Zebra slot

Stephen Fischer Photography

Rating: 2B-II

Zebra slot is short little canyon located in the Harris wash as accessed via a 2 mile trail from a side road from Hole-in-the-rock road, south of Escalante. More hiking details can be found here.

It can typically be a wet canyon, having sometimes to go through waist deep water to reach the more interesting parts.  Zebra is unique based on the horizontal striations in the sandstone as shown in the images below.  If you look more closely at the sandstone walls, in certain areas you will also notice these smallish volcanic marble sized concretions embedded within them.  I found these on occasions within certain areas of the Colorado Plateau, typically sitting loose on some flat playa-like surface, but have not seen them with as high a regularity as found here in Zebra Slot embedded in the walls.

As mentioned earlier, in order to access this slot it was necessary to go into waist deep water when last visiting there.  Many of us elected to temporarily strip down to our underwear in order to cross this deep section, and then putting our pants back on at the other side.  I found it entertaining that there were also a couple of other groups of photographers that had to do the same thing.  After repeating this dress-down on the way back, many folks (including some ladies) were just hanging around in their underwear chit-chatting about photography, the weather, or who knows what, all while waiting to get sufficiently dry before putting their pants back on.  Apparently something about photographing slot canyons loosens your inhibitions :^)