Backpacking Capitol Reef National Park with a dog

Dogs are prohibited from backcountry areas in national parks. I support this policy because most are poorly trained. If allowed in national parks, they would foul the “natural atmosphere” and have mild ecological implications. Despite my support for the policy, Sarah and I planned a 90-mile route into and through Capitol Reef National Park with her dog Seldom. We chose to violate the no dog policy because we felt Seldom would have no significant adverse implications to humans or the environment:

• He has no negative social implications. He does not bark at people or dogs outside and rarely shows interest in other dogs. The only potential negative impact is on people’s perception of nature and "wilderness." That is, someone might become disturbed by seeing a typically urban pet in a location they believe to be wild. But, compared to the average backpacking dog, this is rare because we rarely hike on trails, rarely camp in established sites—we most commonly go to places without other people.
• His environmental impact is equal to or less than a human’s for three reasons: (1) He doesn’t chase and therefore has little impact on wildlife. (We have a near perfect success rate at calling him back from moose, bears, mountain goats, deer, birds, etc; (2) The area of his paws is smaller than my feet—he crushes, for example, less cryptobiotic soil than I do; (3) Like ours, his poo can be buried.

I believe Seldom’s excellent behavior combined with our route selection and low impact camping practices make it reasonable for him to join us on certain trips through backcountry areas in some national parks. Capitol Reef being one of them.

The Route

We planned a 90-mile mostly off trail route from the Coyote Gulch trailhead to the Capitol Reef visitor’s center in Fruita—alongside, through, and on top of the reef. The original aim was to do this in October, but our 80-mile Escalante trip took longer than expected (we intended to combine them into one trip) so we rescheduled the reef for the first week in January. 

Hitching in blue, walking in pink.

Better than being sick in a warm house

I caught a cold when we were leaving Nebraska and Sarah felt like she was coming down with one. We went forward with the trip because, as Sarah said, “being sick in canyon country is better than being sick in a warm house in a warm bed in Salt Lake City.” Through we felt weak and tired, it was totally worth it; coughing up green phlegm in a gorgeous canyon was far more enjoyable than in my bed.

We covered the ~110 miles from our parked car to the start of the route with only six miles of walking—a lucky feat considering the rural roads and low season traffic. We rode with a Mormon family from Salt Lake, cabin owners from Salt Lake, California road trippers, a fourth generation local rancher, and California landscape photographers. The California road trippers asked us why Seldom didn’t have a pack, which made us realize that we left his pack and food in the car. Oops!

Wading through the unfrozen Escalante river with air temps in the 20’s was frigid. I carried Seldom on my pack across the open water, breaking through the ice on the banks, so he didn’t turn into a frozen fur ball. He loved it. Farther up, the river had three to four inches of ice in some places; we tiptoed across, sometimes dragging our packs behind in case we broke through.

Walking through Stevens Canyon was a blast. There are several areas the easiest route crossed slickrock benches in order to avoid pour overs. Great fun. The ice pools were also fun to walk on and we smashed them with big rocks to get drinking water.

The ice completely changed how we interacted with the canyon—rather than wading through pools, we slip and slid across them.

On the afternoon of the third day we bailed from our route in hopes of hitching on the Nottom-Bullfrog road back to our car. This decision was motivated by the snow, which had arrived in quantities that would have made our high, slickrock route unreasonably dangerous and much slower. We were also moving slower than normal, our bodies felt tired and achy from being sick, and I had a flight to catch in two days.

We exited east and walked to the road where we immediately caught a ride with some archeologists who were surveying BLM roads. They carried us out of their way for 15-20 minutes. Then we walked for several more hours into the darkness without seeing any other vehicles. The next morning we woke up at 4:00 AM to 3” of fresh snow and set off down the road (6” of snow) expecting to walk the remaining 30 miles to Highway 24, where we could hitch to our car. Remembering walking in the pre-dawn hours munching energy bars and watching color return to the landscape makes me smile. A friendly rancher from Utah Sandy Ranch picked us up and drove us the remaining distance back to our car. We walked about 16 miles by 11 AM and were darn tired—Sarah had a sore throat and I was still expelling green phlegm. We could see the happy exhaustion in each others faces.

$125 fine for Seldom

We took almost no care to hide Seldom from park employees: we parked in front of the visitor center’s main entrance and filled out a permit (during the process we had to lie about not having a dog and that person later saw us with Seldom—she knew we were breaking the rule). Further, when we returned to our car Sarah went into the visitor center where the person she lied to saw her and called in a ranger. We voluntarily showed the ranger our intended route with ~50 miles in the park, described how our actual route differed from the intended. 

Both the ranger and the visitor’s center employee described the rationale for the no dog policy. We refrained from arguing why Seldom’s impact was less than that of the average dog (or person?) and that grazing cattle in the park (much of the park appeared to be grazed) has a greater ecological impact and a causes a much greater reduction in people’s perception of “wilderness” than allowing the rare dog to accompany the rare backpacker. Instead, we accepted the fine as the cost hiking with a dog and as punishment for our lack of effort to avoid park employees.

Despite the sour ending, this was a lovely trip in stunning country. We are both excited to return to finish the reef scrambling and canyoneering route. Reflecting on the region in general, I suspect Coyote Gulch to Stevens Canyon to an exit on the Nottom-Bullfrog road is one of the best short trips (2-4 days) in the Southwest.