There is nothing natural about walking off a cliff backwards.

This is what is running through my head as stand with my feet planted on the edge of a drop where the easy flowing stream, lined with watercress and willows abruptly ends and plummets into a shallow pool more than a hundred feet below. I can feel the slip of algae under my feet and, once again, I am wondering what I have gotten myself into.

There are nine of us - six Boy Scouts and two other adults besides myself, Kirk Smith and Cory Mattson. We have brought the boys to spend their fall break exploring the Escalante canyons. The plan today is to hike Calf Creek, from near its source along the east end of Hell’s Backbone road, almost the entire distance to its confluence with the Escalante River. Last night we camped near the Boulder airstrip, which in reality is a long stretch of dirt with half of an abandoned fuselage from a small plane upturned on its nose, sporting a windsock where the tail used to be. The airstrip sits on the bench to the north of Calf Creek’s headwaters, and it is where water from rain and snow soaks into the ground and through the porous Navajo sandstone until it filters out hundreds of years later, through mossy seeps along the walls of Calf Creek. What starts out as barely a trickle dampening the rock underfoot gradually builds into a stream sufficient to fill the deep, clear pools above Upper Calf Creek falls.

We descended quickly from the bench along a dry trail strewn with large basalt boulders that look like big, black dinosaur eggs tipped from a giant basket and scattered across the creamy white sandstone. The plates are scattered haphazardly among the basalt eggs and still hold the ripples and cracks that tell of their former life as silt in a river bottom left high and dry long ago as the water cut deeper into the canyon.

The canyon drops nearly 90 feet at the upper falls, but it is easily skirted on the east side where a well-marked trail takes an easy descent along the canyon wall, through the wild rose and willow that feeds along the life-giving water, to the soggy moss and rushes that make up the banks below the falls.

For most of the next three miles, the creek is the trail. We wandered in and out to duck under willows and cottonwoods that tipped into the water as the bulk of their branches outweighed their shallow roots buried in the banks that are stacked on top of solid stone. The color of their leaves is amplified by the light that bounces off the sandstone and bathes everything in a honey-colored glow. The rich color reflects off of the water slipping between the narrow walls of the canyon and lights the undersides of a long ridge where erosion over time has carved a tube-like indent in the bottom of the canyon wall. Seeps drizzle out of the middle of the tube and down into the stream, adding to the stream’s bulk in increments barely more than a few cups at a time, but constant enough that by the time the water reaches the lower portion of the canyon, it is considerably more than what topples over the falls at Upper Calf Creek.

After about two miles, the canyon widens enough to accommodate an overgrown footpath to the side of the creek, but it crosses back and forth as the water turns from one side of the canyon to the other.

We found ourselves climbing out of the creek, only to enter it again a few yards downstream. It took us four hours to reach this point and we had expected to find the second falls by now. We had a short discussion about when we should consider turning back, but it was quickly decided that we were well past the halfway point by now and turning back would be more effort that forging ahead, even if our last few miles will be in the dark.

It didn’t take long for the canyon to constrict again and we soon heard falling water. The first few were false alarms, as the creek tumbled down small obstacles and a series of little falls that were easily circumnavigated until we stood at the edge of a long pool that filled the canyon from one side to the other and curved up around the corner and out of view. We could hear a rumble echoing through the watery passage that was much louder than the past few. This surely had to be the lower falls.

On the left, there was a ledge that would take us around the pool and, at very least give us a view of what lies ahead, but getting up it was still a challenge. I was tall enough to find a fingerhold far up on the wall and pull myself up, but there was no guarantee that we would get six teenage boys up onto the ledge and around the pool without rigging one of the ropes from above. I climbed up and onto the ledge, and from the top I could see that the route would take us easily around the pool and we could jump onto a sandbar on the other side to get down. More importantly though, I could see deep down into the canyon below. We were at the top of Lower Calf Creek Falls.

With the exception of a couple of practice rappels that we have done over the past few weeks and the occasional climbing wall, I haven’t been rappelling for over twenty years. I have never rappelled down a waterfall. Cory Mattson, the boy’s Scout leader, has spent the past month or so preparing the boys, showing them how to rig the webbing and tie two ropes together with a fisherman’s knot, but (thankfully) they didn’t rig this rappel. Cory has tied every knot and checked every inch of the rigging. None of the boys are within view of the falls, which is good for two reasons; we don’t have to worry about them bumping someone off the edge, and they can’t see how freaked out I am.

Cory’s eyes are fixed on mine as I start to lean back, into the opening between the walls. The slack in the rope tightens up as Cory pulls back to counter my weight but it still feels uneasy as I take my first step. I’ve positioned myself with one foot on each side of a crevice in the rock where a small side stream, maybe the equivalent flow of two garden hoses turned on full, flows between my feet. My left foot is on dry rock and feels solid, but as soon as I shift my weight to the right, I lose my footing and slip into the crack. I catch my balance and my foot has wedged into the crack enough to keep me slipping very far so I manage to adjust my position again, straddling the water. I notice that I’m below the edge of the falls now and, with the rope pulled tight, it suddenly feels more solid. With the newfound confidence that the rig will hold, I move my way down the first section of the falls. Fifteen feet down I’m confronted with a tactical error. With one foot on either side of the stream, when the water moves away from the rock where it pours over a small ledge, the full force of it hits me directly in my abdomen. The shock of cold is disorienting and for a second I keep waiting for someone to turn it off! I try to move to the side and my feet slide down the mossy ledge like I’m ice skating vertically. I lower myself down another twenty feet or so but there is no place to land. The water has carved out a deep pool, maybe six feet in diameter and I have followed the same path the water does, directly into the deepest part. I manage to swing to the

right side