Golden Cathedral
- Day Hike: Nov 1, 2017, 12.2 mi round trip, 8 hours, max altitude 5613’, min 4456’
- Egypt Bench Trail Head, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Today’s Photo Tales trail description destination is the Golden Cathedral in Neon Canyon. I hiked there in early November, 2017, in the endangered Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Southern Utah. I won’t go into the politics today, but let’s just say that I have an ‘Endangered Monuments’ gallery on my photo website. 25% of the price of any work sold, including all the images in this blog, will be donated to the Utah Diné Bikéyah and/or the Natural Resources Defense Council to support legal challenges in defense of Bears Ears and GSENM.
The Golden Cathedral hike has been high on my list since I first read Photographing the Southwest by Laurent Martrès (I highly recommend this series of books, geared towards nature photographers). I skipped this hike on my first trip to Escalante in 2011 because I didn’t think our rental sedan could make it to the trailhead (boy was I right!). The road and some of the hike is in the GSENM, and some is in the Glen Canyon National Recreation area.
Please note, this is not meant to be an accurate reference trail description with topo maps and coordinates. There is an excellent trail description and map on the Grand Canyon Trust site.
Getting There
The route involves a 10 mile drive down Hole-in-the-Rock Road, which is doable in a passenger car in dry weather. The side road to the Egypt Bench trailhead is several miles of rutted, rocky ‘road’ that includes a stream crossing, deep sand, and slickrock obstacles. Fortunately my Jeep Grand Cherokee rental was more than up to the task, and after a brief stop at Devil’s Garden to capture these unique hoodoos at sunrise, I arrived at the trailhead a little before 9am on a chilly but sunny early November morning. Important tip: don’t try the road to Egypt Bench in a rental sedan! High clearance 4WD/AWD a must!
As I pulled up to the trailhead, I saw 3 millennials unloading their climbing gear from a Range Rover. Egypt Bench trailhead gives access to several different popular technical hikes, but it turns out they were headed to the Golden Cathedral as well. Their plan was to hike up above the Cathedral and rappel down through the pothole arches (natural bridges, technically).
Even when I hike with others, I tend to set a different pace. I hike deliberately, stopping when I see an interesting viewpoint or composition. Sometime I stop for a minute or two, sometimes for hours, often leapfrogging my hiking companion(s). I have a small GPS satellite communicator in case I get into real trouble, but I am comforted by the sight of other hikers at the trailhead, who will at least be headed the same general way. It turns out that aside from the Knut, Shelley and Gabe, I would see only one other hiker the entire day!
The Hike Begins
Golden Cathedral lies in Neon Canyon, which is on the opposite (East) side of the Escalante River from the Egypt Bench trailhead. I have read about 2 different routes – one more ‘direct’ across the slickrock and down a dune toward the river opposite the mouth of Neon Canyon, and a slightly longer, more scenic route that descends to the river via Fence Canyon. I always opt for the scenic route (see map here).
At first the trail is obvious, switch-backing down a slope from the ridge where we parked (+5600’), but after about 1/2 mile heading generally East (and about 500’ lost elevation), the path broadens onto slickrock, with scattered cairns roughly pointing the way. We come to a wash (dry creek bed), and know from my research that I need to cross the wash, then skirt to the left (Northeast) to descend into Fence Canyon from the North. My fellow hikers, who have farther to go to find the route into Golden Cathedral from above, decide to try the more direct route, so we part ways at this point. As I hike generally Northeast, the cairns and footprints in the sandy spots get more infrequent. I am confident that I am headed in the right direction, however, as I am tracking my progress on my phone via Backcountry Navigator Pro app, which has gotten me out of a jam on more than one occasion. I had previously downloaded the topo map for the area to my phone, so even though I am well out of cell range at this point, I can see how I am progressing on the map, and can leave digital breadcrumbs for my return, which is important, as I am not entirely sure I will be back before dark.
After about 20 minutes, I see my new friends angling back toward my path. Having neither phone nor paper map, they have decided that perhaps sticking with me makes sense. I am happy to have the company, so we can all figure this out together. The big unknown for me is the river crossing, which I have read about, but for which I have no visual clues. How deep will it be where we cross? Shin deep? Thigh deep? We shall see.
About 1.6 miles into the hike, we walk through a notch in the rocks, and Fence Canyon begins to open to our right. We are spread out along the ‘trail’, each of us working our way along the rocky canyon edge at various paces, to try to find a route down. After a couple of missteps, following cairns and footprints that lead to steep overlooks with no obvious way down, someone eventually sees an obvious point to the Northeast, beyond which we can see what we think is the mouth of Fence canyon where it meets the Escalante. Scrambling down to the point, we find a series of switchbacks down into Fence Canyon, losing another 500’ to the canyon floor (~+4600’). One of the reasons I chose this hike this time of year is that the leaves of the cottonwood trees turn a glorious golden yellow, so I stop to photograph the backlit trees that line Fence Canyon. I don’t dwell too long, though, as I know there will be more cottonwoods in Neon Canyon, and I am anxious to catch up with my new friends before we cross the river.
Crossing the Escalante River
On the floor of the canyon an obvious narrow trail winds through a dense underbrush of reeds, hopping across a narrow stream in two places. Soon the reeds are joined and overtaken by a dense thicket of tamarisk trees, which create a tunnel of sorts on either side of the winding trail, somewhat obscuring the cliffs that line the canyon. I hear voices ahead, and I turn a corner and come upon Shelley and Knut, stopped short of a rushing, muddy torrent of water, perhaps 20 feet across, its depth obscured.
I have to admit, if I had been hiking alone, I would have been rather intimidated by the sight of the rushing river. In my head it was a wide, lazy river I had to cross – this looked entirely different. My dry bag backpack was left home in Brooklyn, and of course camera gear and water do not mix! Gabe was already in the middle of the river, wearing a dry suit, wading across with one end of a climbing rope, attempting to string up some sort of line we could use to cross the swift and muddy river. But he managed to get across the river rather easily, with the water coming just above his knees at the deepest point. We all had a good laugh, as the river suddenly seemed much more tame. I took off my boots and socks, unzipped the legs of my zip-off pants, and crossed the river, with my hiking pole in one hand, probing the muddy river bottom, and my boots in the other, making sure my backpack full of camera gear was well up on my back, just in case. The water was cool, but not cold, and the most difficult part of the crossing was scrambling up the far bank.
From that first crossing, the trail through the reeds and tamarisk snaked down the Escalante River canyon. The mouth of Neon Canyon lies about ½ mile downstream from the mouth of Fence Canyon, and to my surprise, the river meandered quite a bit, from one edge of the canyon to other, necessitating a total of FIVE crossings of the Escalante River in each direction, sometimes knee-deep, sometimes thigh deep (waist deep for Shelley). By the third crossing, I just left my boots on, squishing my way thru the tamarisk beyond, as the day had warmed considerably. We worked out way downstream, backtracking once when I chose the wrong trail. The canyon then hooked toward the East. There along the north wall of the canyon is a fairly large petroglyph panel. Mixed with the pre-Columbian, Anasazi rock art are more contemporary images, including relatively fresh cartoonish outlines of a pair of men boxing, and a man on horseback in what appears to be a ranger hat, with dates scrawled from the 1890s.
Neon Canyon
A few hundred yards farther East, the mouth of Neon Canyon opened up to the North. This narrow, steep-sided canyon is appropriately named, as the tall, vivid red rock walls of the canyon glowed with reflected late morning light, and the cottonwood trees were tall, graceful, and full of golden leaves, backlit beautifully in places. My companions shortly left the trail, climbing to the left to find their way above the Cathedral and the rappelling spot. I continued alone, stopping frequently to photograph along the way, before arriving at the Golden Cathedral just about 1pm.
The Golden Cathedral
As a photographer, sometimes I am forced to share a special location with tourists and other photographers. Unique places like Delicate Arch, Bryce Point, Antelope Canyon, the Virgin Narrows are often crowded. Photographers are as common as bison and bears in Yellowstone and Yosemite. Sometimes, though, you reach your destination with the feeling that you have just lucked into a private audience with nature. Recently for me, Indian Head in the Adirondacks, the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Druid Arch in the Needles, and a sunrise on Dream Lake all qualify. The Golden Cathedral is one of those places. For two hours, while waiting for the rappellers to appear above me, I had this unique spot to myself.
On the way in, the wind had been whipping thru the narrow canyon, thrashing the cottonwood trees to and fro. But here at the end of the trail, there was barely a ripple in the pool below the grotto. As the afternoon wore on, the sun shifted lower and toward the southwest, coming up Neon Canyon to reflect off the pool of water below the two natural bridge potholes that at times pour water into this glorious overhang. The reflected sun worked its way across the stone face, until it reached the openings, casting rippling refractions of light on the walls and ceiling of the grotto – truly magical.
After eating my lunch in the shade of a cottonwood, I set to work. I shot primarily with my widest lens (Canon EF 16-35mm f/4) and a tripod. With the lighting conditions slowly shifting, I worked my way toward the side of the pool, and turning my tripod around, I captured the photo to the left. The high contrast between the shadows of the grotto and the bright sky and sun on the trees necessitated using HDR. I captured three, but only used two images (shutter speeds 1/25 sec & 1/100 sec) to create the final image. With the light reflecting onto the ceiling, and the cottonwoods backlit beautifully, it is of my favorite image captures of the year, and I have already sold a couple of prints! (Find it here. Hint: it looks fantastic on aluminum!). Be sure to read my earlier blog post about my Top 40 Photographic Hits of 2017. All images in that gallery are 25% off through Feb 1!
Company From Above
About this time, I heard voice from above, as my new friends had found their way into the slot canyon above. Their timing was excellent, because they were perfectly illuminated by the sun as they rappelled in. At times they each had two distinct shadows, one direct, and one from the sun reflected in the pool. Their ropes made slight ripples in the pool, adding to the magic happening on the walls of the grotto.
It was a real bonus to have these three as action subjects to photograph. I don’t often photograph people in nature, but sometimes it really helps to give a sense of scale to the image. I am not a technical climber, so I can only imagine what it must have been like to see the Golden Cathedral for the first time as you rappel down into it!
Return Trip
The return trip was fairly uneventful. Retracing our steps was fairly easy, even once we were back on the slickrock. I had my phone in case we got off course, but the ridge where the parking lot waited was visible once we got past the river crossings and out of Fence Canyon. The hike up was quite a slog, especially the last mile or so, which included 500′ of switchbacks at the end of a 12.2 mile hike. That was longer, with more elevation gain (1200’+) than some of the descriptions I read. The entire round trip hike took about 8 hours, including a 2 hour stop at the Golden Cathedral. We arrived before the sun set, but it was dark by the time we got back to Escalante, and had a lovely meal of pizza and beer at the Escalante Outfitters Cafe, with great memories and new friends.
This is the first of what I hope will be several Photo Tales descriptions of some of my favorite images. Do you have an image of mine you’d like to see on Photo Tales? Click the Contact Me button above to let me know. I love feedback!
Colin’s Bag of Camera Gear, Canon Style
