Permit Pickin'

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Where I stayed

Comfort Inn

(Kanab hotels)

Flag of United States Kanab, Utah
Friday, October 1, 2010

Today was a nice relaxing day. We slept in and had a nice breakfast of waffles at the hotel. We walked next door to the Bureau of Land management (BLM) office to pick up our permits for Paria Canyon. When we talked to the ranger lady, we discovered that there are two BLM offices in Kanab. The other one, the field office was where we had to go to pick up our permits. We toured the small museum at this office and then drove over to the field office.

The Ranger was nice and informative and we received the latest weather report. Tomorrow looks pretty good with only a 20 to 30 per cent chance of rain but Sunday is up to a 40% chance here and 50 % in Bryce Canyon. We also received our waste management systems which is a bag with deoderizer in it to poop in as you must carry your excrement out with you. Nice! Permits and crap containers in hand, we left and had lunch at Lotsa Motsa Pizza.

After lunch, we explored the area and bought some supplies for our hike. Here is some general information on the area we will be hiking.

Paria River Canyon is a 38 mile trail that starts at the Whitehouse trailhead 43 miles east of Kanab. It follows the Paria River bed for its duration and ends at Lees Ferry near Page, Arizona. Buckskin Gulch the worlds longest slot canyon (16 miles) joins Paria Canyon at the confluence 7 miles in from the trailhead. The BLM only allows 20 campers per day to overnight in the Paria canyon/Buckskin Gulch area each day. You can reserve your permits on line up to 3 months in advance and we were able to grab two nights.

There is also another area called The Wave which requires permits and is for day use only. They also are limited to 20 people per day. 10 Permits can be reserved ahead of time and these were all gone. The other 10 are done by a lottery held at the Paria Contact Station each morning at 9:00 and are for the next day. We hope to get 2 of these 10 when we come out of Paria Canyon.

Weather is definitely a factor and concern in these parts. Flash flooding does occur and has killed hikers in the past. Rain that falls as far away as Bryce Canyon (50 miles) can cause flooding in Paria Canyon. Tomorrow morning, we will get a current weather report at the Contact Station which is 2 miles from the trailhead. There is some rain in the forecast so we will make our decision on the hike then.