Text and photos © copyright by Rob Jones
Co-adventurers: Kathleen and Rob
Panasonic DMC-FZ200 camera
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*ERM = Energy Required Miles. A mile is added for every 500' elevation gain or loss. ERM was initially used in Trails of the Tetons (long out of print) by Paul Petzold, founder of NOLS. It's a wonderfully useful concept and application. Add one mile for each 500' up AND down to distance = ERM. I use ERMs to calculate what the actual day is like. It's a very serviceable method of estimating energy required miles.
Estimated mileage and ERM for this trip (loop only) - GPS trip total of 19.6 miles with an ERM of approximately 29.6.
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for a full-resolution map, click here. Caution - do not use this map or gps track for navigating the route.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Day 1: No Ouzels in Owl:
To below Fish-Owl junction. 8.5 miles; ERM = 12.5; camp @ 4800'.
The blast of wind has faded and again it's dead calm. Clouds rove to
the South and West and we get a few more sprinkles, which dry nearly as fast as they fall.
We're a bit over a mile below the Fish-Owl junction, where we've hiked
looking for water. We find decent water, complete with giant tadpoles, who speed off in the shallow
pool whenever a shadow passes over them.
We start the day at Natural Bridges NM CG, where we fortunately found
the last site last night. A pleasant place. Then, this morning, we check in at the Kane Gulch RS and
get our permit (advance reservation).
Then, off to the trailhead, which is near 6200', for the final pack-up.
Heading down into Owl, we see two ruins while slip-sliding on several slickrock descents. The upper
part of Owl Canyon is more serpentine and more difficult to negotiate, including routes around three
pour-offs, one of which requires a short hike up a side canyon to circumvent. It's just a bit of gription,
no climbing required. There's water intermittently in the top of Owl, yet it goes underground before we
see huge Nevills Arch on the skyline. From here, the canyon and route straightens and soon we're at
just over 7 miles from the TH and nearing the confluence of Owl and Fish Canyons. There's no water
near the junction, so down canyon we hike.
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Day 2: Land of Sand: To near bottom of climb out of Fish. 8.6 miles;
ERM = 12.6; camp @ 5500'.
The petro boulder blazes in the sun, desert varnish pecked to form
sandal shapes. Perhaps a guide to the canyon?
We return from our venture down canyon, to the confluence of Fish
and Owl, and then hike up Fish Canyon. Into the land of sand. A slog at times. After a bit over
a mile above the confluence, we see the first of the intermittent water in Fish, some pools sporting
tadpoles or pollywogs or the tiny fish, namesake of this canyon. The large East wall alcove Fishy
Fry Arch rolls into view. I see how it could be missed if one is not scanning the alcoves for arches
and other stuff. Yet, the high ruins are even less easily seen than Fishy Fry. A cool front has
blown in and it's a pleasant day. Again, the West wall arch eludes me - just where is it and how
does one see it? I am wondering if it is visible from the canyon floor. Onward. Beavers have been
their busy selves near the East arm junction, forming pools and lining them with discarded chewed
willows and cottonwoods.
As we pause in the shade of a Cottonwood for lunch, nestled in the
cool sand, a Towhee and a hummer come to visit. Water is nearly constant as we approach the foot of
the climb out of Fish Canyon.
Bats rule the sky and frogs the amphibian zone.
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Day 3: Brief out: Closing the loop. Visit a secret ruin.
2.5 miles; ERM = 4.5; camp on the mesa.
It's a steady climb above the fern garden overhang at the end of
the Fish Canyon route. Looking back, there are remnants of at least three pueblo walls - these lower
in the canyon than most in the Fish-Owl system. Climb. Climb some more. Then, a scramble at the end,
up the crack to the top of the mesa, to see distant Bears Ears above Cedar Mesa. Dramatic.
A lope through the pygmy forest and we close the Fish-Owl loop.
After a lovely lunch, we venture out on Cigarette Spring Rd.
(3.4 mi. to TH) to find a glorious ruin with an art deco ceiling. Secret Ruin. Mystical.
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 wfish-owl-2013-day3-24 Winnifred and friend - Netherlands.jpg |
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Day 4: Natural Bridges Loop:
9 miles.
After driving part of the loop road in the monument, we hike abruptly
into White Canyon and to Sipapu Natural Bridge. Along this long loop, we will see three giant
NBs (natural bridges, Sipapu, Kachina, Owachomo) and lots of good hiking. Horse Collar Ruin
and the pictos and petros near the buttress of Kachina NB are added features. During a lunch
break, a storm of geology students ripples past. Over 50 in this group. Ahh, field research.
Continuing past another high panel of art, we climb out under and through Owahomo NB, and return
to where we parked on the mesa top trail. Gorgeous.
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Working class gets conned in scam favoring the rich (Social Security)
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for a full-resolution map, click here. Caution - do not use this map or gps track for navigating the route.
Peter Francis Tassoni (2001) A Hiking Guide to Cedar Mesa: Southeast Utah, University of Utah Press.
Grand Gulch Grandioso: Kane RS to Pour-off near San Juan River and out Collins Canyon TH, 2011
Bucolic Butler Wash: Ruins or ruination? Butler Wash – Cedar Mesa area, Utah, 2009
Cedar Mesa Somewhere - Hiking the Trails of the Ancients, 2001
Click here to see the BLM brochure about Fish & Owl pdf file
Click here to see Alum water treatment for backpackers - summary by John Ladd.
Scenic Toilets of Inner Earth: Scenic Scatology of the Wilderness Vagabond
Bill Mckibben - climate change and the flood this time.
Working class gets conned in scam favoring the rich (Social Security)
We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction (click here for full article)
All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.
We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet’s life-forms—an estimated 8,760 species die off per year—because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam’s elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is “the monster on the land.” Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic—the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.
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