Backpacking Dark Canyon, Bears Ears National Monument, Hite, Utah

Oct 19

A Dark Canyon backpacking trip has been on my bucket list for a few years, but my availability and the weather never aligned until this fall. With a good looking weather window, Mike and I decided to pack up the van and head out to the desert for the next few weeks, with Dark Canyon as our first stop. The night before we camped near the Sundance Trailhead, and the following morning we headed to the trailhead to begin our adventure.

The trail starts out on a 4x4 road for the first 1.8 miles. Along this road we passed the a group of 10 people hiking back to their cars. They were the only people we’d see all day. One of the members of this group said “good luck, you’ll need it” and just kept walking without giving us any further context. I’m still not really sure what he meant now that the trip is over. After 1.8 miles, there is a turn off with a marker, and it’s where a hiking trail begins. After about 1 mile on rolling trail, we came to the top of what I think is the worst part of the trip. We descended ~1200 vertical feet over the next mile. There are cairns to follow, although there are actually too many cairns providing options that are less helpful than they should be. Regardless, we were able to follow a trail down this section and our knees were really happy when we made it to the bottom. From here, it was about a half mile to the creek.

Once we got to the creek, we filtered some water and began walking upstream. Our plan was to camp a few miles upriver that night. It was a warm day so about a mile upstream, we found a nice deep pool and decided to jump in and cool ourselves off. I was surprised at how cold the water was. It was probably around 50-55 degrees and was cold enough that you didn’t want to swim around for too long. Of course, after passing a few nice campsites, we decided we would start looking for a campsite. At that point the canyon narrows and the number of camping options are pretty slim. Fortunately, we eventually found a nice site along the river with some pretty views of the canyon around us.

We slept in the next morning as we had no firm agenda, and I was looking to have a relaxing backpacking trip. We left our tent and decided we would hike upstream for a few miles until we wanted to turn around. We hiked roughly 2 miles upstream and then decided to turn around. When we got back to our campsite, we packed it up and headed back towards where we had come from the previous day. After a few miles, we had worked up quite a sweat and decided to jump in the next deep pool we saw. Of course, there were some ladies hanging out at the next swimming pool (the first people we had seen all day) so we kept walking until we found another one, which didn’t take long. After a quick dip, we continued hiking, passed the intersection with the Sundance Trail, and found a campsite about 0.5 miles downstream from that intersection. We enjoyed some beautiful views that night. Of course, as we were heading to bed, it unexpectedly started pouring rain. The weather forecast was for a 10% chance of rain so we were surprised to see such a heavy downpour. Since we were in a canyon, we didn’t want to fall asleep until the rain ended. Thankfully, the rain only lasted for 30 minutes and made for some cooler sleeping, which we enjoyed.

The next morning, we slept in again. Our plan for the day was to walk to the intersection of Dark Canyon and the Colorado River. I had not done much research on this part of the canyon so we really didn’t know what to expect. The canyon got much more dramatic and steeper than I had anticipated. Route finding became the theme of the day with us frequently asking ourselves if we should stay high on the left side, stay high on the right side, or stay low in the riverbed. Of course we chose wrong a few times and had to backtrack, but this made the day more of an adventure. There was one spot by a waterfall where a short down climb was required. It was not obvious from above how to get down it, but thankfully Mike was feeling adventurous and found us a way down. The down climb was not exposed, but was vertical for ~8 feet. I believe most people that are ok with a little scrambling can do it - I think the hardest part is just finding it from above. Once through this part, we continued downstream and ultimately, the canyon got a little wider and the walking got a little easier for the last mile before the confluence with the Colorado River.

We took a short snack break at the Colorado River intersection and then turned around and headed back up the canyon back to our campsite. I enjoyed walking the canyon in both directions as the views were extremely different each way. We made much better time on the way back as route finding was no longer an issue. We made sure to cool ourselves off and jumped in the river right by the difficult down climb I described earlier. The water in this part of the canyon felt a little warmer than the water had been upstream so we were able to swim around a bit more. After this break, we continued hiking and made it back to the campsite by mid afternoon. We ended up averaging around 1 mile/hour on this day due to the route finding required and the leisurely swim break that was also required. When we made it back to camp, we discussed hiking back to the van, and while it would have certainly been possible, we decided to enjoy another night in the canyon.

Of course it wasn’t a completely uneventful night, with a nice windstorm and some rain that accompanied it (the forecast was a 0% chance of rain). The winds really picked up right as we were trying to go to bed and as we were reading in our tent, we found sand flying into our eyes. The wind was so strong that it was blowing the sand up and under our fly and through our mesh tent and covering us with sand. It was really unpleasant and led to a very sandy sleeping situation. Every backpacking trip always seems to have a reminder than Mother Nature is in charge and this was the reminder for this trip. We got out of our tent in the middle of this windstorm and found some driftwood to use to try to create a wind break around the bottom of the fly. It seemed to work to some degree and helped us to at least be able to go to sleep.

The next morning, we slept in once again (I could get used to this!), packed up, and headed back out the same way we came in. We hiked the steep slope in the middle of the morning, when it was in direct sunlight, and it was an extremely hot mile. Once we got to the top of this slope, it was easy walking ~3 miles back to the van.

Overall, I really enjoyed this backpacking trip. Dark Canyon is beautiful. What’s not to love about a stream flowing at the bottom of a huge canyon in the middle of desert with only a handful of other people around?

Day 1 Stats: 7 miles, 350 ft of elevation gain

Day 2 Stats: 6.7 miles, 200 ft of elevation gain

Day 3 Stats: 7.5 miles, 700 ft of elevation gain

Day 4 Stats: 4.5 miles, 1700 ft of elevation gain

Total Stats: 25.7 miles, 2950 ft of elevation gain

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