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Published: November 7th 2011
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White Pocket was a suggestion given to me by an avid area hiker. I have never seen it on any map and it is pretty tough to find any information on it online. The weather here is getting pretty crappy and there is snow predicted for this afternoon and into tomorrow; chances are good that I am not going to be hiking to the Wave. Could this be the next best thing? After the hike up Angels Landing I didn’t have much to lose, I’d already done something pretty amazing with my day. Plus this guy had told me that he likes this one better than the Wave, that was right before he gave me the directions. Which went something like this: “Take that same Houserock Valley Road past the Wirepass Trailhead stop, and look for a dirt road on your left. You have four wheel drive right?” “Yep.” “Good, you may have to deflate your tires to make it.” I nodded my acknowledgement. “You’ll go on this road for a few miles, past a windmill, and you’ll have a fence right by you for a while. You’ll go through two gates, make sure you close them. There isn’t a marker
or anything, but you can see the top of the monolith for a while as you approach it and there you’ll see a single juniper tree. You can just park there. There is no formal trail or anything, you can just walk around.”
Well, the instructions sound awful, but they weren’t bad. I mean I made it. The crazy thing was the drive out there. I am by myself in this little rental Jeep barely making it through, my axles scraping against sand and rock more than a couple of times along the way. I was certain I was going to get stuck and have to walk out from there. That is the adventure though right? Not knowing? Once there I started to walk up the hill to this... thing. I had no idea what to expect. I didn’t have a cell phone that works out there, had left my wallet in the car, didn’t take my backpack or camelpak. I thought to myself “this is worst case scenario, when I get killed by a mountain lion, or someone steals my vehicle and leaves me out here dead, I’ll have no identity.”
Anyway, I made it back to
recount all of this. So I trekked up this hill, through the open sandy desert, certain I was going to see snakes or a mountain lion. Nope, just cactus, lots of them. And then I got closer to the monolith. This thing was beautiful. It looks like the Wave does in photos, same texture and colors, same fragile rock. I made my way around taking photos and staring up with my mouth agape as if I was starring in “Faces of Duh part XII”. The photos could never do this justice. After walking around for a hour or two I thought it was best to head back to the Jeep and give myself plenty of sunlight to make it back. I saw no vehicles on the way out there or back, had I gotten stuck or experienced issues/gotten lost I’d most definitely still be out there. In the end I made it back to Kanab, showered, ate at Nedra’s Too (really good actually), and am back in my room now blogging, getting ready for tomorrow. Hope this snow stops coming down. Tomorrow... the Wave.
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Chris and Nikki
Chris
Awesome picture.