Trip report
Jun 21, 2019 — Hidden on both of our to-do lists for years, Matt and I decided to head over to the Cosmic Ashtray near Escalante, but did it via a loop that includes the nontechnical fork of Red Breaks Canyon (west fork). In order to make the day a bit more fun, we did Red Breaks first, ascending the canyon, opposed to descending it. This also allowed us to make Cosmic Ashtray the climax of our trip before walking back on a dirt road to complete the loop.
From the Harris Wash Trailhead, we followed a dirt road across the currently dry Harris Wash, then continued north away from the road up the mouth of Red Breaks Canyon. A bit of wash walking led to some great narrows, before Red Breaks forks east and west. The east fork apparently has a rappel and we heard was a bit less interesting, so we took the west fork. A dryfall immediately stopped us, so we had to backtrack to locate a route up to the west side of the canyon, dropping in above the dryfall. Lots of obstacles and fun squeezes met us within Red Breaks and it was over too quickly, though the canyon was definitely longer than we thought it would be. Once out of the narrows, we veered right, out of the wash and up a Class 3 move to a slope. We dropped east into a drainage, then back up another slope, only to come back down. We worked up to the northeast on gorgeous slickrock, following a wash until we could get around a ridge and Cosmic Ashtray came into view. Another drop down into a slickrock wash led us to the final ascent to the Cosmic Ashtray. It was more gorgeous than photos had ever made it seem.
From the Cosmic Ashtray, we headed southwest in a slickrock drainage until we merged with the dirt road we had left earlier. We followed this back to the trailhead.