Stone Donkey Cyn August 25-26

We started the day with the good news that Cottonwood Road was just opened, our ticket to our next backpacking destination and a possible shortcut back to Arizona. We made brief stops at Bull Valley Gorge (muddy!), Willis Creek (pretty boring) and Grosvenor Arch (unimpressive after just coming from the Escalante) before continuing our drive on the rough dirt road. The road weaves back and forth between some neat jagged rock formations (strike ridges) known as the Cockscomb. We backpacked up Hackberry Canyon through some very annoying quicksand and liquefied sand for several hours, forced to camp short of our planned campsite because of time, exhaustion and lack of daylight. The next morning we opted for a cross-country route to the head of Stone Donkey Canyon to avoid the wretched canyon. A nice 130 foot rappel dropped us into the head of the Stone Donkey slot. The slot was beautiful, but compensated by being narrow, having skin-shreding downclimbs, being dark (headlamp needed in places), muddy quicksand, and some wading in very foul water. It was a lot of work for 800 feet of slot canyon. I had sand everywhere! Thankfully we found a spring clear enough to filter near our camp. Instead of the slow slog in liquiefied mud down canyon back to our vehicle, we opted to try an uncertain trans-Cockscomb route to hit the road where the last couple miles to the car would be easy. The beginning (climbing out of Hackberry) and the end (getting down the steep face of the Cockscomb) were the hardest. The first drainage we tried led us to several dryfalls so we backtracked to find another way down. We lucked out and found a steep rockslide chute drainage that allowed us passage down to the road. Ryan graciously ran the road back to the car while I waited with the packs. Thankfully we could made it south to the highway although it involved a bit of boating through deep, wet, rutted mud in our borrowed 2WD truck. Over the worst stretch the car rarely went straight forward and the wheel had to be constantly rotated from one extremity to the other to try to compensate for the last slide of the car. Thanks to Ryan for a great trip.