2000-06-26 Antelope Island to Reflection Canyon 2000-06-27 Reflection Canyon 2000-06-28 Reflection Canyon to Dungeon Canyon 2000-06-29 Dungeon Canyon to Labyrinth Canyon 2000-06-30 Labyrinth Canyon to Wahweap 2000-07-01 Dam Tour

Day 6 - Friday, June 30, 2000

By Friday morning, the wind had abated, and we awoke to a mostly sunny day, our last day on the lake.  We planned to motor the rest of the way back to Wahweap and sleep on the houseboat Friday night, then we'd spend part of Saturday cleaning and unpacking the boat and taking care of some other errands.

We weren't leaving the lake without one last hike, however, and this one was by far the best one of the week.  We took the speedboat back into Labyrinth Canyon, the upper reaches of which become a slot canyon that continues for miles back into the desert backcountry.  At the time, the lake was high enough that we could motor all the way up to the slot canyon entrance.  Six years later, as I write this journal, the lake is so low that the nearest place to dock a boat is at least a mile down-canyon from there.

The Labyrinth slot canyon is, in places, so narrow that you have to turn your body to get through it.  It is now known that these slot canyons form primarily due to flash floods in regions of exposed Navajo Sandstone.  Each flood carries a surprising amount of material out of the canyon bottom but does not widen the canyon by very much, so it remains narrow and deep for a relatively long period of time.  In the intervening dry periods, wind smoothes and polishes the sandstone walls into delicately curved eddy patterns that seem almost unnatural in origin.  This particular canyon extended as much as 40-50 feet over our heads and was as narrow as 6-9 inches ... in other words, not where you'd want to be during a thunderstorm.

The canyon continues for several miles, gradually getting shallower until the floor is at the level of the ridgeline and the canyon peters out altogether.  However, going as far as the head of the canyon requires a bit of canyoneering, so we turned around after a mile or so and hiked back out the way we had come.

As we were pulling up anchors, the Tree of Contention came up yet again-- literally this time.  Robert insisted that the plucky little shrub had been all that was preventing us from being dashed against the rocks the previous night.  To prove his point, he gave the rope a good yank ... and, of course, the Tree of Contention popped right out of the sand.  (Note: the debate over the Tree of Contention was never a serious debate-- it was more like a bar argument.)

The wind picked up a bit during the couple of hours that it took to steam downriver to Wahweap, and this made docking the boat in the marina a bit tricky.  We spent the rest of that afternoon doing some chores so we could get out of there early on Saturday.

Friday night in the marina was hot and still.