Travel: Cottonwood Canyon

'Impassable When Wet'

Posted
By Phil Clark
Lake Powell Chronicle

The sun shone through my duplex window on a Saturday morning. It had been a long stressful week and I couldn’t imagine spending the day indoors with such a radiant day starting outside. I had been wanting to go explore Lower Hackberry Canyon and what better day to go than on a crisp morning in October. Little did I know that I’d have more of an adventure than I thought I would.


I headed north on U.S. Route 89. The sky was mostly clear and calm. There were just a few wisps of clouds in the distance. About 25 miles from Page, I turned onto Cottonwood Wash Road as it was called in 1989.  It was an unpaved and somewhat rough road that I had driven many times. As I turned, a beat up metal sign, rusty and sporting random bullet holes warned “Impassable When Wet.”  I’d seen the sign many times. I haven’t had to test the validity of the message though. I haven’t yet hiked up Lower Hackberry Canyon after the many trips up and down the road and the thought of exploring a new canyon drew me up the road.


The road was rough and curvy at times. Even though I had four-wheel drive, usually all that was really necessary was decent road clearance. Even though there wasn’t a sign to mark the trailhead, I knew where the canyon started.  It was a break in the long cockscomb that runs roughly north-south along most of the road. Once parked off of the dirt road, I started following the drainage that formed Hackberry Canyon.


The magic of fall was at its peak as the walls of the canyon urged me to keep going, trying to see how narrow the canyon would get. It didn’t get as narrow as slot canyons I knew but had a certain beauty all its own. Soaring light beige sandstone cliffs capped deep red cliffs. Cottonwood trees were ablaze in yellow.  Other trees were still green. Scrub oak glowed deep red. The flowers had long gone to seed. A raven flew overhead. The decomposing leaves and grasses lining the canyon just added to the smell of fall in the canyon. A frog looked at me from its pool of water, wondering what I was doing in its natural habitat. A rabbit scampered away, stopping every few feet thinking it had somehow turned invisible. Lizards tried to head up on sunny boulders, doing pushups as I walked by in an effort to scare me away––It worked.  I kept walking upstream. I was glad to have waterproof hiking boots on since it was almost impossible not to get feet wet. Hackberry Creek wasn’t deep and the splashing cooled things off.


As I walked, the clouds overhead started to overtake the blue sky and I dug out the windbreaker to counteract the chill in the autumn air. This desert rat was getting cold. As I walked and took pictures of the canyon, I started feeling rain drops. Not knowing how far the canyon went, and hoping the canyon would soon become a slot, I just kept hiking. As the almost imperceptible drizzle continued, the canyon started opening wide and decided I’d better turn around just in case the road became slippery. Turning around gave a new perspective on the canyon, with the rain making the rock colors become more vivid and more intense. The cloudy sunshine softened the shadows and made the colors more intense. Taking photos of drops on a leaf, I lost myself in the scenery and wasn’t in a hurry to get back home.  


Back at the truck where I nibbled on a granola bar, I relaxed on the tailgate and took in one of my favorite smells: the wet desert. OK, I tell myself, I’d better head home in case some of the side canyons start filling with flash floods. Driving down the road, I notice that my tires are making noise and I realize that it’s the sound of mud being flung inside the fenders. Hmmm, I said to myself, that might make things a bit more interesting.


Soon afterwards I move the transfer case lever on the floor into the “4WD” position. I had already locked the front wheels as I usually did when I would go into remote areas. Soon, I found the truck behaving as if I were driving on ice, with little control. Funny, I thought, I had just bought some all-terrain tires recently.  How could this be happening? Backing off the accelerator and avoiding using it entirely, I did my best to stay on the road. Thankfully the piles of dirt and gravel at the edge of the road were serving as a sort of ‘guardrail’, bouncing my wheels back onto the road. Before I knew it, I was soon heading down one of the many switchbacks found along Cottonwood Wash Road, cut into a hillside. On one side of the road there was a steep drop-off. On the other, it was a steep hillside. Thankfully someone else had been down the switchback recently and left ruts and hadn’t seemed to run off the road. Following the ruts, with my feet off of the gas, brake and clutch pedals, I gently held the steering well to keep it as straight down the ruts as I could. I was thinking to myself that maybe it would have been a good idea to bring along a sleeping bag, extra water and some extra food, just in case––

Somehow, with white knuckles and sweaty palms on the steering wheel, I made it down the switchbacks.  All that was left was to keep my truck on the road back to the highway. Somewhat easier than the switchbacks, the “dirt guardrails” helped keep me on the road but I knew it wouldn’t take much to run through them if I got fast enough. It was the longest 10 miles I’d ever driven! I had assumed that the Impassable When Wet sign was intended for those who didn’t have four-wheel drive. That day, I found out it was meant for any vehicle regardless of the type of tires or whether it had four-wheel drive or not.


Back on U.S. 89, as I sped up on the pavement, the mud quickly flew off of the tires leaving tracks behind me and coating the inside of the fenders. As my palms dried out and my knuckles regained their normal color, I had a new respect for muddy roads, especially those cut from clay hills.  
Talking to friends at work, I learned that many of the roads near Page can become a muddy “skating rink” without much rain, including Warm Creek Road and others through Smoky Mountain. The day could have ended much worse and was glad it didn’t. I learned what many visitors have learned since then that the signs that read Impassable When Wet are for any vehicle and it’s best to find somewhere else to go.  That was the last time I’d second guess a sign on a backcountry road!