Flash flood on the Escalante last Tuesday, glad we bailed early

We were doing a 4 day loop down near Coyote Gulch. Day 2, the sky went from clear to dark in about 20 minutes. My buddy said it smelled like rain, which I thought was a joke. We were in a narrow section maybe 2 miles from camp. I checked the weather that morning, said 10% chance. That 10% hit hard. Water came up to our knees in like 5 minutes. We dropped our packs, climbed up a slickrock shelf about 15 feet. Watched a whole wall of brown water take out the trail below. We waited 3 hours, soaked and shivering. Lost a pair of trekking poles and my map. We turned around, hiked back to the car at the trailhead, drove to Escalante town and got a motel. The ranger at the visitor center told us there was a gully washer 40 miles upstream and we were lucky. Has anyone else had a close call on a dry wash in Utah? How do you judge when to trust the forecast vs the clouds?

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casey3931mo ago

Rule of thumb now, if clouds build fast near any canyon, I turn around before the rain starts.

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