Yesterday we went into Ernie's Canyon for a couple of miles. Nothing too spectacular: VSO found a couple of pictographs and EDO climbed the scree for a closer look at a small arch. We can give it more time later, though: You can get to the mouth of the canyon (from Price) in about 90 minutes.
Normally, I would not set foot on a National Park Service trail, but EDO thought that today would be a good day for Navajo Knobs. VSO and I agreed to go with her. It wasn't awful: We probably encountered four or five parties (which is six too many for me), but after we summited we had the return trip to ourselves.
The Park Service says that the entire trail is 4.7 miles from the parking lot to the Knob, with 1620 feet of elevation gain. VSO eventually dropped out, but we made the 9.4 mile round trip (3,240 vert) in exactly four and a half hours. EDO walks fast! And is good with punctuation.
We spent yesterday scrambling through the canyons at the head of Tantalus Creek looking for a couple more sites documented by Morss in his 1931 monograph. We were not completely successful, but did certainly find our way to "Site 16." According to Morss, the cave had originally been fronted by a wall of "cedar" woven with willow and daubed with mud. By the late 1920s, the construction of the Bowns Reservoir had raised the water table, filling the cave with seeps and springs, and causing the roof to collapse.
He noted that there were 20 feet of undamaged wall at the east end of the cave when he visited the site. As you can see, above, the eastern roof has fallen, too, and the only thing remaining are a few pieces of juniper that originally supported the "cedar" wall. The cave is now a swamp, filled with willow and river birch. For me, the highlight of the afternoon was checking out this beautiful old ponderosa that we found growing on the rim of the canyon.
We made it about four miles up Sheet's Gulch before we encountered a pool we couldn't cross. EDO said that we'd probably need to get down into the water. It was in the forties, so not too cold, but there was a strong north wind. We would have needed to strip below the waist, ford the pool, climb over a five foot chock stone, and then get dressed again. Plus, we were on our way out and had to come back.
So we turned around and tried a side canyon. It developed into an hour long foray, but got us thinking about side canyon jumbles. If you wanted to put some time into it, there were dozens of places that you could try scrambling to the rim. The other benefit of a shorter hike is that we had time to goof around at the arch.
We agreed, though I'm not sure that VSO was committed to it, to try the alternate route up Fern's Nipple. By alternate, I don't mean another trail, but full-on, backcountry route finding. It took us more than three hours to get to the top (reach the teat, ahem). (I'm adding a second image, below, to illustrate the summit climb.)
At that point, I was seriously worried that we wouldn't be able to make it back to the Chev before dark. Fortunately, EDO saved the day by finding the tourist route and leading us down. Six to seven miles across 3,200 vertical feet of rugged backcountry in six hours. We reached the truck by 5:30p. I was impressed.
