Echoes can be purely recreational, too. When we were boys my friends and I used to go a short distance up the river from Moab to a place where the canyon wall on the other side of the river curved in such a way as to focus the echo and throw it back at us. That’s the place where Tim Martin and I took one of Moab’s loveliest girls and his old .45-70 rifle. We were firing it just to hear the magnificent, wrap-around, clapping roar of the echo. That’s where she fired the rifle, melodramatically fell to her seat and dropped the rifle in the sand. Tim and I were more interested in rifles than girls at that time and in our ignorance rescued the rifle instead of the girl. It was one of the best places I’ve known for making a great echoes.
Winter is the best time for echoes. The frigid air seems to conduct sound better that the heated air of summer. One winter morning in the 1960’s Dale Slade, Steve Lovell and I were out to Indian Peak, near the Nevada border west of Cedar City. A single loud whoop produced fourteen distinct echoes. I’ve never heard that many answers to my voice since.
The best echoes are produced by firing large caliber rifles in the proximity of high cliffs or deep canyons. Some of the greatest echoes you will ever hear are at the confluence of Texas, Arch and Butts canyons. It is difficult to access now. The road is much deteriorated. We went there once for the purpose of making echoes. There was a young couple from out of state camped there. I walked over and introduced myself I apologized for the intrusion and told them that we wouldn’t be long. I also told them not to be alarmed when we began firing the rifle.
At that site the canyons are several hundred feet deep with sheer walls on all sides. You can fire a rifle up Butts Canyon, down Arch Canyon, or toward the far talus slope across Arch Canyon. The echo of a single shot rolls up and down the canyons for several seconds, creating thier own echoes, piling layer upon layer of rumbling sound until the whole thing dies out and it’s time to torch off another round.
Another great spot for winter echoes is near the Goosenecks of the San Juan Fiver. Few people are in the area during winter and I’ve never cracked a cap when people I didn’t know were there. The deep, serpentine canyon with the river more than a thousand feet below makes great echoes. The first time I was there there in 1956 with Tim Martin. All we had was a .22 rifle and it was summer and hot. The echo was small but full of promise.
Not long ago I was out in Comb Wash upstream from the crossing near Bluff. It was early morning and cold. As the road goes up the wash it swings farther and farther away from the Comb. We turned around about where the road turns toward Cedar Mesa. I fired a couple of rounds from my .40 caliber pistol. It took several seconds for the echo to return from the Comb.
A couple of weeks ago we were poking around along the John’s Canyon road beneath the towering ramparts of Cedar Mesa. Before we headed back we stopped and fired the pistol, trying to count the number of times the report bounced came back to us from the high, curving wall. It was all one big, continuous roar to me but Steve Lovell insisted that he could count five distinct pops of the pistol in the echo.
Maybe this persistent ringing in my ears is simply a continuing echo of all that shooting.