin Gulch. We started off at the White House trailhead on the Paria River. We Spent Friday night at the trailhead and woke up early Saturday morning to eat, pack up camp, and head out. We hit the trail at 6:15am. The first few miles zig zags through the mud pit formerly known as the Paria River. The views are spectacular with the sculpted Navajo sandstone formations on both sides of you and 300 foot high dramatically painted red/black walls. After about 4 miles the canyon walls starts to close in, get taller, and become vertical. Finally the start of the narrows. There is about a half mile of transition and then you are fully engulfed in the narrows. Red and black water cut, wind sculpted walls 300 feet straight up on both sides with the canyon floor about 20 feet wide and occasionally opening up to about 100 feet wide. We walk by a few areas where large slabs of the sand stone wall have broken free from the wall and now sit in the bottom leaning against the side. The largest of these is called slide rock at about 5-6 miles in. After Slide rock the walls start to close in a little tighter and the mud is now wetter and unavoidable. At 7 miles we come to the confluence of Paria River and Buckskin Gulch. If you have not been there, try to imagine being in a canyon 20 feet wide with 300 foot red and black walls going straight up on both sides, and then the 10 foot wide Buckskin Gulch intersects with the same 300 foot high walls creating a deep T intersection. If you were to continue on down Paria a few miles you leave Utah and end up back in Arizona, finding several springs with drinkable water along the way. After 30 miles you’d come to the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry. Our trip led us up Buckskin Gulch. Buckskin Gulch has a spring so the water flowing into Paria is reliable and filterable. Buckskin is much narrower and has a slightly different look to the walls, with less red and more black. About 1/4 mile from the confluence is the first camp area. It’s like an oasis. The canyon widens and there are trees on both sides. This continues for about 100 yards before the canyon narrows again, less then 5 feet wide in many places. About 1.5 miles up Buckskin we start to encounter several boulders that have fallen from the sides and now sit in the middle of the path. About 2 miles in we get to the boulder jam, our destination. The boulder jam is several boulders, each larger then a full size SUV that makes an interesting obstacle. There are three ways past it. You can go to the right side and climb up some notches that have been cut into the wall, but that is a pretty sketchy climb to do when you are a good 4-5 hour walk from the nearest road. You can climb over it head on thanks to a rope someone tied up, or you can crawl under the boulders a short ways and scamper your way through a crack and end up on the top. We climbed around on it for a few minutes trying all three options before heading out on the 9 mile journey back. It took us 6 hours to get to this point including a stop for lunch and a lot of picture taking. The first 5 miles of the trip out, through the shady cool narrows took us 1.5 hours. The last 4 miles with no shade and temps in the 90’s took 2.5 hours. Total we hiked 18 miles in just under 10 hours.
I can do this hike no justice with words and the pictures will only give you a glimpse of what it is really like. If you are serious about hiking this is a must do hike.

I’ll try to get pictures up in the next few days. We have so many it will be hard to limit them, or get them all in one spot.

[Daryl]

Pictures:
http://www.hikearizona.com/photocodeZOOM.php?ID=672&TNI=392

[Arizonaheat]

Nice pics Daryl. Paria/Buckskin is definitely on my list.