Life in Death Hollow, Part I

Few places on the planet offer the diversity of landscape that you see in Southern Utah, a land that offers stark views of what was, what is, and what will be. On clear days, the snowcapped peaks of the La Sals to the east and Henrys to the southwest tower above scrub and desert, the rivers Fremont, Escalante, and Dirty Devil washing through them as red-hued veins of life.

Your eyes make it clear to your brain the first time you glimpse it. Stare straight and you’ll see the mountains rise to over 12,000 feet, but it’s hard not to be distracted by the fractured horizon line. There is no one horizon line, really, as while the mountains pull your gaze upwards, the stark canyon cliffs that drop thousands of feet below them pull your pupils back down as if gravity drove them. The earth juts up, the earth falls off like a cross-section of some geological sine curve.

At the bottom of said canyons and gulches flow the rivers and creeks returning life to what little holds on in this rocky, desert climate. It’s not just the current lifeline, but the glue that brings all species there together. It is, quite literally, what is there.

Of course, it’s the canyons through which the waters flow that tell tales of what was, the sheer cliffs a constant reminder of just how many cycles this part of the world has witnessed. The red, muddy waters bring life to the region while carving through the dirt and rock as if they were carving cake, and have done so for millenia.

Working backwards through this cycle of life brings your eyes back up, back to the snowcapped tops of Mount Peale, Mount Pennell, and Abajo Peak, among others. What snowpack there is – fortunately for all of us, 2023 provided quite plenty – serves as the what will be, the future of the rivers and drainages already there in plain sight anxiously waiting for its turn. It’s not just what’s going to bring life to this place down the line, it’s what will continue to create new lines – new canyons – in the very same process.

It’s a constant, mesmerizing dichotomy as you sweat profusely, sun-exposed, trying like hell to walk with progress through the fine, soft sands. You can feel the dry air pulling out what moisture you have left in your soul all while mountains ripe with snow sit plainly in view like moisture banks with ironclad vaults.

Finding the locations and crannies that hold onto and foster their water year-round has been the path to human existence in the area for, at this point, hundreds of generations. The Fremont and Anasazi leaned on them long before the Ute, Paiute, Navajo, and Shoshone followed that guide. The petroglyphs they left behind often tell tales of the harvests borne through the guidance of the waters, serving as lessons to future generations trying to live, thrive, and survive in the same locations.

The thousands of years of human history that dot the region resonate when down there to simply pass through doting a backpack for a mere few days. The self-sufficiency you think you’ve perfected by lugging pre-made food on your shoulders gets knocked down a few pegs when you get there. You quickly realize just how long people have lived year-round and grown, hunted, and harvested all they needed to stick around that long despite being hemmed in every day by rock and sand and the unmistakeable red dirt.

You need a little callus on your feet and more on your soul to even commit to a trek in that part of the world. Witnessing the hardiness of those who’ve been down there every single day of their lives gives you the respect and motivation you need to get started – knowledge that it can be done, but that it’ll take focus and a maximization of what limited resources exist.

*************************************************************************

Death Hollow derives its name from the countless number of livestock that perished within its steep walls while trying to navigate the terrain for – you guessed it – good water. That Pine Creek and Death Hollow run parallel, and eventually together, with year-round sources of water in an oft-barren landscape provide a tragic twist of irony, as the greatest amount of life in the rocks and deserts just east of Escalante, Utah exist within the narrow canyon whose name is Death.

Getting to it from Escalante, as my good buddy George and did in mid-April, was an effort in itself. Long before highways and during the early existence of the towns of Escalante and Boulder, the Boulder Mail Trail served as the route connecting the two remote towns via courier, at first, and eventually via telegraph line. From Escalante it ascends steeply up a giant block of Navajo sandstone before riding a ridge to the northeast, dropping occasionally back into smaller drainages and subsequently back up the opposite walls.

It’s a trek that’s just under 15 miles if you take it from town to town. Just about halfway up that route, however, you’ll encounter a giant north-south crevass that looks like some giant placed a splitting wedge into the rock and hit it with a big ol’ hammer. That crevass, with crystal clear water running through its basin and hundred-foot ponderosa pines lining its walls, is Death Hollow.

*************************************************************************

The trek across the first section of the Boulder Mail Trail turned north away from the Escalante River, following Pine Creek around a bend to a weak point in the wall of sandstone, a funnel up which we’d climb. Once on top and decidedly sweatier, we found ourselves under high skies, the sun warming both us and the sandstone beneath our feet. We gradually began working our way across the shelves and eventually onto the Antone Flat, with Mamie Creek the lone water source between us and an entrance into Death Hollow much later that day.

We eventually rendezvoused with the telegraph line, the poles that carried it and the messages between the towns of Boulder and Escalante, and the soft sand in which most of it traverses across the flat. The sparse clouds meant visibility was good, and Mt. Ellen Peak and Mt. Pennell of the Henry Mountains stood snowcapped dozens of miles to our East.

Mamie Creek threw us a lifeline with water I’ll politely describe as ‘water’ and more accurately describe as ‘maroon,’ but the few places where the pools rode gravity over rock into lower pools created enough movement within it to fill up a bottle or two with confidence.

That left just one subsequent up-and-over remaining before we intersected Death Hollow, where we’d drop in to find camp for the night before turning south to wade through the lower section’s clear waters and narrow canyon walls. We quickly discovered that the descent was carved deep into the rock, with ponderosa pine trees towering out of a canyon floor that was, truly, an oasis.