2023 Fall Gateway to Canyon Country

One morning last May, I was sitting in my
kitchen in Page, Arizona, drinking coffee
and trying to decide what I wanted to do
on my birthday, which was two days away.
For starters, I would be a no-show at work,
which, of course, everyone should do on their birthday.
The other plan that came to mind was riding my mountain
bike from Big Water, Utah, to Alstrom Point in
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a ride whose
roundtrip distance would roughly approximate the age I
would be turning – 56.
But I also thought it would be fun to spend the day
hiking to The Wave, located in the Coyote Buttes North
Special Management Area of Pariah Canyon-Vermilion
Cliffs Wilderness. The catch was that the hike requires
a permit from the Bureau of Land Management, which
are allocated by lottery and can be particularly difficult to
get in the popular hiking month of May. I decided to apply
anyway and hope for the best. I’m generally not a lottery-winning
type of person, so in the meantime, I started
making a mental list of everything I would need to carry
for a day-long mountain bike ride to Alstrom Point and
back.
That evening I checked my email and, to my surprise,
saw the congratulatory message from recreation.gov – I
had scored a permit for me and my wife to The Wave. I
logged into the website and confirmed that I would ac-
www.GatewaytoCanyonCountry.com 11