Quick Summary
Amanda Bryan shares a recap of a four-day, three-night backpacking trip through Paria Canyon in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, done as an all-women's trip (plus a dog named Pocho). Starting from the White House Trailhead, the group hikes the winding, narrowing slot canyon, takes a side detour into Buckskin Gulch that gets stymied by deep murky pools, and camps along the way with tequila, tarot cards, and campfire stories. Enjoy vivid descriptions of the canyon's sandstone walls, muddy Paria River, and geology, with reflections on friendship, resilience, and the desert as a feminine landscape, plus a few great and lighthearted mishaps. With a triumphant finish and final swim at the Colorado River, the team headed to Page for celebratory beers — closing with a meditation on how sand and sediment (and, by extension, the people who pass through) become folded into the canyon's ancient layers.
Words and Photos from Amanda Bryan @amandakbryan
Spring Break is for the slots! The slot canyons, that is. Even more specifically: Paria Canyon. A 38-mile slot canyon in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument that shows off beautiful sandstone walls that tower 500ft above the admirer. One of Paria’s tributaries, Buckskin Gulch, boasts the longest continuous slot in the world. A natural environment for an all-gals trip and one boy dog named Pocho.
It's common to talk about nature through a feminine lens. Re: Mother Nature. But I've always felt the desert, in her many forms, is one of the most honest representations of the feminine. The desert isn't soft, but it is resilient. It survives in spite of. It adapts. It endures long stretches of scarcity and still finds ways to bloom. It's constantly changing while somehow remaining entirely itself. Those qualities felt fitting for a trip like this. Coordinating an all-women's journey into a deep, isolated canyon just made sense. The landscape mirrored the people I wanted to share it with. Plus, women are the best.
Where this story starts is with a steak at 7 am.
You can plan as well as you want, but sometimes a couple cold beers in Lee’s Ferry and two friends with no sense of time make the rules. What was supposed to be a nourishing dinner over a fire turned into a grilled steak at 7 am because we rolled into our starting trailhead well into the night and couldn’t be bothered to fire up the grill at midnight.
Once steaks and veggies were consumed, we slung our packs over our shoulders and carried on into the humble, sunlit wash that was the beginning of a 3-night/4-day submersion into Paria Canyon.
The starting point flipped-flopped a little between the White House Trailhead and Wire Pass (top of Buckskin Gulch). I was dead set on going down Buckskin because who wouldn’t want to add a few extra miles to hike the entirety of the world's longest continuous slot?! Thankfully, I called the ranger station, and she cautioned me: “We have reports of over 50 standing pools in Buckskin with quite a few reaching chest height on 6’2 men.” Gulp. If you know anything about canyon water, you surely know it serves as massive drainage ditches, and just trust me when I say the water is GNAR. I made the call to skip swimming in suspect water with our packs over our heads, so we started at the White House Trailhead. (We disrespectfully referred to Paria River and “dead cow river” due to most of us seeing images of bloated cows and sheep in standing water in pools at the bottom of canyons. A detail I don’t think you need, but maybe one people don’t consider.)
The wide beginning of Paria meanders beautifully for about four miles, criss-crossing the turbid waters of the river, before the walls start to heighten and narrow.
The drama of the changing scene created a palpable excitement among the group–that’s why we were here after all! Our trusty canine companion, Pocho, could sense the positive vibe shift and proceeded to run ahead at every bend, acting as our personal guide into the magic that the canyon was encapsulating us in. Or maybe that was the mind-expanding drugs?
About seven miles in, we reached the confluence of Buckskin and Paria. It being noon, we easily agreed a wine lunch was to commence before we shuffled into Buckskin for a high-reward side mission. This group heavily considers the fun-to-weight ratio for backcountry travel. Here’s a clear definition:
Fun-to-Weight Ratio (noun):
The perceived value, enjoyment, or utility of an item relative to the effort required to carry it. Commonly used in outdoor recreation to justify bringing nonessential items that provide a disproportionately high level of enjoyment compared to their weight. Example: “The fun-to-weight ratio of carrying a bag(s) of wine into the canyon was exceptionally high.”
With a gentle buzz, we stepped into Buckskin to ogle its tall, narrow walls covered in near-black desert varnish. We made it about two miles up the canyon without coming in contact with any standing water. Feeling a little disappointed and allowing FOMO to start to sink its teeth into the idea that maybe we would have been fine coming down Buckskin, quickly disappeared around the next bend. Our shuffle came to a halt at a large pool with a depth unknown to us due to the murky brown water. The sides of the pool were slick and nearly impossible to navigate without the help of a friend. Being my stubborn self, and really wanting to see around the next curve, I pushed through.
Our first failures of crossing the pools came from moving cautiously and letting the deep squish of earth up to our calves freak us out. After the group promised that if one made it across, we would all go, I took the approach of moving as fast as I could through the waist-deep pool and triumphantly reaching the other side. My friends were both stoked and disappointed, having remembered the promise we all made. Once we all crossed, laughing and holding our breath at each crossing (we really didn’t want to see anyone fully submerged), we carried on. Riding the high of our bravery, we hit another pool, then another. Each getting deeper and deeper and our morale getting lower and lower. Along with one trip companion, I went ahead to scout, but sadly could only see more pools, so we called and headed back to our packs waiting for us on the sandy bank of the Paria.
Our first night's sleep was on a romantic bend in the canyon about two miles up from our first water source. Once the packs dropped to the ground, we stripped down to nothing but our skin and bandanas, pulled out a flask full of tequila, and enjoyed a backcountry cigarette while sharing wild stories from our youthful single selves and wisdom that comes from the sanctity of women's shared spaces. This is where I add my giddiness as I sat back and listened to the banter and laughter of these women; some were longtime friends and others were meeting for the first time, but we fell into the safe and comfortable bubble so easily and seamlessly.
Day two started with robust coffee and a frenzied excitement. We were in it now, and we had about a ~12-mile journey down canyon, wrapped in the slot energy Paria is famous for.
Paria is a name that originates from the Southern Paiute Indigenous word pahri'ah, which roughly translates to "muddy water" or "frothy water". At first glance, the Paria River doesn't look like much. Instead of crystal clear water, it's usually a muddy, chocolate colored flow winding through one of the most beautiful slot canyons in the Southwest. But that muddy water is exactly what makes the Paria special.
As it flows from its headwaters located in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument toward the Colorado River, the Paria picks up and carries huge amounts of sediment downstream. That sediment helps build beaches, create habitat, and support the overall health of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. For a river that's only about 95 miles long, the Paria punches way above its weight. It's one of the Colorado's most important tributaries.
The walls got higher, and so did we. High on the decision we made to spend our time in this way. Being thankful our paths braided together with like-minded women to find similar joy in wild spaces. The afternoon moved along lazily as we allowed ourselves to be awe-struck by where we were. Choosing to lounge in the sand at various intervals so we could take in the wide expanse of the walls holding all the secrets we decided to share with each other.
The soft sand of our night two camp spot created the perfect environment to bust out another high fun-to-weight object: Tarot cards. With these cards in tow, the Modern Day Witch Tarot Deck reimagines the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) archetypes into a more relatable read for, you know, the modern-day witch! The practice of asking questions related to future plans, careers, love, and personal growth to a stack of cards not only helps you think about situations differently, but also adds hilarious discourse to a backpacking trip. This is a very mother nature approved activity, FYI.
Day 3 brought us another side quest we were all too happy to take. Ditching packs, we scrambled up a side canyon that held an arch. Wrather Canyon is a short hike with the Wrather arch at its end. Traveling down the main canyon, it’s pretty flat. You actually lose about 1600 feet over 38 miles. So the steep scramble up was a welcomed task that got our blood pumping.
The 3rd day came with our final water source. A hard-to-find spring tucked away into a rocky cluster. Last Reliable Spring is about 25 miles in, leaving 13 miles of hot desert travel until reaching Lee’s Ferry. Knowing this, we filled everything we had to the brim and hauled it with us to our final night of magic.
Our final evening came with a skincare routine that involved a light microdermal facial that ended in pain. The idea was that by night 3 we would be so crusty and dry that a light skin scrub would feel luxurious–a notion that went very wrong. The facial felt like sandpaper on our dried-out sun-smacked skin, causing a slight burn. Things got worse when we tried to wipe it away with a face wipe, as it only made that sandpaper feeling deepen! We survived but managed to get ourselves into a laughing fit at how ridiculous this situation was and moved on to soft hydrating lotion and more tarot cards and wine.
Morning of day 4 was an early one. Alarms were set to 5 am so we could enjoy coffee and breakfast and beat the morning sun. We had already started spilling into the lower part of the canyon the day before, with the walls widening along with the sun exposure. We wanted to beat the heat with a 6 am departure, knowing we had no additional water source until we reached the end. Having been spoiled by the jaw-dropping and dramatic sandstone walls for three days, I don’t think we had high expectations for the scene at the lower portion of Paria. We were quickly humbled by what she yet again provided us. The transition from the narrow slots to an open gorge covered in early spring green was breathtaking. The early morning sunrise made the pink, red, ochre bands in the towering sandstone walls glow in a showstopping way.
The final shuffle was met with pleasant exhaustion as we made our way to the Colorado River. The group found a private riverside spot to have one last baptism, this time in the emerald waters of the Colorado, before it mixes with the life-giving brown flow of the Paria. We stuffed ourselves into the rental truck and pointed her towards Page, where we promptly bought cold Pacificos before closing the loop on the trip.
The Sandstone found in Paria is over 150 million years old. The actual carving of Paria Canyon via the Paria River only happened within the last few million years. Grains of sand carried by wind, rivers, and ocean currents get deposited, compacted, and cemented into time. Holding history and stories and experiences. A good friend on the trip, Caroline, shared how she “likes to think about how a tiny sliver of herself gets folded into it, too. A little piece of whatever she is, added to a place that was here long before me and, if we protect it, will be here long after.” This amazing group of women willingly and gracefully allowed slivers of ourselves to be folded into Paria’s layers and history as well.
