Everett Ruess shared my love of remote places. A teenager from Los Angeles, Ruess travelled the south-west and the sierra with two burros before disappearing in the Escalante in 1934.
Ruess' body was never found, only adding to the mystery. In 1996, Jon Krakauer revived the Ruess story in his book Into the Wild, about Christopher McCandless, another youthful wilderness traveller who died.
The teen's last-known location was about 16km from where I scanned the heavens from Coyote Gulch. His legacies coloured much of my trip, making me better realise the risks and rewards of travel in isolated places like the Escalante.
The rigours of such travelling telegraphed through my body on the drive there, as soon as I left Utah 12 for the unpaved, 89km Hole in the Rock Road.
My teeth were on edge as my car rattled past the monument's most popular attractions and made its way to near the road's end at the "Hole in the Rock", an opening in a canyon wall next to Lake Powell.
In 1880, Mormon pioneers made their way through the hole to begin settling the area.
John Wesley Powell's expedition of the American West did initial mapping at this time.
Adventurers have long explored the Canyons of the Escalante, but it was not made a national monument until 1996, when then-President Bill Clinton praised the "high, rugged and remote region".
The monument covers 800,000ha and has three parts — the Kaiparowits Plateau, which includes the distinct Straight Cliffs, a sandstone shelf that runs parallel to the Hole in the Rock Road; the Grand Staircase, where cliff lines and benches form the "steps" near the Arizona-Utah border; and the Canyons of the Escalante, the area I visited, largely north of Hole in the Rock Road.
In addition to endless opportunities for hiking and backpacking, the monument has many campsites, a river for fishing and rafting, trails for mountain biking, and much more.
The Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for the monument, does not provide many of the features designed to make a park user-friendly: signs, built trails and the like. This does give the area a more wild and natural feel but it can also make travel more difficult.
Guide services in the town of Escalante do provide tours. If you go without a guide, however make sure you know a few things about desert hiking. Take plenty of water, of course. Also take detailed maps or a GPS unit. Desert trails are typically harder to follow than trails in other places because the ground does not retain footprints and the sparse landscape provides fewer natural cues to follow.
I used a GPS unit to find two slot canyons, West Fork and Big Horn; without the unit, I would have been lost in a maze of desert canyons.
Once I found them, I was transfixed. Bright orange and red walls look freshly painted with swirls. As those walls press closer and closer, small shafts of light seem to set them on fire, until canyons get so tight you cannot move.
The highlight of my excursion was hiking the serpentine canyons of Coyote Gulch, named a top hiking destination by many outdoor writers, including Peter Potterfield in his Classic Hikes of North America.
Coyote Gulch is probably the monument's most crowded attraction. In three days I saw about 40 people, most of them travelling in large groups. Most of the time, I trekked in secluded bliss, as hours would pass without seeing anyone.
The gulch leads across 23km of land and ankle-deep water. The canyon walls get bigger and the views get more dramatic as the gulch makes its way towards the Escalante River, under the Jacob Hamblin Arch and the Coyote Natural Bridge and past Cliff Arch. The topography gets trickier with a succession of waterfalls requiring the traveller to scramble on rocks at the edge of the water.
On one of those scrambles, I had to ease across a strip of smooth, wind-polished rock known as slickrock about 30cm wide. On another, I was traversing steep slickrock that led to a 9m drop-off into a rocky waterfall. At such moments as these, I was most aware of my solitude. If I broke a bone, I would have to wait for rescue, which may not come.
When I finished my first trip through Coyote Gulch, I went out to the Escalante River and saw yet another natural arch. Then I immediately made my return trip, to be just as stunned by the beauty as on the initial view.
My legs felt like burning stumps from a week's hiking, but like Ruess, I had not tired of the wilderness. The beauty propelled me forward.
PLAN YOUR ROAD TRIP
To book your USA road trip: See House of Travel.
Further information: See visittheusa.com.
IF YOU GO
Getting there: American Airlines flies from Auckland to Salt Lake City, Utah, via Los Angeles.
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a four-hour drive from Salt Lake City.
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