Why you should visit the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area in Utah

But this morning, on Day 2 of our trip, I decide it will be better for everyone if I hike and hang out in camp instead of going on the group’s planned canyoneering adventure down Knotted Rope Canyon.

Derek offers to stay behind, too, but I tell him no. Just because I can’t do Knotted Rope doesn’t mean he shouldn’t. Also, I enjoy solo time, especially when the landscape is as big as the thinking I have to do.

Seeking Utah’s desert grandeur? Bypass crowded Zion for Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Yesterday in another canyon, symptoms from multiple sclerosis, an incurable, degenerative neurological disease with which I was diagnosed when I was 30, put myself and the group in danger. Today, after 16 years of fighting against and/or ignoring MS-caused limitations — denying them allows me to believe, if only one adventure at a time, that I’m in control — I’m trying something different, albeit reluctantly. My wave goodbye is accompanied by tears.

The first four hours of our first canyoneering adventure, in Lower Eardley Canyon, are most excellent. From a camp we established near the Eardley Canyon Trailhead in the southern section of the Swell, we walk up Straight Wash, a wide slash of sand sometimes shaded by cottonwood trees and sometimes congested with nests of cottonwood carcasses deposited by flash floods. (Although there are two major rivers that cut through the Swell, it is Interstate 70 that has been the dividing line between north and south sections since 1970.)

After two miles, we leave the wash to make our way up a jumbly ridge seemingly stitched together by the arthritic, extensive roots of dwarf juniper and pinyon trees. After about 45 minutes and 800 vertical feet of elevation gain, we’re at the top of a gully that, once we descend it, will drop us into the middle of Eardley Canyon. At the bottom of the gully, we’re no longer hiking, but canyoneering, which does include hiking, but also scrambling, wading, stemming, problem-solving, rock climbing, swimming, rappelling, squeezing and even butt sliding. When canyoneering, you wear a climbing harness and helmet and, depending on the time of year and amount of swimming, maybe a wet suit. There are many ways canyoneering can injure or kill you, including hypothermia, drowning and falling.

According to Christopher Hagedorn, the owner and lead guide of Get in the Wild Adventures, which specializes in combining guided trips in Utah and Washington with teaching clients how to be safe and recreate responsibly in the outdoors, the San Rafael Swell is “one of the very best canyoneering destinations in the world.”

Until recently, the Swell’s landscape had no protective designations, even though there had been a decades-long push for it to be recognized as a national park or monument. In 2019, though, the bipartisan John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act established wilderness areas within the Swell, totaling about 663,000 acres, and also established the approximately 217,000-acre San Rafael Swell Recreation Area. The Bureau of Land Management manages the wilderness areas and the recreation area. The act also roughly tripled the size of Goblin Valley State Park, in the southern part of the Swell and one of Utah’s most popular, to nearly 10,000 acres.

There is canyoneering to be done in the Swell’s wildernesses, recreation area and state park. Because we wanted solitary car camping — pitching our tent within feet of our parked car and with no neighbors in sight — we’re in the recreation area. Wilderness camping requires backpacking (i.e., carrying all of your equipment with you); Goblin Valley State Park has a developed campground with 25 sites, two yurts and showers, but it’s also crowded — relatively speaking.

In Eardley, we don wet suits, harnesses and helmets. I’m fortunate that the progression of my MS, which about 2.8 million people have worldwide, has been minor. My balance can get wonky and sometimes my body is unable to regulate its temperature.

A feature of slot canyons is that little sunlight reaches their floors. In October in the sun in the Swell, the air temperature is in the low 70s. In Lower Eardley Canyon, the water and air temperature are both about 50 degrees. To keep myself from spiraling into hypothermia, I put on extra layers of clothing beneath my wet suit that Derek, Chase and Tara don’t bother wearing. Then we set off.

There are boulders to be…