I descended Todie seven or eight years ago, but it wasn’t entirely a pleasant experience.  I vaguely remember the route, a short canyon rim stroll, a rubble strewn descent, a labyrinth of large boulders on the canyon bottom, and finally, a turn-around moment, a 10-15 ft vertical pour-off formed by a resistant sandstone ledge.  I didn’t want to shimmy down a flimsy, long-dead juniper lodged against the rim.  That was it, a brief flashback of that distant day, a hike never completed.

Todie canyon is a tributary of Grand Gulch, a deeply incised drainage system on the eastern edge of Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah.  Grand Gulch is a popular haven for mountain bikers, hikers and backpackers, birders, and stargazers.  It’s red rock country, a land of slot canyons, natural bridges, sagebrush forests, and Indian ruins, a reddish-brown and white mosaic of Mesozoic sandstone and mudstone born in river channels, paludal depressions, sand dunes, and mudflats.  Dinosaur tracks, petrified wood, and pottery sherds are plentiful if one knows where to look.

This time I had a hiking companion, a fellow desert rat and rock crawler, an archeological buff and avid outdoors enthusiast.  April has climbed every Colorado 14er, an enviable accomplishment considering there are 58 of them, and many require technical climbing skills.  She’s a retired family practice physician and an outstanding hiking companion.  We agreed to meet at Natural Bridges National Monument, a National Park Service parcel created in 1908 to preserve breathtaking natural features with Hopi names like Sipapu, Owachomo, and Kachina.  The secluded 13-site campground is shaded by a dwarfed forest of pinyon pines and junipers.  It’s one of the darkest dark skies sites in the desert southwest.

We drove April’s Subaru Forester south on Utah highway 261 past the Kane Gulch ranger station, then turned right onto a red dirt track and drove a mile to the trailhead at the upper end of Todie Canyon.  A single vehicle sat in the cobble-strewn parking lot, an older model Ford camper van with Colorado plates, probably owned by fellow hikers or backpackers.  We anticipated a 6-7 mile roundtrip hike to Grand Gulch to see some rock art and Indian ruins.  We checked our packs and water bottles, applied sunscreen, and tightened boot laces.  My watch indicated 9:30 AM as I walked to the map displayed on the trailhead kiosk.  The Bureau of Land Management is usually attentive to hikers at Grand Gulch.  Signs are posted at trailheads, and warnings are issued for occasional backcountry problems like washouts, cougar attacks, or health warnings.  There were no warnings today.  I looked around and contemplated our clear spring morning, deep blue sky, and light northerly breeze.  The trail began along an old four-wheel track, now off limits to motorized vehicles.  The route led us west along the south rim of Todie, just as I had remembered it.  Uppermost Todie is shallow but deepens quickly on its way to Grand Gulch, a straight line distance of about three miles.  The route led us through a pinyon-juniper grove, slick-rock pavement of undulating sandstone, and red silty patches with black cryptobiotic soil crusts.  Rock cairns marked our way over the slick rock, up and down the hummocky surface accentuated by orange and green lichen, a natural artist’s palette in the bright sun.  Wild flowers were in bloom too, red-orange paintbrushes, yellow prickly pear, yucca, and hedgehog cactus protruding out from the red-brown silt in the arid 6,200 ft upland desert.

A lone juniper marked the route down.  As we approached the tree, we noticed a partially hidden cairn directing us into a three-foot wide crack in the canyon wall.  We looked into the gap, more steps and more cairns urging us forward.  I looked ahead below toward the canyon and beyond, maybe 300 feet to the opposite rim, about the same distance to the canyon bottom here, and then down at the rubbly, blocky mass of dislodged rocks ahead of us.  We started down through the slot between two dislodged sandstone blocks, past a few isolated junipers wedged into vertical cracks, then some switchbacks and a slippery drop through clayey shale beds.  That’s when I suddenly remembered the truck-sized slab ahead of me, a flashback image of a sandstone surface dipping into the canyon with an extensive view of open space at the far end, a place requiring extra care.  I stood on the upper end of the slab and looked ahead.  The slab was dipping about 20 degrees, not steep enough to see what lay beyond.  It was about fifteen feet long and five feet thick, a smooth weathered chunk of White Rim Sandstone, temporarily lodged in mid canyon, a rest stop on its slow descent downward to the canyon bottom, a trip that might take thousands of years.  We pondered our situation.  A cairn at the lower end assured us that the trail continued beyond the slab.  I took several steps, then sat down on the sandstone and pushed myself forward on my rear to the cairn.  I lowered my legs and looked down over the lower edge of the slab at a small sandstone step, maybe two feet square and a steep slope beyond.  A narrow path of flat rocks to the right indicated the way forward.  I edged myself down onto the step, one leg at a time until I could feel it’s firmness.  I slowly stood up and stepped to the right, trying to ignore the steep 50-foot drop ahead of me.  The flat rocks led to a grassy platform, a sandy track, and then more switchbacks.  I looked back as I always do, contemplating the return trip later in the day.  April was right behind me.  Her climbing experience has given her confidence with exposure, a skill I lack.  We followed the trail easily now, more switchbacks, a few large sandstone blocks to navigate, some exposed tree roots for footholds, and finally a shaly descent on a gray, slippery slope to the canyon bottom.

We were greeted by a rock cairn and an arrow made of cobbles pointing the way up for our return trip, an opportunity to do our rock crawling all over again in reverse.  I looked to my right, upstream, and immediately realized why the route into the canyon was here rather than near the parking lot.  Huge blocks of sandstone the size of dump trucks choked the canyon upstream making a descent there into the canyon bottom impossible.  I looked downstream, but more boulders concealed our trail.  We estimated a two and a half mile hike to Grand Gulch, first through the boulder-strewn bottom, but ultimately along a well maintained trail to the confluence as the valley widened.  I tried to recall the details of my previous hike.  Where did I encounter the steep pour off and tree trunk ladder?

At first, we casually walked on the white sandstone pavement, a polished concrete-like bedding plane route that had been periodically refreshed by flooding.  We passed mature junipers near the canyon wall, survivors of intense flood events, more boulders interspersed with sandy patches, and then even more boulders the size of large trucks.  We first managed to walk around these monoliths thanks to well-placed cairns guiding the way.  But then too many cairns, conflicting pathways, and backtracking when a route dead ended.  We climbed over boulders, jumping from one to another, or sidestepping them.  Once, we had to scramble part way up the canyon on a scree slope to evade large blocks obstructing the canyon bottom.

After a long mile of bouldering, we encountered a wider canyon floor, and our route became much easier.  We passed grass-covered sand dunes cut by a well worn path.  Farther yet, a burned area of fallen cottonwood trees memorialized an old wildfire.  We hiked on an old stream terrace and along incised channels, each representing alternate periods of erosion and deposition, remnants of canyon bottom surfaces hundreds of years old.  The old terrace surface was littered with lithic sherds and pottery fragments from the Puebloan period.  The incised valley bottom meandered as it wound its way toward Grand Gulch.

We knew we were close to the Grand when we spotted a grove of trees and shrubs ahead of us, an indicator of flowing or stagnant water from Todie spring, a dependable water source for hikers and backpackers close to the confluence.  Water is always a welcome sight in canyon country, even stagnant water.   The spring wasn’t visible but probably bubbled up from below a foot-deep pool along the canyon wall.  The water here was pungent, the smell of rotting vegetation, scum, some dead bugs, tadpoles, a generally distasteful appearance.  We were happy to have plenty of water in our packs.  I always carry water purification tablets with me, but using them here would be an unpleasant task.  Todie spring reminded me of a backpack trip to the Flattops Wilderness in northwest Colorado years ago when I had to use coffee filters and iodine tablets to purify water from a muddy pond surrounded by sheep tracks and droppings.

The Todie-Grand confluence had to be close.  We scanned the nearby walls and alcoves for the ruins and rock art identified by others near here.  One landmark caught my attention, a large tree trunk, a dead, debarked cottonwood maybe 25 feet tall, bleached white from the sun, resting against the north canyon wall.  It must have died and later tipped onto the wall, a remnant of the old canyon bottom fire.

We continued our canyon descent, very close to the confluence by our account, cautiously looking for the Grand.  We approached what seemed like a narrow side canyon to our right.  It appeared to be a dead end, an amphitheater ending in a pour off ledge, but we didn’t walk in that direction.  Instead we turned left and dropped into an incised drainage cut 15 feet into the old terrace.  We walked downstream occasionally climbing up to the higher terrace level to look for rock art and ruins.

April and I had just unknowingly entered Grand Gulch.  We had reached the confluence and were heading downstream in a dry gravelly stream bed, still under the perception we were in Todie.  Had we inspected the suspected side canyon to our right, we would have realized it continued upstream.  Boot tracks were suddenly more abundant, a sure sign that we had entered a more frequently travelled drainage.  We discovered our first rock art panel 20 minutes later.  Grand Gulch literature describes rock art near the confluence.  We looked up to our right about twenty feet, along a narrow ledge separating two sandstone beds.  We observed some bipedal figures, stick images of humans and a cross chipped out of the rock.  We removed our packs, looked up to view the panel, and decided this was a great lunch stop.  Against a backdrop of the White Rim Sandstone and azure blue sky, we settled onto a sandy hummock next to some Indian paintbrushes, prickly pear, and yucca.  It was a beautiful early afternoon.  We pontificated about regional prehistory of the desert Southwest with Korean jerky, dried fruit, a few crackers, and some cheese sticks.

I checked my watch, 1:15, plenty of time to start back, up rubble-strewn Todie and out before dark.  When April and I started walking, we presumed we were retracing our route back up Todie on the terrace surface.  In 20 minutes we spotted our first ruin, probably hidden from us on the way down.  This must be the confluence ruin. The structures extended along a large south-facing alcove in the canyon wall, maybe 300 feet long, protected from the weather by a rock overhang.  The ruin covered a large area along an ancient canyon meander well protected from the weather.  We climbed up to the ruins and inspected the rubble, several partially standing walls, sharpening stones, numerous lithics and pottery chips, more pictographs, and even a kiva.  After wandering through the alcove for about 30 minutes, we retraced our steps and continued walking along the canyon bottom.

As we walked upstream from the ruin, the canyon seemed different, a subtle feeling, but canyons often do this to you on return trips, a slight juxtaposition of features, a change in appearance, different lighting and space.  Maybe it was a tree we missed or a boulder viewed from the opposite direction.  At some level of observation, canyons are very similar.  At another level more detailed level, they are vastly different.  We walked for about 45 minutes, but our uncertainty only increased.  We felt uneasy, a puzzling feeling.  It was 3 PM when the realization settled in like a house-sized boulder.  The canyon appeared to end a quarter mile ahead in a massive wall, but worst of all, we saw an arch on the left, high up on the sandstone cliff.  April pulled out her map and spotted the only arch in the immediate vicinity, Stemper or Natural Arch, situated in Grand Gulch about 2 miles above the confluence with Todie.  Our subtle feelings morphed into anxiety.  We had to get out of the inner canyons before dark or suffer an uncomfortable night in the cold while drinking water laced with pond scum.  Furthermore, would we see Todie when we came to it?  We had failed to track our route carefully and felt a sense of embarrassment and frustration with our predicament.  I think April, who prides herself in her orienteering skills and backcountry savvy, felt even worse than I did.

So, with some trail humor and perseverance, we retraced our steps at a moderate clip.  About 20 minutes and ¾ mile down canyon we were surprised to meet Mary Ann from Portland, a solitary backpacker, our first human contact of the day.  Mary Ann was a nurse and graduate student in psychology.  She was on vacation, headed up Grand Gulch to camp near some ruins farther up canyon.  We confessed our error, and she confirmed it with her GPS-based phone app.   She had been creating way points of her route and had passed Todie spring about a hour before meeting us.  She had filled her water bottles there. Talk about embarrassment!   We thanked her profusely and continued downstream.  We were clearly in Grand Gulch looking up every potential side canyon or recess we encountered hoping for Todie, and at the same time wondering how we could be so inept at orienteering.

The canyon widened and an equally wide side canyon appeared on our left.  There were tracks, lots of tracks entering the side canyon.  If this was Todie, it seemed wider than Grand.  I had falsely presumed that Grand Gulch was always larger than its tributaries. We turned left and followed the tracks.  Some looked suspiciously like ours.  Cautious optimism took hold, but we were not certain about this route.  We walked about ¼ mile when we saw the tree, the large bleached cottonwood leaning against the valley wall on our left, the one we had seen that morning.  Considering it was about 5:00 PM, with less than three hours of light, the cottonwood sentinel was a welcome sight.  Trail humor intensified, but the sobering thought of climbing uphill over house-sized boulders, exposed slabs, and scree slopes soon commanded our attention.  It was still going to be a close call.  I had forgotten to pack a flashlight, but two hours should get us out, or at least most of the way to the trailhead.  The important thing was to get up on the rim by dark.

During mid afternoon, high clouds began rolling in from the northwest.  The overcast lowered and thickened by the time we reached Todie spring at 5:30.  There was a chance of rain later according to the forecast I had read the day before.  We assessed our dwindling water supply.  I had nearly a full liter, but April had less and filled an empty bottle with a gray-green liquid from the stagnant pool, hoping she wouldn’t have to drink it.  It was impossible to tell where fresh spring water was entering the pool, probably just a trickle at the upper end against the rock face.  I searched my pack for two caffeinated dextrose tabs and offered one to April.  The ingredients improved my attitude.  We exchanged some anecdotes from previous desert hikes as we continued up canyon.  Familiar objects were everywhere now, the slab with a broken cairn, a juniper with trapped brushy debris from a previous flood, more tracks from our morning rest stop, a truck-sized boulder.

6:00 PM:  The bouldery bottom seemed endless.  Climbing above, descending below, and edging around these monoliths was exhausting work, compounded by late day fatigue.  We scanned the rocks ahead of us for cairns and easier routes around the largest impediments, juxtaposed blocks or a dry plunge pool from the last monsoon event.  We trekked up and down, a quick decision, a wrong route, backtrack, another route through a maze of obstacles.  The route ahead often looked like an entirely different canyon, but then suddenly a recollection, a friendly slab, a familiar flowering shrub, or the morning’s tracks.

7:00 PM:  When I finally saw the “rock arrow” and large cairn indicating the route up and out of the canyon, I was surprised.  The arrow of course looked familiar, but the canyon backdrop looked different from the opposite direction in late daylight.  A last energy bar, two Advil tabs, several gulps of water, and a glance at the route up.  The sun had long disappeared behind lowering clouds, cooler now as dusk approached, but still comfortable in the low 60s, but yet no rain.  Our last uphill slog, more rocks, and then the rim walk to the parking lot.  I didn’t say anything, but I was a bit anxious about attacking The Slab in reverse.  The rest was manageable even in the dwindling light.  The rim walk would be a snap.

I started up first with April close behind.  We reached the first of several switchbacks, soon grabbing or standing on exposed roots and stable rocks, continuing to work our way up the steep slope.  I was focused on cairns and didn’t recognize The Slab until I was nearly on it.  I edged my way toward the rock step at the base, careful to avoid getting too close to the drop off on my right.  April was 20 feet behind and closing the gap as I pondered how I would climb onto the slab.  I unbuckled my fanny pack and threw it as far up onto the slab as I could.  I then stood on the step, grabbed the lower end of the slab with my hands and pulled myself up.  I painfully crawled a few feet on my bare knees to escape the exposure.  Rising quickly, I grabbed my pack and stumbled forward to the upper end of the slab.  As I turned around, I saw April on the step.  She asked me to lower a rope so she could attach her pack.  It took a minute to find it in my pack and tossed most of a 50-foot roll of synthetic cord her way.  As I pulled up her pack, she stepped up onto the slab without getting to her knees and walked to the top.

We had successfully managed the last obstacle on the route.  While gazing at the canyon below, we consumed most of our remaining water.  April noticed that both of my knees were bruised and bleeding slightly, an occupational hazard for people who crawl on sharp sandstones in short pants.  After a reprimand and some joking, we continued upward through the last few switchbacks, more tree root footholds, and a surge to the top through the slot in the dislodged wall, and finally up to the lone pinyon sentinel marking our earlier descent.  We whooped it up on the rim.  It was dusk and I just noticed I was still wearing my sunglasses.  I had neglected to pack my regular glasses for the hike.  The last ¾ mile to the parking lot was a cinch.  There was still enough light to find our way over the slick rock and the old 4 X 4 track to the parking area and April’s Subaru.  The Ford campervan was still parked there.  It was nearly 8:00 PM.  April unlocked the vehicle and grabbed two diet Pepsis from her cooler.  During the 10-mile drive back to the campground, our discussion revolved around what each of us did wrong: we needed more water, GPS control, headlamps, long pants, and extra glasses.  We had turned a seven mile hike into a 15 miler, an exhausting tour of the inner canyon.  Dinner that evening was freeze dried rice and beans with added chicken.  We topped it off with instant tapioca pudding.  It was one of the best meals of the hiking season.

It was during dinner that I reviewed my recollections of previously hiking Todie.  I was right about the easy rim walk, the difficult route down, and the bouldery 3-D jigsaw at the canyon bottom, but whatever happened to the dry pour off and the log ladder?  Canyons are confusing places.  Maybe a monsoon flood destroyed the sandstone lip and reconfigured that part of the route.  Maybe I remembered a different canyon and got it mixed up with Todie.  I guess I’ll never know the answer to that question.