Start ‘em Early

As we stumble down to the canyon bottom, Juliet slips on some loose rocks. But I manage to catch her. She presses on, and in the wash she picks up walking sticks for us both.

Even only hiking a little over a mile in, a solitary place like this is an adventure, with nothing certain about what we’ll encounter. When you’re backpacking, you always walk the line of the uneasiness and sublimity of solitude. This sense conflicts with my desire as a parent to be in control. At least until a certain age, our kids tend to think we as parents are omniscient. But I explain to Juliet what an adventure is, that I’ve never been here before. I don’t know what will happen.

Indeed, I find remnants of flash flooding — debris hugging the upstream side of the willows in the wash. And as we walk I see fresh tracks in the mud.

Juliet is now quite happy and engaging me in what she calls the “animal game,” wherein one of us thinks of an animal and the other asks “yes” or “no” questions to home in on and guess the animal.

“Daddy, are you thinking of an animal?” Juliet says.

The tracks become clear as pawed feet.

“Daddy?” she says when I don’t respond.

“Uh huh,” I say, scanning the canyon around us for any movement.

“Is it a mammal?”

The walls are sheer, no escape.

“Daddy!”

After a few distracted rounds of the animal game, we arrive at the junction of Yankee Doodle, a relatively popular technical slot canyon. We decide to run up, until the canyon narrows and a muddy pool blocks our path, and Juliet wants to get to camp.

The cat tracks have tailed off, and the canyon wall shadows have lengthened. After another half hour of walking down canyon, we arrive at the junction where Big Hollow meets Heath Wash. This is where we plan to camp.

Juliet wants to know if we’re camping right in the wash. She hopes so, because she likes the sand and mud. I tell her we don’t really want to get washed away by a flood. In fact, finding a good spot to camp is tricky. You have to look for a lot of things: level ground and safety are vital but so are avoiding cryptobiotic soil, finding big rocks for furniture, and above else getting yourself a nice view.

We explore all parts of the canyon confluence, scampering up the loose rock of each escarpment before deciding on a spot. It’s at the nose of the plateau between Big Hollow and Heath Wash, on a flat area in a garden of lichen-covered boulders, juniper and manzanita. We have views both down the canyon and up, through the folding layers of sandstone.

The area is beautiful, and part of the beauty is that it’s new to us and there’s no one else here. I-15 is just three miles away but the place feels remote. It’s one of the lessons I want to impart to Juliet on this trip, that if you go slowly and spend a night in a place, every landscape has its own value and presents opportunities to explore. Especially in Utah. (Read: Why Your Kids Need a Utah Trip)

But what do you do with a 7-year-old during the down time of backpacking? There’s plenty of daylight left in the long September day. Not to worry — Juliet goes right in the tent and gets comfy in her sleeping bag with her stuffed moose. This was her vision of the trip.

What the heck, I follow suit. One of the things she has in her backpack is a Bunco dice game we had bought on the way out of town. We play a few rounds of Bunco in the tent before we emerge to kick a soccer ball in an open field. She jumps some rope. Dinner is bean and cheese quesadillas. Juliet marvels that this entire place seems to be ours.

When the stars come out, it’s unlike anything she’s seen. Despite the snow up north there is no rain in the forecast here so we leave the rainfly off, and the glittering black sky seems right on top of us as we drift off to sleep.

The morning brings the simple directive to finish the journey. A different light shines on the trail we walked the afternoon before. I feel good. I realize that after Juliet had taken her licks on the double black diamond and in the ocean, it wasn’t long before she was asking to go back. This time, we’ve barely returned to the car before she’s talking about the next backpacking trip.