Day 2 - Big Pour Off Ruin to Cow Tank Canyon

What a rough day - the rainstorm through the night and morning turned the Grand Gulch wash into a proper running creek. Problem is, the wash is usually the trail.

Hitting the trail at Big Pour Off

Our tent was nice and soaked in the morning but we stayed dry. Hardly a drop fell on Mike and Jim’s tents thanks to their cliff shelter. We hit the trail at about 9:30am.

We meet the flood - first of two encounters

About an hour into hiking the surprisingly dry river bed we met the flood - water coming down canyon but not aggressively so. This changed our hiking scheme and would make it a long day.

Julie crossing the stream

When we could traverse across plateaus between bends in the river we did, trying to follow game trails. Often we had to hug the river bank, crossing back and forth and improvising fords by tossing crossing rocks in.

Some of the plateaus were just impassable with dense dried out junipers. We had multiple sand collapses as we climbed or descended the soggy river banks.

Big Man panel

But the payoffs were incredible! Sometimes finding higher ground meant finding a surprise midden with ancient pottery sherds to examine. We also hit most of our ruin and rock art finding goals.

Big ruin and pictographs

Our final find was a large ruin with a huge set of pictographs. The views out to the amphitheater with green cottonwoods below made the climb worthwhile.

Our camp for night two

We ended our day about a mile short of goal, having likely walked two extra miles navigating the flood. Our camp is at the entry of Cow Tank canyon to Grand Gulch. Tomorrow we aim for Bullet Canyon n