Here's the list of who went on the trip:
Submission from Kathy Sharp:
We drove up Friday night and camped at the Round Valley Draw trailhead. Saturday morning we set up a shuttle. Kelsey's map shows several road branches and we had planned to park at the end of the west one, but it turned out that only one road was visible and it was a pretty good road, so we parked at the end of it. We had no trouble at all getting through the narrows, so maybe the conditions changed since Kelsey wrote about it. We continued on down Hackberry Canyon, but it wasn't very narrow, the sun was hot, and the sand was getting hard to walk in. In retrospect, we should have just hiked back through the narrows or gotten out at the first exit, which we reached in under two hours, I believe. But we went down Hackberry Canyon, up Hackberry Canyon, climbed up one side, climbed back down when it didn't go, climbed back out another place, and then went up and down several times back to the car in the hot, hot sun. These were very nice narrows, though, and we were commenting on how this would be a good place to take people who don't want to do very technical stuff. Hackberry Canyon was pretty, but the Round Valley narrows were much better!
We had planned to spend more time in Hackberry than we did, so we had time to go to Bull Valley Gorge afterwards. This is the place where a car is wedged head first in the slot underneath the bridge. We followed a short little trail up the canyon to an easy entrance. The little trail bothered Richard too much, so he turned back. The trail was very close to the edge, there was a huge drop-off, and the trail was slighly slanted toward the edge. It was fine, but I can understand why someone with a more-than-average fear of heights wouldn't like it. Bull Valley Gorge had some great narrows, too, and was a very pretty canyon. Someone had left some webbing that aided in getting down the first obstacle, and someone had left a rope to monkey-man down the next one. We continued down to where Kelsey shows an exit on both sides of the canyon, and we climbed out on the left side (facing down canyon). Then we hiked cross-country back to the road and then down the road to the cars. We had looked for a jeep trail we saw on Sam's topo map, but we never found it. We found a nice campsite for Saturday night while walking back to the cars, though.
Sunday morning we hiked Willis Creek. This, too, is a fun, easy slot hike, and the water was running in the top end of the canyon, although it was easily avoidable. I think when I return I'll just turn around at the first little side canyon on the left (we were going downstream). It was blocked with a huge chokestone. Rogil climbed it, and said it wasn't terribly hard, but the map showed the side canyon as being a very small canyon so the rest of us didn't follow.
After Willis Creek, we went to see Grosvenor Arch. We parked in a lot with an outhouse and there was a sidewalk to the viewing area. Tough hike! ;-) It's a neat multiple arch, though.
For our final adventure, we decided to do the Cottonwood Wash Narrows. This wasn't in our original plan, but we had some extra time. Kelsey compared these narrows to Buckskin Gulch. They were nice, but I have no idea what he was talking about. We followed a very short road to a little parking area off of Cottonwood Wash Road and walked into the canyon. The description of where to start was a little hard to follow, but eventually we determined that we entered at the south end of Kelsey's description and headed north and into Butler Valley Draw. This slot had some very unusual rock for slot canyons and we had fun (more fun once we got out of the sun and sand). Rogil thought we should come back and explore more of it. When it was getting late, we hiked back to where we had seen the power lines through a break in the canyon wall and very easily hiked out to the road from there.
Although the weather forecast had called for a totally dry weekend in Canonville, there were dark clouds looming in the direction we were to drive, and we had had some sprinkles. Cottonwood Wash is impassable when wet. Take that seriously. I ran into one wet spot on the road and couldn't believe how slippery it was. And I can't imagine what the clumps of mud on the wheels would be like if it had rained rather than sprinkled! At one point I was driving in front and came to a hill where there were only two sets of tire tracks. One went staight up the hill, and the other set looked like someone had slid off the road. I was stricken with fear and asked Rogil to go first. We put the trucks in 4WD low--first time for my truck--and were fine. We stopped at a gas station in Page to clean the mud off our windows and headlights; Richard's headlights were so covered with mud that I didn't even know they were on!
I should mention that Sam and Rogil saw a bobcat running up out of one of the side canyons of Hackberry Canyon that we explored! I've never seen one in the wild.
It was a great trip!