I have a soul-level connection with the Red Rock country of southern Utah. The multicolored layers of rock remind me that I am but a small speck in geologic time. I stand in stunned silence as I truly take in the history that is visible to me. I journeyed to this part of the world with a Hampshire College group of eight students and their instructor, Karen Warren.

I met the group in Massachusetts and we packed all of the food and gear to fly to Salt Lake City. There we gathered a few last supplies and fresh food and drove 4 hours south to the San Rafael Swell. Here we based out of Goblin Valley State Park and did many days of slot canyon exploration. We started by doing a traverse up Little Wild Horse Canyon and down Bell Canyon. We began to hone our moving over rock, our spotting, and our pack passing skills as we negotiated several obstacles in the tight canyons. The highlight was a 1/2-mile section of canyon narrows that towered above us.

The next day we did an out and back exploration of Crack Canyon. We were surprised to find a frozen section of creek that we could slide belly like a seal style on-if we’d had skates, we could have played the first in canyon game of hockey. We took a break from canyoneering to pay a visit to Capitol Reef National Park. We finished up our time in the Swell by doing a traverse of Ding to Dang Canyons. I actually got to be part of the Ding Dang Singers who went up Ding, Down Dang, Up Dang and Down Ding again. Follow that?

From the Swell, we traveled to Moab, Utah to spend a few days there exploring. We spent one day learning about rock art (petroglyphs and pictographs) from a local expert we dubbed “Rock Boy.” We spent another day hiking around Arches National Park and a third day preparing for our backpacking excursion into Canyonlands National Park. We drove 2 hours south to the Needles District and spent a night in the front country campground before departing for our six-day trip into the backcountry.

We backpacked over the slick rock into Chesler Park and set up camp for three days. Our first morning we were greeted by snow and high winds so we took the morning off to rest. We did a 6-kilometer water run that afternoon up towards Druid Arch and the next day hiked the Joint trail. It took us through a narrow slot like canyon that was formed through by two rock joints coming together rather than water based erosion.

On our fourth day, we traveled over several slick rocks passes-several of which required using ladders to get up and down them. We camped in Lost Canyon at the end of a 12-kilometer hike. The next day we tried to hike to a lookout but got turned around by snow covering the slick rock on north facing slopes. On our final morning in the backcountry, we awoke to 4 inches of snow and we wondered if we would be able to get out over the pass we needed to cross. We packed and set off. The backside of the pass was dry as it faced south. As we reached the top and looked down, the route looked doable if we used the rope to pass the backpacks down.

We hooked up a belay and sent folks and packs down the slippery slope and we all made it safely. We hiked the remaining 4 kilometers to the van in relative silence-thankful for the time spent surrounded by red rocks of Southern Utah. In Moab, we rented “Grandma’s Place,” had a wonderful feed and cleaned and dried tents and gear. The next day we drove back to Salt Lake City paying a quick visit to Temple Square and the Patagonia outlet. We boarded our United flight the next day and made our way back to Hampshire College with bodies and souls much richer for the time spent exploring the red walled canyons of Utah.