On May 3, 2013, Tracy and I met our friends, Megan and Jason, to do an overnighter in Robber’s Roost Canyon. Tracy and I camped near the San Rafael Swell on Friday night, and then we met Megan and Jason in Hanksville on Saturday morning. Form there we drove out to the Angel Point Trailhead on the west side of the Dirty Devil River. We made the descent down towards the Dirty Devil without any problems. We decided to make the short little drop near the river, which required lowering our packs and handing their son down the short drop. But the hike down was uneventful, and once at the bottom we crossed the Dirty Devil and headed up river towards Robber’s Roost.
After getting into the canyon, we headed up canyon until the confluence with the South Fork. At the South Fork, the sun, heat, and sand had given us all we felt like dealing with, so we made camp across from the South Fork. Jason and I went further up canyon to the small spring I had found a few weeks earlier. It wasn’t until we were getting close and I couldn’t hear the water running that it occurred to me that the spring might have dried up, but luckily there was still a trickle coming out of the rock. It took awhile, but we were able to get our bottles filled. After getting back to camp, I saw some nice rock art on the canyon wall. That was cool because it was the first time I had ever found rock art that I didn’t know was there ahead of time. I then walked up a small side canyon next to our camp that I remembered Kelsey had said was a route out of the canyon. I found a trail, but the trail eventually hit a dry fall that I couldn’t understand how to get up.
The next day I talked to a guy who had climbed out of it, and he said that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. The next day we hiked out and just had a nice trip. While I hadn’t wanted to do Robber’s Roost again because of the cow dung, it was about the only place we could meet our friends that time of year for an overnighter. We had a good hike, made better by spending a weekend with good friends.
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