Escalante

Put in at fence and took out at Coyote Gultch.  Used escape goats for the shuttle and they were great 4358264652.  The river really is mellow till you hit scorpion gultch and which point it really picks up in difficulty.  I would say its class IV moves with class II consequences because if you fall over you just could stand up and it usually was not more than knee deep.  This made the rapids way fun.  I was not expecting so many fun punchy rapids.  When paddleing at these levels we were making 4 miles an hour.

Camping is much more difficult to find than i thought.  The few nice places alreay had nice people in them who did not want to see us.  The river double one night for us and that means be careful about camping right next to the water.  Many unlucky boaters were trapped for the day until the flash flood stopped.

Just after the first mandatory portage there is a spring flowing out of the rock that you can fill your water with without filtering.  It is much better than the spring in scorpion.  When we were there it was super manky.  But we also filtered river water and other than cleaning the filter often it tasted great.  The filtered river water tasted better than filtered fence canyon water.

The hike out was way hotter than i thought and climbing up the cliff to get to the sand hill was an adventure all by itself. Nobody tells you about that.  You scramble up a rock face with a heavy pack and wet shoes, what could go wrong? My advice for your trip pack lite, dont bring a duckie, and bring more water for the hike out than you think.  That last hike across the desert goes on forever.